Conjugal Love

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

We are told in St. Mark, “This is why a man leaves his father and mother, and the two become one flesh. They are no longer two, therefore, but one flesh” (Mark 10:7-8, Gen. 2:24).

The Church has always promoted very clearly the doctrine on marriage.

Our Lord, when He spoke to the apostles, He said, “Go you therefore, and teach all nations” (Matt. 28:19).

The Church has always seen that she has a God-given task to teach—to teach the moral principles of marriage, and also to teach the natural law, which is the plan of God for man.

Our Lord communicated this divine power to Peter and the apostles and sent them to teach these commandments to all nations.

He constituted the Church as the authentic guardian and interpreter of the whole moral law—not only the law of the Gospel, but also natural law, “because natural law declares also the will of God, and its faithful observance is necessary” to reach the eternal wedding feast (Paul VI, Encyclical, Humanae Vitae, Point 4, July 25, 1968).

Down through the decades and the centuries, the Church has issued appropriate documents on the nature of marriage: the correct use of conjugal rights, the duties of spouses.

There's a whole treasure trove of truth and beauty and doctrine that's contained in the Church in these areas.

“The question of human procreation, like every other question that touches human life, involves more than the limited aspects specific to disciplines like biology, psychology, demography, or sociology. It is the whole man and the whole mission to which he is called that has to be considered in its natural, earthly aspects, and also in its supernatural, eternal aspects.

“Sometimes in the attempt to justify the use of artificial methods of birth control, people can appeal to the demands of married love or of responsible parenthood. Those areas have to be accurately defined and analyzed.

“Married love particularly reveals its true nature and ability when we see that it takes its origin from God, who is love” (ibid., Point 8).

Human love and conjugal love are one of the most beautiful aspects of the planet. That's one of the reasons why the devil has done his level best to mess up these ideas for young people.

…from “God, who ‘is love’ (1 John 4:8), from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name,” we're told in Scripture (Eph. 3:15).

We are taught that “marriage, far from being the effect of chance or the result of the blind evolution of forces, is, in reality, the wise and provident institution of God the Creator, whose purpose was to bring about in man his loving design” (ibid.).

St. Josemaría liked to emphasize how marriage is a vocation, a real calling to holiness.

Husband and wife have to live out that calling in all moments. “Through that mutual gift of themselves, which is specific and exclusive to them alone,” they have to try and “develop that union of persons in which they perfect one another, cooperating with God in the generation and rearing of new lives.

“The marriage of those who have been baptized is invested with the dignity of a sacramental sign of grace because it represents the union of Christ and His Church” (ibid.).

St. Paul says, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church. … Even so, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the Church.

“This is a great mystery,” says St. Paul, “and I mean about Christ and his Church. Let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband” (Eph. 5:25,28-29,32-33).

The document Humanae Vitae has explained conjugal love, or married love, very clearly. It says that married love has four specific characteristics: it's human, it's total, it's faithful and exclusive, and it's fertile or at least open to life.

It's very important that young people, including high school students, should know and understand what conjugal love is, so that they work towards having conjugal love. Some people could have been married for twenty years, and their marriage might never be conjugal.

One lady lecturer in the States puts the lack of conjugal love and the use of contraceptives down to the reason for so many divorces in the world today.

When the Church says it's human, she uses that word in its deepest meaning: “fully human, a compound of sense and spirit.” It's not animal. “It is not a question merely of natural instinct or emotional drive” (ibid., Point 9). It’s something much deeper, much more beautiful.

“It is an act of the free will, whose trust is such that it is meant not only to survive the joys and sorrows of daily life, but also to grow, so that husband and wife become in a way one heart and one soul, and together they attain their human fulfillment.”

It's total, the total giving of oneself, a total self-giving.

“Husband and wife generously share everything, allowing no unreasonable exceptions, and not thinking only of their own convenience. Whoever really loves their spouse loves not only for what they receive, but loves the spouse for the spouse's own sake, content to be able to enrich the other with the gift of self” (ibid.).

Pope John Paul II liked that phrase very much: “the gift of self.” He said marriage is a total self-giving (John Paul II, Theology of the Body, 15:5; Vatican II, Gaudium et spes, 24).

Married love is also faithful and exclusive. You can't give yourself totally to many different people. Husband and wife understand, “on the day, fully aware of what they're doing, they freely give themselves to one another in marriage.” ‘I give myself to you completely, unto death.’

“Even though the fidelity of husband and wife can sometimes present difficulties, no one has the right to say that it's impossible. On the contrary, it's always honorable and meritorious.”

We shouldn't forget the example of countless married couples down through the ages that have proved that “fidelity in marriage is very much in accord with the nature of marriage, and, as well as that, it can be a source of profound and enduring happiness.”

Conjugal love is also open to life. It's not just “confined to the loving interchange of husband and wife. It tries to go beyond this, to bring new life into being. ‘Marriage and conjugal love are, by their nature, ordained towards the procreation and education of children (Vatican II, Gaudium et spes, Point 48).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church likes to say, “Children are the supreme gift of marriage and contribute in the highest degree to the parents' welfare (Catechism, Point 1652; Vatican II, Gaudium et spes, Point 50).

We can't repeat that too frequently in the world that we live in.

There was a chastity educator in California who was talking one time about how difficult it was to teach high school kids there to be chaste.

She was reminiscing and saying, “You know, in my home and my parents, they didn't have to talk to us too much about these things, because every time they brought home a baby, that baby came to be the center of our whole family life. All of us realized that that baby was very, very important. And it was as though that baby brought with it many, many messages and values.”

And she said, “They did this eleven times, so we had plenty of opportunity to learn those lessons.”

Conjugal love “requires of the husband and wife the full awareness of their obligations in the business (matter) of responsible parenthood” (ibid., Point 10).

We hear a lot about “responsible parenthood.” St. Teresa of Calcutta liked to say that responsible parenthood does not mean not having children, because if there are no children, there's no parenthood, and therefore it cannot be responsible. Really clear thinking.

“With regard to the biological processes, responsible parenthood means an awareness of, and respect for, their proper biological functions. In the procreative faculty, the human mind discerns biological laws that apply to the human person.

“With regard to the innate drives and emotions of the man and wife, responsible parenthood means that reason will exert control over them.”

Somebody once said that the term birth control is very badly coined because it often means no birth and no control.

We have to move society and civilization in a different direction: to promote “a culture of life and a civilization of love,” as John Paul II has mentioned (John Paul II, Encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, March 25, 1995), and to help the new families that are being formed for the twenty-first century to understand those concepts at a deep level and be able to live them, because their greatest happiness may be tied up there.

Humanae Vitae says, “With regard to physical, economic, psychological and social conditions, responsible parenthood is exercised by those who prudently and generously decide to have more children...”

If God has planned and wants you to have a lot of children, and we don't have those children, we have a lot of explaining to do on the last day.

We may be judged in relation to the fulfillment of that mission.

Humanae Vitae continues, “…and by those who, for serious reasons and with due respect to moral precepts, decide not to have additional children for either a certain or an indefinite period of time.”

The Catholic Church is not saying that people have to have as many children as they possibly physically can have. It encourages them to be responsible: responsible before God, but also responsible before society, before others, for their other children.

Often the greatest gift that can be given to any child is the gift of another sibling. Sometimes, in Asia, in the school where I was working, people would tell me, “You know, if I have another child, I won't be able to afford to send that child to this school.”

But I like to tell them, “Look, the best that money can buy is not the best. The best is what you give them at home in the domestic Church. The best cannot be bought.”

The greatest thing you can give your future child is that domestic Church well lived: human virtues, human values, an awareness of the goal to which we are all called, the eternal wedding feast.

This also involves “the objective moral order established by God, and of which a right conscience is the true interpreter.”

Many years ago, we used to hear a lot of people saying we should be free to follow our conscience. Well, be careful with that one.

We need to be free to follow our informed conscience—a conscience that is formed about what is right and what is wrong. Hitler may have been following his conscience. People who blew up the World Trade Center may have been following their conscience.

We better find out and make sure that our conscience is the right one, headed in the right direction.

I heard a story once about four people who were drinking soft drinks, or sodas if you like. They were all very convinced that that was what they were drinking, some of the usual sodas or soft drinks that are available in the market.

But the fourth person—their drink was laced with cyanide. But they really firmly believed in their heart and soul that what they were drinking was just an ordinary soda or soft drink.

All you can say is that in spite of their beliefs and their feelings and their sincerity, and their conscience, in a few minutes they will be very sincerely dead.

Following our conscience may be no guarantee of correct moral action.

“The exercise of responsible parenthood requires that husband and wife keep a right order of priorities and recognize their duties towards God, towards themselves, their families, and all of society.

“From that, it follows that they are not free to act as they choose in the service of transmitting life, as if it were wholly up to them to decide what is the right course to follow.”

In the document, Humanae Vitae, part of the message that it gives to married couples is the message that let God be God in your marriage. Let Him decide.

I often like to tell couples to live dangerously. It's much more exciting, instead of trying to live a life doing all sorts of calculations, or exposing yourself, or particularly your spouse, to all sorts of dangers that can come with all sorts of chemicals that very often do not receive the publicity that they should do.

I was at a pro-life conference in Manila many years ago. A lady doctor from Liverpool had a statement to say that women are not being told the truth.

“The first right of women,” she said, “is the right to know the truth, the truth of what some of these chemicals are doing to their bodies, which are not publicized.”

Some people might go ahead and use them anyway, but at least they have a right to information. And young people, even more. Young people are not being told the truth. We have to try and “ensure that what we do corresponds to the will of the Creator” (Humanae Vitae, Point 10).

We need to bring it into our prayer. We need to get advice from people who are qualified in spiritual direction or some other way.

If we follow some of the documents that the Church has written, we'll find wonderful guidance there also.

“The sexual activity in which husband and wife are intimately and chastely united with one another, and through which human life is transmitted, is noble and worthy,” as the Second Vatican Council has said (Vatican II, Gaudium et spes, Point 49).

St. Josemaría Escrivá liked to say that the marriage bed is an altar. The marital relations of husband and wife can be a prayer, can be sanctified, part of the couple's mission to make themselves holy, and to make sure that those actions are all fulfilled as God and nature intended, within marriage and with no unnatural actions.

Even if it's foreseen that independent of their will, it's not going to be fertile, they don't cease to be legitimate and noble and worthy because of that.

Every time that couples engage in those activities, they're strengthening their union. They're growing in their marriage.

Experience also shows that new life is not always the result of every act of sexual intercourse. The Church then urges people to observe the precepts of the natural law. Try to make sure that you do nothing wrong.

It's a great message we have to give to young people: try never to do anything wrong, because happiness comes from doing things that are right.

That's one of the reasons why God gave us the Ten Commandments which spell out for us things that are wrong, so that we would know that we have a good lead in leading upright lives, and therefore being happy always.

The doctrine of the Church has always spoken about “the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his initiative may not break, between the unitive and the procreative significance that is inherent in the marriage act.

“The fundamental nature of that act, by uniting husband and wife in the closest intimacy, also renders them capable of generating new life—and this is as a result of the laws written in the actual nature of man and woman” (Paul VI, Encyclical, Humanae Vitae, Point 12, July 25, 1968).

If we play around with those great laws, we can end up not loving our spouse, but using our spouse.

There’s one lecturer in the States who puts down all the divorces taking place in the world precisely to that: spouses using each other, not achieving conjugal love because they use contraception.

They don't give themselves to each other completely. They hold back “my paternity” or “my maternity.” Therefore, it's a lack of total self-giving.

After a while, the couples may realize, “We don't love each other anymore.” So divorce becomes the reason.

John Paul II has said the breakdown of culture starts from the breakdown of the male-female relationship. He speaks about this in his Theology of the Body. Very powerful statement: “the breakdown of culture.”

“Culture” is defined by the Second Vatican Council as everything that humanizes us, makes us human beings, until the breakdown of everything that makes us human beings begins with the breakdown of the male-female relationship. We can end up functioning like animals.

These are very simple ideas, but very important ideas. We don't need to know many things; we just need to know a few things. But those few things we need to know very clearly, express them, and pass them on to people and live them in all their clarity.

Because ultimately, we're transmitting the message of human love, and that's why the Church is so concerned about these issues because “God is love” (1 John 4:8,16) and human love finds its origin in the love of God.

If we get some of those basic ideas wrong, we get everything wrong. Welcome to the world in which we live.

“A conjugal act imposed on one's partner without regard to his or her condition, or personal or reasonable wishes in the matter, is not a true act of love. It offends the moral order in its particular relevance to the intimate relationship of husband and wife.

“They have to recognize that an act of mutual love which blocks the capacity to transmit life is not what God and nature intended. It frustrates his design.” Therefore, the Church says it's a mortal sin. It “contradicts the will of the Author of life” (ibid., Point 13).

We have to try and restore to marriage and the family these great principles.

The Church says that any use of contraception is the falsification of human love because, instead of couples giving themselves to each other completely, they hold back something.

They're saying in the language of their body “I give myself to you completely” but in reality, that's not what's happening.

John Paul II calls this a lie in the language of the body, “the falsification of human love” (John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation, Familiaris Consortio, Point 32, November 22, 1981), the most beautiful reality on the planet, and therefore the Church says this is “intrinsically evil” (Catechism, Point 2370).

Now for the greatest moral authority on the planet to say that something is evil—it's a pretty strong statement. But to say that it's intrinsically evil, evil at its very nature, evil at its very core, is even stronger.

We have to try and inform and educate young people about the gift of married love, so that they can “respect the laws of conception and acknowledge that we are not the masters of the sources of life but rather the ministers of the design established by the Creator.

“Just as men and women do not have unlimited dominion over their bodies in general, so also, and with more particular reason, they have no such dominion over their specifically sexual faculties, because these are concerned by their very nature with the generation of life, of which God is the source” (Humanae Vitae, Point 13).

As Pope St. John XXIII used to say, “Human life is sacred” (John XXIII, Encyclical, Mater et magistra, Point 194, May 15, 1961).

Pope St. John Paul II liked to say we have to be “unconditionally pro-life” (John Paul II, Encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, March 25, 1995).

“Human life from its very inception reveals the creating hand of God” (Op. cit.).

“The right and lawful ordering of birth demands, first of all, that spouses fully recognize and value the true blessings of family life and that they acquire complete mastery over themselves and their emotions” (Humanae Vitae, Point 21).

The Church talks a lot about self-mastery, self-control. Where do we hear those phrases anywhere else?

“Because if, with the aid of reason and of free will, they are able to control their natural drives, there can be no doubt at all about the need for self-denial. Only then will the expression of love, essential to married life, conform to right order” (ibid.).

Sometimes you hear people say, ‘People have to follow their natural impulses.’ Well, sometimes, our natural impulses can be very unnatural. ‘Let all your feelings hang out, follow your natural impulses.’

What happens if a husband comes home one day and is very annoyed about something and picks up a brick and throws it through the glass window? His spouse will tell him, ‘Put down that brick immediately! Control your anger, control your emotions.’

We need self-control in each area of our life. “Self-discipline is a shining witness to the chastity of husband and wife and, far from being a hindrance to their love of one another, transforms it by giving it a more truly human character” (ibid.).

That's why we always have to grow in the virtues of purity, chastity, and modesty. People who don't understand these virtues—they don't understand what human love is all about.

“And if that self-discipline demands that they persevere in their purposes and efforts, at the same time it has the salutary effect of enabling husband and wife to develop their personalities and to be enriched with spiritual blessings. … It brings to family life abundant fruits of tranquility and peace. It helps in solving difficulties of other kinds. It fosters in husband and wife thoughtfulness and loving consideration for one another.

“It also helps them to reject inordinate self-love,” which is the great enemy of our spiritual lives. “It's the opposite of charity. It arouses in them a consciousness of their responsibilities. And it confers upon parents a deeper and more effective influence in the education of their children. As their children grow up, they develop a right sense of values and achieve a serene and harmonious use of their mental and physical powers” (ibid.).

As we meditate on this beautiful reality of conjugal love, thanking God for the greatest encyclical of the twentieth century, Humanae Vitae, we could ask Our Lady that we might be heralds of this great marital joy and truth and beauty that God wants us to transmit to a world so much in need of it.

With this document, with these truths, a Nuncio told me once, we can create a whole new society. This is what we're involved in, what we're looking forward to in the twenty-first century. This is what the recent Popes have called “the new evangelization” (Pope Paul VI, 1975; John Paul II, 1983, 1990, 1994, 2001; Pope Benedict XVI, 2010, 2012; Pope Francis, 2013).

We can ask Our Lady, Queen of the Family, Queen of Conjugal Love, that she may help us to be great missionaries, great heralds, great transmitters of this beautiful truth so much needed by so many young people.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

MVF