Each day seems to bring fresh criticisms of Christ, His Church and the goods she defends. Recently, it was marriage, dismissed in the pages of the New York Times as a relic, an outdated and burdensome institution. Many today are disillusioned with it, distrustful of it, even repelled by it. To modern eyes, it appears less like a great calling and more like a constraint. But perhaps this judgement rests on a failure to see what marriage truly is. Let us consider whether it really has nothing to offer modern men.
G K Chesterton, in his book Orthodoxy, highlights two contrary desires in the human experience. First, there is the natural desire for adventure, for the unknown. The heart longs to break out of the safe and ordinary and to seek what is exotic, even dangerous. Only through such pursuits do we discover the limits of our virtues and challenge our hearts to grow.
Second, there is an equally natural desire for the familiar and the stable. Few things are as satisfying, after a long journey, as the comfort of one’s own bed. Stability is the necessary ground of any true adventure; we can only depart because there is something to return to. Like Odysseus, who wandered so far that he came at last to long only for home, the heart ultimately seeks both.
In a striking act of generosity, God has given Christian marriage as the fulfilment of these two desires together. In matrimony, one finds the stability and familiarity of a spouse: the same voice at the end of the day, the same face across the table, known more deeply with each passing year. Together, husband and wife establish a rule of life and, in imitation of their Creator, bring order and form to the chaos of existence, through shared routines and through the procreative power that makes them truly one flesh.
At the same time, marriage contains within it the element of rupture, the break from the merely ordinary. It satisfies the desire for novelty, for in one’s spouse and children one encounters difference, surprise and growth. Marriage forces us into communion with what is truly other, a contradiction, even if complementary. Each spouse inducts the other into a world strangely unfamiliar, and as parents into yet more foreign worlds unfolding.
Matrimony is also a real adventure, in that it has the dangers of a real enemy. The chief enemy is not one’s spouse or children, but oneself. This is the first battleground of marriage: the struggle against one’s own disordered will, the effort to hold one’s tongue in anger, to choose patience when irritation rises, to give when one would rather withdraw. As Christians, we may also name the world and the devil as adversaries, but their point of entry into the home is always through the door of our heart.
These are among the great goods of marriage, so often overlooked in our age. A Catholic man does not choose a wife for mere appearance, but for virtue. In her, he sees the answer to some of the deepest desires of his heart: a home and a fortress, an escape from the dull monotony of living for himself, and the means by which his greatest enemy, his own selfishness, may finally be overcome.
In a culture that is ever eager to criticise Christ and His Church, there stands marriage in defiance. Marriage continues to delight the heart in both its longing for adventure and its longing for home, and orders them towards love. It is not an escape from difficulty, but an invitation into a greater one: the daily, hidden heroism of self-gift, where love is proven in constancy, patience and sacrifice. Matrimony calls for men of valour, men willing first to conquer themselves and then the world. In an age of disillusionment, there remains an uncommon grace for the common man: to become like God by laying down his life for his bride. If marriage has been dismissed as a burden, it is only because the Cross is poorly understood. For here is both the adventure we seek and the way home for which we long. Christ does not give bad gifts. Step into the adventure.
