Love and Lent
NTC/Kevin Bartram
It’s that time of year again, time for all of us to figure out what we are going to do for Lent. Of course, this year, Ash Wednesday falls quite close to Valentine’s Day, which gave me an idea. I have decided to forward it along. Speaking specifically to married couples, how about making a sacrifice of love?
When the Lord made our first parents in the Garden, He made each of them for the other, making them fit for one another to be a “helper.” This is significant, for the relationship the Lord creates in them is more than one of general complementarity. Rather, it is a relationship of specific cohesion, soul to soul. This is indicated by Adam’s famous response to being given Eve: “This, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23).
As the Church declares, the very essence of matrimony is the “partnership of the whole of life” (Code of Canon Law, 1055.1). Of course, it should go without saying that a soul cannot enter such a partnership with just anyone. It takes someone quite special to fulfill this role in a person’s life.
This becomes even more apparent when we take into consideration the fact that the harmony of the couple largely depends upon how the complementarity of the couple is lived out and the needs of the individual persons are met (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2333).
The needs to which this partnership is inherently ordered are those associated with the “whole of life”: meaning, those needs of body, soul, heart, and mind. When such needs are met, there exists true harmony among the couple which is a sign of the integrity of the partnership and their union. This love of the couple necessarily involves the totality of each person, “in which all elements of the person enter — appeal of the body and instinct, power of feeling and affectivity, aspiration of the spirit and of will. It aims at a deeply personal unity, a unity that, beyond union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul” (CCC 1643).
Key to this union of one heart and soul is something inherent to matrimonial consent, the mutual giving and acceptance of one another. What is directly implicit in this mutual exchange is the giving of oneself which is total and complete, without reservation. One’s reception of the other is total and complete as well; meaning, receiving them not as one imagines them to be or wishes they were, but how they exist in reality, as they are in themselves, unconditionally.
Living this out can be a challenge for the most compatible of couples, but it teaches us how to love in a truly unselfish, self-giving, unconditional manner. In other words, loving as God wishes us to love — sacrificially.
So, this Lent, how about choosing one (or more!) sacrifices of love?
What would this sacrifice look like, you ask? Beginning with the nature of marriage in mind (a “partnership of the whole of life”), how about making a sacrifice of openness? How about one of deep communication with the aim of making a soul-to-soul connection? How about asking your spouse what their needs are and fulfilling them? How about laboring against what you know is sowing disharmony in your relationship? How about working toward something lacking in your relationship which is keeping your marriage from achieving the harmony to which it is designed? How about finally divulging the secrets which have kept your relationship bound in falsity?
Whatever your sacrifice is, it should address at least one of two things: something which is lacking in your marriage that you can fulfill, or something which needs to be addressed that hinders the flowering of your marriage. Taking this into consideration, what will your sacrifice be?
Jason Whitehead is the diocesan director of evangelization and catechesis. He entered the Church in 2012 and subsequently received a master’s degree in theology. Find his regular columns for the North Texas Catholic here.