MY HERO (self-reference alert)

 It seems clear that the daily business of married life is difficult before it is delightful. We are talking here of married life that is consecrated. We are talking of holy matrimony.

Ordinary human friendship has its many joys. The companionship that elicits delight, and slowly turns to love, and finally to consecrated spousal union, is a joy given to the human race from the time when God told Adam that it was not good for man to be alone.

But as it is not good to be alone, it is also not easy to be together.

Which begs the question: what keeps marriages alive? What is the glue that binds?

You look at these couples married fifty years. You see one dancing around a hospital room to cheer a spouse who is bedridden and dying. They smile as if they were youngsters on a park bench, or newlyweds walking down aisle at twenty-three. Unthinkable these days, but now half a century of love later they live out a witness to the possibility of faithful life together. Theirs are joys that will not die even in the night of sorrowful partings.

Surely they know something of what it takes. Yes, the answer is love. A love they treasure and believe possible -- unconditional love. Fine. We will listen. Watch them. We shall learn.

And then you see the young ones, married two years and on the brink of separation. Or divorced with two kids and about to turn thirty-four. And they still believe that matrimony is holy, and yes permanent, although theirs is broken. They know something of love too. That it is beautiful. And so difficult.

And then there is the rest of the culture that says we should simply fall and always try to feel in love -- a standard so low, it is good simply as a point of contrast.

If it is to last, love will be tested. It will be hard. No model exists for easy love. If marital love is the fullest expression of human generosity that can make of two one flesh, then it comes at the standard of lifelong sacrifice and perseverance. Generosity entails an offering -- one possible even in weakness because it is supplanted by grace. And this is the tipping point between any marriage, and the sacramental reality of holy matrimony.

We must be capable and ready to make a defense for the choice we have made -- the choice to walk up an aisle and ask to be given another in trust before God.

Because the time will undoubtedly come when doubts prevail over early joy, and sorrows rend the bond thought unshakable.

Because it is so easy to break union, and fragile unions break.

Because it is always hard to truly love.

Because all the encouragement one gets these days, is the encouragement for the failure we superficially call liberation -- the deluding encouragement to feel good about failing, which comes from the prior despair that heroic love is ever possible.

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