The spirituality of conjugal love

Abstract

Until this very day, I still live the single status. But I have high esteem towards the married status. It is perhaps the most popular one in our society. Unfortunately, at present, it is the target of the Mass Media and of today's materialistic society. The sacred value of the sacrament of matrimony has often been downgraded, on the grounds that it is no more fashionable to remain loyal to your partner in marriage. To carry the cross and commit one's life for the other, and if necessary to die to one's own ideals in order to live up for those of others, has become unthinkable and often considered an impossible way of life. Love is often seen as just an appetite one has for a particular dish at one time or other which you immediately change over to another more inviting to the appetite. With all this negative attitude around, I was urged to choose this as title for my Thesis - 'The Spirituality of Conjugal Love'. In spite of all, one can still look up and say that only Christians, believing Christians, can be true Christian theologians. For only they can explore the meaning of the divine self-communication in Christ. And if only Christians can be Christian theologians, it seems to me that only married Christians can ultimately be complete theologians of marriage. For this it is not enough that they should be married, they must have the necessary theological background as well. This does not mean that to get married you have to be theologian. On the contrary, one must firstly have a deeper knowledge of God, i.e. one must have established a close and deep relationship with God who, through this means, will enable the spouse to appreciate the depth of God in the other's personality. The study of God's self-communication to man in Christ has a dynamic unity which is only gradually recognised. On the level of biblical evidence and of human experience, marriage plays a central role in understanding the divine self-communication, the God - man relationship. In the Old Testament and the New, God's relationship with his people, or Christ's with his church, is described in terms of the marriage relationship. The most intimate relations with God described by the mystics invoke the imagery of sex and marriage. The phrase "one flesh" express the fundamental Judea Christian conception of marital love. It is used in the text of Gen 2, 24 to define the essence of marriage; Jesus bases his teaching on marriage on it, in Mt 19, 5; for the apostle Paul, the "one flesh" concept is a great mystery, one which partakes of the union between Christ and the church, Eph 5, 31-32. For the man or woman of biblical faith, a union of "one flesh” was a total union of two human beings, who thereby created a vital new reality. A new human person, consequently, is created by marriage - a person both sanctified and sanctifying in the mysteries of creation and redemption. Marriage is a gift of God, just as love itself is essentially a gift. When love is total and complete, so also the gift of self out of love must be total and complete, and therefore without any limits of time and place, without conditions and presuppositions. It is from these considerations that arises the indissolubility of any true marriage as an indispensable and necessary quality of marriage.

The union of two persons in marriage, a man and a woman, descending as it does from God, is the most perfect and intimate union that exists or can exist, after the one that by faith we know to exist between the divine Persons of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It has been my aim, in writing this dissertation, to illustrate the greatness and the beauty of Christian marriage such as we know it in the light of Faith, and to indicate the lines along which is to be sought the solution to all problems and difficulties that might arise, as they are bound to arise, given the human frailty of sinful human beings. "What God has joined together, let no man put asunder, but let God keep together''.