Marriage has had a
changing form throughout the centuries and it continues to be challenged in our
modern era. The following entry will try to establish and challenge the notion
of what ascetical marriage means within the context of our modern times. Marriage
a few thousand years ago was viewed as a means to survive through the process
of pro-creation. Marriage today has been characterized as a self-fulfillment of
both security and fulfillment of one’s own career. These two notions of
marriage I plan to challenge to see if truly the meaning of marriage is for
only pro-creation or for the establishment of one’s own career.
Abstinence and
procreation have become two ways to understanding martial asceticism. However,
by examining the paradigm of marriage we will begin to see that abstinence and
procreation are nothing more than a teaching tool to the fuller picture of what
marriage is understood to be. They’re both very positive tools are procreation
and abstinence are needed tools for marriage however, when they start to define
the marriage that is when the marriage begins to collapse from within.
The foundational words
for understanding marriage occur when one opens scripture. God created the
human being in his image and likeness. He created them male and female asking
them to be fruitful and multiply. Theologians point to this passage as being
the main reason one gets married. I would challenge this notion because God
also allowed the animals to procreate (cf. Gen 1.22). Human beings were created
by the word of God while every other creation was spoken into existence. God
said let it be and it was. Humanity was the only creation made in the image and
likeness of God from the creation accounts. So why would God bestow a great
mystery of procreation to the animals? One answer might be that the purpose of
marriage was not only limited to procreation but a deeper meaning lies beneath
understanding the purpose of the ascetical marriage.
Marriage then,
understood in the context of the Genesis account, can be viewed as a giving up
of the self to be restored in the image of God. This paradigm continues on in
the Scripture of the New Testament. Marriage is understood by the Apostle Paul
as a sacrifice being made for the other individual. He summarizes in to the
Corinthians that a man or a woman should not rule over their body but to give
up the body for the other (cf. 1 Cor 7.1-6). Paul later on would tell the
community that he would wish everyone to be like him, which is to say, to remain
celibate. Celibacy has its reward as a sacrifice to Christ through the
formation and breaking down and rising up of the human being, to be formed in
Christ’s image and likeness. By conclusion the New Testament through St. Paul demonstrates
that both marriage and celibacy have a unique place within the church. The
church later on would hold this beauty of marriage and adopt it as one of the
mysteries of the church.
By way of conclusion, marriage
then should not only be viewed from the realm of procreation. This can happen
if God allows it to be. The challenge then that Christians must bring to
marriage or the celibate life, is not how to cope with either but rather it
should look towards Christ. By making Christ present in this world this will
spiritually procreate Christ. A Christian marriage is thus defined neither by
its procreation function or unity two people together as two separate aspects
of the marriage. If these two are understood to stand alone within the paradigm
of marriage then this will lead to a self-centered ideology. Rather Christian
marriage is a means of manifesting Christ, continuing and showing his liturgy
for the life of the world. In turn marital asceticism as temporary sexual abstinence
is not what it has mistakenly become in modern thought on marriage, a means of
making sexual activity more unitive. Rather, temporary sexual abstinence,
should be viewed in light as a God given means of refocusing our center of
attention, with the aim of achieving, what was given from the beginning-to be
made males and females in the image and likeness of God. But the truth remains
of this is still hidden with Christ in God, who stature we continue trying to attain
throughout the progression of life.
Father Alexander
Schmemann sums it up beautifully on what it means to married:
“A marriage which does not
constantly crucify its own selfishness and self-sufficiency, which does not
“die to itself” that it may point beyond itself, is not a Christian marriage.
The real sin of marriage today is not adultery or lack of “adjustment” or “mental
cruelty.” It is the idolization of the family itself, the refusal to understand
marriage as directed toward the Kingdom of God. This is expressed in the
sentiment that one would “do anything” for his family, even steal. The family
has here ceased to be for the glory of God; it has ceased to be a sacramental
entrance into his presence. It is not the lack of respect for the family, it is
the idolization of the family that breaks the modern family so easily, making
divorce its almost natural shadow. It is the identification of marriage with
happiness and the refusal to accept the cross in it. In a Christian marriage,
in fact, three are married; and the united loyalty of the two toward the third,
who is God, keeps the two in an active unity with each other as well as with
God. Yet it is the presence of God which is the death of the marriage as
something only “natural.” It is the cross of Christ that brings the
self-sufficiency of nature to its end. But “by the cross, joy entered the whole
world.” Its presence is thus the real joy of marriage. It is the joyful
certitude that the marriage vow, in the perspective of the eternal Kingdom, is
not taken “until death parts,” but until death unites us completely.” –
Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World
