A Call of Love: The Vocation to Marriage

The following reflection on marriage as vocation is offered to mark St Valentine’s Day.

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Why get married?

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love” (Jn 15:9). These words of our Lord from the Last Supper can help us consider three reasons why spouses embrace the sacrament of matrimony. Firstly, they get married because God loves them. Secondly, they get married because they love each other. Thirdly, they get married so as to love God. For Christian couples, marriage is a call from love, in love and to love.

1. Because God loves them

In the first place couples get married because God loves them. “Abide in my love”: These words of Christ imply that we are already in his love. Before marriage the man and woman are already very greatly loved by God, as indeed we all are. We know we are loved by God by the very fact of our existence. “Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary”.

God does not just love us into existence. He sustains us throughout life and beyond. “I have loved you with an everlasting love”, he tells us through Jeremiah. “Therefore I have continued by faithfulness to you” (Jer 31:3). In their vocation to marriage, the Lord continues his faithful love for the spouses. He has called them into existence, each with their unique personal characteristics. In marriage he calls them to become one, one with each other, and one with, in and through Him.

“I have called you by your name, you are mine” (Is 43:1). In calling a given couple to marriage, God once more shows his deep personal love for them, and indicates their path to happiness, here and hereafter. As Pope Francis teaches, our “Christian identity, as the baptismal embrace which the Father gave us when we were little ones, makes us desire, as prodigal children – and favourite children in Mary – yet another embrace, that of the merciful Father who awaits us in glory”.

1. Because they love each other

Secondly, men and women get married because they love each other. We have already said that the couple are called to marriage. Marriage is a real vocation, a call from God. On one level, we all have the same vocation, namely the calling to become saints, as the Holy Father has recently reminded us. Life is a bit like a motorway, where we are all headed in the same direction (we hope!) towards eternal life. That one motorway has different lanes however, as there are different personal callings within the one great call to holiness.

As a philosopher St John Paul II reflected deeply on human love. In his great teaching on the Christian family, he states that “love is the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being”. But what is love? St John Paul often repeated that love is the sincere gift of self without reserve.

Yes, we are all called, every single one of us, to make of our lives a sincere gift of ourselves. In marriage the spouses are called to give themselves freely, sincerely and entirely to one another, and to the children God may gift them with. In apostolic celibacy too, the person is called to freely and fully give him or herself to God and to others, and hence live out the same fundamental human vocation to love.

If the gift of self is at the heart of marriage it will show itself in the spouses’ willingness to welcome and bring up the children God may entrust to them. This openness to life on the parents’ part is the first training in self-giving for their children. Creating a culture of vocations is dependent on marriages rooted in the sincere gift of self. Children are better prepared for their own vocations, be it to marriage, apostolic celibacy, priesthood or consecrated life, if their first and primordial “school”, namely the family, is based on the logic of unselfish love.

“Human life is a gift received in order then to be given as a gift”. This is the great challenge and drama of every human life and the true path to holiness. Self-surrender is the way of Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave himself up for us (cf. Gal 2:20). This is why it is most fitting that the Sacrament of Matrimony be celebrated within the sacrifice of the Mass, where the self-giving love of Jesus “to the end” (cf. Jn 13:1) is made really and truly present.

Paraphrasing St Josemaría Escrivá, a great pioneer in proclaiming that marriage is truly a vocation, we might say that the husband’s path to heaven bears the name of his wife, and the wife’s path to heaven bears that of her husband. Christ calls all married couples to “remain in [his] love” by remaining faithful in their love for one another, “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health”.

In fact, “marriage based on exclusive and definitive love becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice versa. God’s way of loving becomes the measure of human love”.

1. So as to love God

Thirdly, couples get married so as to love God. In matrimony, God will makes the woman and man one in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit (cf. Eph 5:31). This is the Sacrament of Marriage, and occurs when each party expresses his and her free consent. The spouses themselves are the ministers of this sacrament.

What happens in the celebration of Christian marriage is no mere formality. Nor is it just a public declaration. There is real divine action whereby the two become one and it is God who does this through their free consent.

In joining spouses to each other, Christ tells them: “Abide in my love”. The Lord commits himself to accompanying them on their journey through life, each and every day, and towards eternal happiness. Every human life and every marriage has ups and downs, easy times and hard times. However the grace of God, that spiritual strength that only God can give, will never be lacking.

We get our strength, all of us, from prayer, from having some time each day to listen to and speak intimately with the Lord. We are healed of our sins and fortified for the challenges of life in a powerful way by the Sacrament of Confession. Above all, Christian marriage and family life find their mainstay in the Blessed Eucharist, which makes present the ever-faithful love of Christ for his Church.

Mother of Fair Love

It is very significant that the first miracle of Christ was worked at a wedding feast, and that this first miracle was prompted by Mary. In Scripture wine signifies joy and love. At the bidding of Our Lady joy and love are poured in abundance on the newlyweds of Cana. So too, Mary desires to bestow God’s gifts on all her married children.

The plentiful and rich wine of Cana also prefigures the superabundant outpouring of Christ’s blood through his life-giving Passion. It is through the Sacraments, Matrimony included, that the springs of divine life flow from the heart of the crucified and risen Christ into the families of today.

We do well to invoke Mary our Mother, asking her to look tenderly on each and every one of us. We ask her to help us to always cherish marriage as a proof of God’s love and as a path to holiness. We pray that she may be close to all married couples as they live out their vocation through their family life. May her intercession help and support them so that they may be happy and faithful. May married couples love each other more each day, and may they rejoice ultimately in heaven, in the fullness of eternal love, the marriage feast of the Lamb (Rev 19:6-9), to which we are all called.