By Randall Smith
Fulton Sheen, who will officially be declared “blessed” in a few days, began his wonderful book Three to Get Married with these four sentences:
Three are needed to make Love in Heaven: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Three are needed for Heaven to make love to earth: God, Man, and Mary, through whom God became Man.
Three are needed to make love in the Holy Family: Mary, Joseph, and the consummation of their love, Jesus.
Three are needed to make love in hearts: the Lover, the Beloved, and Love.
It was a brilliant summary of the relationship between the triple communion of love that unites the three persons of the One and Triune God and the love that must unite spouses and children within a family.
How can we begin to understand the One and Triune God, a reality that transcends our human reason? We begin with what we know concretely in our own world: human marriages.
In the same way, we begin to understand God as “Father” in relation to our own fathers. “He is not merely an angry and distant God,” we say, “He loves us like a Father.” But, upon reflection, we come to understand that the relationship actually works the other way around.
God is the paradigm of “Father,” and our human fathers merely participate in His “fatherhood.” Our human fathers are partially responsible for our existence, but not fully, as God is. Our human fathers care for us, but not perfectly, as God does. Thus, by reflecting on God’s fatherhood, we better understand what human fatherhood is meant to be.
The closest we come in this life to understanding the loving communion of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit is the family. It begins with a man, a woman, and the love that unites them. But then the love they share is embodied in a real person: a child.
Anyone who has married friends has probably experienced a slight discomfort when spending time with one but not the other. You may have been close friends with one of them before the marriage, so you simply relate more naturally to that spouse.
But if you know that those parents love their children, then you probably also know that there are few better things you can do for your friends than to love and support their children. Loving and supporting their children is loving and supporting them: the fruit of their union as a couple. It is not his child or her child; it is their child. The child is the embodied union of their love.
So we start from human marriage, but, upon reflection, we realize that we can understand marriage and family better as modeled by the One and Triune God: a unity of love that does not destroy their distinction, and a distinction of persons that does not make their true unity impossible. And this is a unity of persons that does not close in on itself, but expresses itself outward, abundantly inviting others to communion and fellowship.
The love of a great family never stops at the door of the house. It goes outward to invite others to come in.
What makes this kind of love possible in marriage? As Catholics, we believe that we are given the grace to love in this way by the Holy Spirit. As the Holy Spirit is the Love shared between the Father and the Son, constituted as a distinct divine person, when we share the gifts of the Spirit we participate in the same Love shared between the Father and the Son.
In Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina, Konstantin Levin, an unbeliever, marries Kitty, a woman he has deeply loved for years. In the wedding ceremony in the Church, Levin is led through what for him is a series of uncomfortable steps that he barely understands. But he does them anyway out of love for his bride, and he is delighted.
At one point in the rite, he hears these words: “Grant them perfect love, peace, and help, O Lord, we beseech Thee.” Tolstoy writes: “Levin heard the words and they impressed him. How did they guess that it is help, precisely help, that one wants? thought Levin, recalling all his recent fears and doubts. “What do I know? What can I do in this terrible matter,” he thought, “without help? Yes, it is help that I want now.”
It is a sweet passage, but also a funny one. How did they guess that it is help that one wants? Well, the Church has been at this for a long time, so, as we say in Texas, “it wasn’t their first time.” But moreover, the Church did not “guess” that couples need help; they are ministers of a sacrament whose origin lies in the Trinitarian love of God.
The Creator who made us in love and who loves us so much that He was willing to die did not have to guess; He knows. He knows that we need the sacramental bond and the ongoing help of His Holy Spirit.
Levin’s question is like asking: how did the Church guess that it is Confession that one needs? Well, they have been at this for a long time, and they noticed some problems. And, more to the point, God sent us a Savior for the forgiveness of sins and some instructions about binding and loosing. So the Church is not going in blind here. God really cares about us, and really enters sacramentally into our lives to give us the graces we need.
Levin must also go to confession before getting married. He does it out of love for his bride, but he does not understand why it is necessary. When he comes to the terrifying responsibility of marriage, at least then he realizes: “I need help.” That is a good first step.
My wife once remarked, after a secular wedding, that it was fine, but “it didn’t have enough oomph.” Something was missing. “Where was the Holy Spirit?” she asked.
Yes: three are needed to get married.
About the author
Randall Smith holds the J. Michael Miller Chair in Theology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. His most recent book, Mapping the Itinerarium: A Companion to Bonaventure’s Journey of the Mind into God, has just been published by Emmaus Press. His articles can be found here: Randall Smith Portfolio.