Fidelity in Marriage

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.

A lawyer in Sydney, Australia tells a story of how one day an elderly couple came to see him. He was 86 and she was 83. The lawyer asked them, “What can I do for you?”

And they said, “We want to get a divorce.”

“Why do you want to get a divorce?” “Because we don't love each other anymore.”

“How long have you been married?” “Forty years.”

The lawyer tried to quickly recall all the points from the meditation he heard about charity and perseverance and fidelity on his last retreat, and he gave them an impromptu talk.

“Charity is patient, charity is kind” (1 Cor. 13:4). It's beginning again. It's loving other people with their defects. It's letting the waters pass under the bridge. It's not making a mountain out of a molehill, etc.

He asked them to go away, think about it for a while, come back some other day, and they would talk a little more. The couple went away, and three years later the wife came back.

She said, “I've just come back to tell you that my husband just passed away. But I want to thank you because we've just had three of the most wonderful years of our whole life.”

The moral of the story is that we're always beginning again in love. Love is a mystery. “God is love” (1 John 4:8).

In the course of our life, we try to learn a little more about that mystery of love. Perseverance and fidelity in marriage are very much based on love and keeping that love alive—taking care of that love.

We have the grace from the sacrament to help that to happen. St. Paul says; “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Cor. 12:9).

He also says; “Let us never slacken in doing good, for if we do not give up, we shall have a harvest in due time” (Gal. 6:9).

We have to keep trying to persevere in doing good, working at our marriage, beginning again; keeping our love young and fresh after many years like it was before we got married.

St. Josemaría liked to give great importance to details (Josemaría Escrivá, Friends of God, Point 122; The Forge, Point 870, etc.). Love is in the details. Perfection is in the details. It's remembering little things. It's sweeping the other party off their feet from time to time with little gestures of love and affection.

There is a song by Julio Iglesias in Spain many years ago. It's the lament of a man whose loved one has left him. The title of the song is Me Olvidé de Vivir los Detalles Pequeños-I Forgot to Take Care of the Small Details. Often those small details can cost us a little bit.

The Lord said; “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me” (Matt. 16:24).

That's quite a program for marriage: to renounce ourselves, forget about ourselves, and take up the cross that God has planned for us. That's the marriage vocation.

We have a vocation that comes with our Baptism: a vocation to holiness. Then there's a specification of that vocation over the years and in the course of our life.

One of the specifications of that vocation is our vocation to marriage—to this particular person at this particular time in history; in this particular place; with these particular difficulties of finance, of health, of employment.

St. Paul says, “We've been chosen out before the foundation of the world” (cf. Eph. 1:4). Every aspect of our life has been chosen by God. Nothing is an accident.

God wants us to work then at making our marriage a success, and in making our family life a success, so that the domestic Church can really be everything that it's supposed to be: a pathway to holiness, a seedbed of vocations.

That means each spouse has to try and live like a great human person—a great human person that gives example to children of what being a great human person is—which ultimately means virtue. Living the virtues in a concrete way.

By doing so, we reveal gold—spiritual gold—to the other members of our family, to our spouse, to our neighbors, to our friends.

But gold nuggets don't sit on top of the soil. One needs to dig. Often, one has to dig with patience, with constancy, with effort. One has to begin and begin again with a new hope, with a new perseverance.

And so, perseverance in marriage is a gift of God. It's a grace that we have to ask for. Pray for it. Ask for it. It's the fruit of faith, of hope, of love.

Our perseverance in our marriage vocation makes many things possible. It's a commitment of love. We're committed.

It's not something that's superficial. We're not a fly-by-night when it comes to this particular reality. We've given our word, and love seeks to be definitive.

God will always give us the power to go on. Even if we feel we don't have any more energy, or willpower, or desire.

To love is to do things God's way. He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

In Christ, we find the meaning and the purpose of our life, and very particularly, in Christ on the Cross, we find the meaning and the purpose of our life.

We draw close to the Sacred Humanity of Christ and to His wounds: “To draw water, in joy, from the wells of salvation” (Isa. 12:3).

If we trust in Him, we will not be disappointed. We derive our strength from Christ for the battles that we need.

We can “leave the past to God's mercy, the future to God's providence” (St. Augustine) and live “the sacrament of this moment” (Jean Pierre de Caussade). It’s a gift.

A sacrament is something that has a visible and an invisible part. We're living out the sacrament of this moment: what we see, what we feel, what we hear.

But there's an invisible part. God lives in an eternal now and we know that He has a gold medal prepared for us. It does not corrode. There is merit in struggle, and God wants us to get that merit.

Love is a decision. I will love you into heaven.

We know that in the battles and the challenges and the journeys of every day, the winds may blow. But if the house is founded on rock—not just the rock of doctrine, but the rock of family life, of apostolate, of Our Lady—the building will not fall.

But for this, we need to struggle. We need to sacrifice ourselves. Sacrifice needs to be always present in our daily life.

Sometimes, perseverance needs sacrifice. If you look at any of the long-distance runners, Kenyan runners that win the marathons all over the world, there's tremendous sacrifice there. There's tremendous perseverance.

We've got to be careful with that perseverance. To put our perseverance in danger could be a serious sin of infidelity to God in this wonderful commitment of love that God wants us to live out.

At the bottom of all infidelity, there is a pocket of corruption. Something that wasn't right from the start. Something that needs to be clarified.

That's one of the reasons why we have to be very careful about our formation: our marriage formation, our spiritual formation, our doctrinal formation.

The Church places an awful lot of importance on formation. Often in parishes, there's a pre-marriage course or pre-marriage formation. But of course, the whole of our marriage isn't just prepared for in one short seminar on a quick weekend.

We start preparing for our marriage in primary school, in our own families, in what we see in the lives of our parents, and how we build family life at home.

We work at that marriage preparation through high school, possibly through third-level education. A lot of it involves the formation in virtue.

But humans are fickle minded. All the apostles said “yes” to Christ, but one changed his mind.

The passing things of this world can never be the source of our happiness. So, we have to be a little bit careful with football, or fashion, or the movies, or professional success.

Our happiness has to come from much deeper things. We find our happiness in the risen Lord.

Just like our marriage, life may not be a romance all the time. There might be periods of dryness, or no ideas, or no affections.

Our spiritual life might be the same. But we've got to work at it. Go back and begin again.

The goal of our fidelity is not just for fifty years’ time, but in this moment. It cannot just depend on our mood, on our health, on our hormones, on our family situation.

Fidelity is something dynamic. It's not static. It finds expression every day.

Mother Teresa was once asked if she really thought that all the things she was doing could make an impact in the poverty of India. Would she be able to solve all the problems of India? The problems of poverty?

Her answer was very quick: “I'm not called to be successful. I'm just called to be faithful.”

There's a lot of wisdom for that in every Christian vocation in the world. I may not be very successful in building my family, in building my marriage, in earning money, in my profession, in various areas.

But I am called to be faithful—and to try to do so with a sense of humor and perspective, so that I never give up on the ideal of marriage and married love.

If the solutions to the problems of marriage and family in the world today don't come from the Catholic Church, they're not going to come from anywhere, because we have the truth. We have the answers. It's all there in the documents of the Church. Spiritual treasures.

We have to try and know very well the ideal of marriage and married love to understand what love is. Human love is one of the most beautiful realities on the planet. It's a reflection of divine love. That's why the devil has gone to so much trouble to mess it up for young people.

Our marriage vocation is a vocation to witness to the truth of authentic love—the truth, the beauty, and the meaning of conjugal love. That's why fidelity in marriage is always moving and inspiring.

Fidelity is to fall in love with God—to grow in this day by day, and to foster this around us; to focus on one thing, not many.

Our Lord said to Martha, “Only one thing is necessary” (Luke 10:42). It's not difficult to persevere in marriage. The vast majority of people persevere.

At the same time, fidelity doesn't come with age. Often, older people don't persevere. If ever that's the case, it's because there's been a focal point of corruption earlier. People did not want to keep struggling. They were not in love enough with their marriage vocation.

Virtues are manifestations of love. When love disappears, all the virtues disappear—and a lot of human things: human talents, abilities, intelligence, big degrees, prestige, well-paying jobs, apostolic successes. These don't necessarily make us faithful and persevering. We've got to work at it out of commitment to the ideals at the beginning.

It would be crazy to worry about whether or not I'm going to persevere in my marriage. We just have to try and live today, try and persevere today, to trust, to hope, to identify ourselves with Christ and to renew our generosity all the time.

Generosity is a very beautiful virtue. Authentic love leads us to be generous.

We could ask Our Lord: Lord, give me the heart with which you want me to love you in and through my marriage and my family, so that I can “sing a new song unto the Lord” (Ps. 98:1).

The sureness of divine love that is with us is shown in cheerfulness. Lord, may others see God in me—sometimes in my defects, but in the defects in which I struggle.

Our first loyalty is to God through our vocation—to live out today the duties of my state that God has placed in front of me, and to fight to place myself at the service of my spouse, of my family.

Because that's what it's all about: all our formation, all our education has the goal of service, because “Christ did not come to be served, but to serve” (Matt. 20:28).

Often, our beginning again in marriage is a question of beginning again in our service. How can I serve better? What is wanted of me? What can I contribute in this particular moment or situation?

Peter Drucker in The Effective Executive asked the question: What makes people effective? He says it's because they ask themselves the right question. They don't just do good things or ask themselves good questions. They do the right things because they ask themselves the right question. And the right question is: What can I contribute? What can I give?

If we can contribute something or give something in this situation, in this family gathering, in this family—even though my family members might be on the other side of the world—if I can contribute something that nobody else can contribute, that makes me effective.

If our children are relatively grown up, maybe our greatest effectiveness is through prayer or being faithful to our spiritual life, and giving that example of virtue, of fidelity, of perseverance.

An attitude to foster can be loyalty even on a human level: to be loyal to people, to be true to our word. “Let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ be ‘no’ (Matt. 5:37).

Fidelity is not staying out of other beds; it's loving the bed that we're in, with all of its characteristics. For fidelity, we need an inner toughness to dominate the ego, so that we're not ruled by likes and dislikes.

Sometimes, we need to burn our bridges to give ourselves, to conquer our addictions, because we're all addicted to something: our laziness, our selfishness, our football, our fashions, our food, our drink.

There was a story of a man in Mexico many years ago who, with his wife, used to go to the bullfights every Saturday afternoon. For twenty-five years without fail, they went to the bullfights every Saturday afternoon, until one day the wife said, “Let's not go to the bullfights. I'm fed up going to the bullfights.”

The husband said, “Okay, let's not go to the bullfights. I never really wanted to go to the bullfights anyway.” There was a man who knew how to keep his first love in first place.

With the passage of time, sometimes our other loves can creep into first and second place, and our first love can get relegated to fifth or sixth place.

Often, we need to rectify, go back, and put more order in things, to recognize that we are vessels of clay.

“We carry this treasure,” says St. Paul, “in vessels of clay” (2 Cor. 4:7). Earthenware vessels. We make mistakes. We put our foot in it. We do the wrong thing.

Difficulties to our fidelity can come from our human limitations—our weaknesses, sometimes our tiredness.

There can be a lack of love. There could be important external changes coming at a bad moment.

Never make long-term decisions, or decisions that affect us in the long term, in a low moment, because that low moment can seriously affect the decision we're going to make.

There can also be difficulties from temporary blindness, a temporary blindness that can pass. It may blow away by next week.

Our Lord says, “The person who puts their hand to the plough and looks backward is not fit for the kingdom of heaven” (Luke 9:62).

Our goal is to keep our hand on the plough and keep looking forward. The devil often wants us to look back and to turn back. If we keep looking back, it won't be long before we turn back.

We should try and keep our hand on the plough and keep looking to the future, because if we start looking back, we can start to place conditions on our proposed commitment, when we have committed ourselves to give ourselves completely. Unconditional surrender.

Dear Lord, help me not to look back.

That Palestinian plough that Our Lord was talking about was a difficult plough. It wasn't easy to direct. The soil in the fields beside the Sea of Galilee was hard soil, so it was difficult to direct and keep your hand on it.

The ploughman has to have a fixed point towards which he directs the plough through difficult ground. If not, he may not be able to open up a straight furrow.

At times, the temptation to look back can come from our own limitations, or from an environment that's hostile to the obligations we've taken on.

Temptation may even be provided by the behavior of others who should be an example and are anything but. Because of the way they live, they seem to tell us that being faithful is not one of the basic values.

At other times, temptation could come from a lack of hope, when we see holiness in marriage as just a far-away thing, as remote an objective as ever, in spite of all of our efforts to keep on struggling.

“After the initial enthusiasm,” especially in the early years of marriage, “there could be doubts, hesitations, anxieties that all begin to take effect” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 133). If we're forewarned against these things, we can be forearmed.

But we've given our word. When we give our word, in a certain sense we give ourselves. We put ‘on the line’ what is most intimate to ourselves.

In spite of our personal failings, a true disciple and follower of Christ will be honest and loyal, a man of his word. Whoever keeps his word is faithful.

There may be a lot of people, irrespective of their age, who seem ignorant of the noble obligation of keeping their word, to fulfill the commitments they once assumed with complete freedom, or to behave in accordance with the decisions they made before God or man in civil or religious life.

Difficulties may arise, but the faith and the teaching of the Church, and the example of the saints that have gone before us, can show us that it is possible to live these virtues. God does not deny His grace to those who do what they can.

We must be firmly convinced and help others to have the same conviction that it is possible to live all the virtues with all the demands that they make.

There is a certain idea that may be in vogue around the place: that virtues and commitments are ideals or goals to aim at, but without much hope of attaining them. But we could ask God that we might never fall into that error.

A Christian who is loyal will not cave in when upright moral behavior imposes or seems to impose serious difficulties.

We can ask God for an upright conscience to be ready to face all situations.

There was a planeload of travel agents who were going to an island off Argentina many years ago for a weekend to explore some new resorts so they could write about it and promote it.

Shortly after takeoff, somebody took the microphone and began talking about how ‘we're going to have the weekend of our lives; we're going to have a great time.’ The picture he was painting was not particularly savory.

But then there was another man who tried to take care of his family formation and his spiritual life. He went and he took the microphone after this fellow and said, “Fine, let's have a great time. Let's have a wonderful weekend. But let's just remember also that twenty minutes ago at the airport, we left our wife and our children. Let's not do anything this weekend that might displease them.”

In just a couple of words, he changed the whole tone of the weekend. We have to be that sort of person, creating an atmosphere of fidelity around us; helping people to live in accordance with the commitments that they have made.

A person who may have a desire in theory to practice a particular virtue—they may not wish to sin, but in practice when the temptation is great or when difficulties arise that are serious difficulties, they may feel justified in more or less giving in.

It can happen in a work situation, or when we're faced with the obligation to react energetically when sensuality threatens to intervene, or when we need a serious effort to finance our children's education, or to be faithful to our spouse or our vocation.

We're told in Scripture, “The rains fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house; but it did not fall, because it was founded on rock” (Matt. 7:25).

We have to try and make sure that our marriage vocation is founded on rock.

Mary's vocation was founded on rock. She and St. Joseph faced all sorts of uncertainties, risks, dangers. But yet they listened to what God was saying to them and everything worked out.

We could ask Our Lady with that great title Virgo fidelis, Virgin most faithful, that we might grow our fidelity to this particular marriage vocation that God has given to us.

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.

GD