God Desires Marriage for You!

It has been said that the Bible begins and ends with a wedding.

This saying is true because God loves marriage. In the Book of Genesis, God created us within a primordial state of marriage. After the new heaven and the new earth are unveiled, the bride of Christ will be wed to Jesus, the Bridegroom, forever. Truly, we will live in a nuptial relationship with God for all eternity. As we experience National Marriage Week this week, let's take some time to reflect on the weddings we witness in scripture.

Throughout scripture, marriage has always been the reference point to describe God’s connection with his people. In the Old Testament, the prophets consistently referenced marriage as a description of the relationship between God and the nation, Israel. (Isaiah 54:4-8; 62:1-5; Jeremiah 2 & 3; Ezekiel 16 & 26) 

In the New Testament, Christ elevated matrimony to a sacramental covenant. (The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) §1601). It is our earthly marriages that mirror Christ’s relationship with his Church:

“Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. ‘For this reason, a man shall leave [his] father and [his] mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church.” (Ephesians 5:21, 25-27, 31-32) 

Marriage was God’s idea.

God created the spousal union to fully reflect the image of the Most Holy Trinity in mankind and to meet a deep human need for relationship, e.g., it is not good for man to be alone. (Genesis 1:26-27; 2:18-25) However, he also designed marriage to bear witness to the relationship his son will have with us forever: the wedding feast of the Lamb (Revelation 19:7-9a, 21:1-3). 

In the Holy Sacrament of Matrimony, “Christ dwells with them, gives them the strength to take up their crosses and so follow him, to rise again after they have fallen, to forgive one another, to bear one another’s burdens to ‘be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ,’ and to love one another with supernatural, tender, and fruitful love. In the joys of their love and family life he gives them here on earth a foretaste of the wedding feast of the Lamb.” (CCC §1642)

It is in the living out of the marital bond in this world that one can experience an inkling of what our espousal with Jesus will be like when the new earth and the new heaven come to pass. Precisely as a husband and wife become one flesh, Jesus and the church become united. Exactly as one spouse helps the other when he or she has fallen, so does Jesus help the members of his body when they are down and out. Just as a marital couple must be subordinate to one another out of as is fitting in the Lord, so is the entire church subject to Christ as its head. (Ephesians 5:21-33; CCC §796)     

For those who are married, this is what each spouse does for the other.

For those of you who are single and hope to marry, God desires an earthly marriage for you. This is because he loves marriage and loves you. 

Next month, my husband and I will celebrate our ten-year wedding anniversary. Some days, it seems very commonplace to me that I have been a wife this long. Other times, it still is quite unreal to me that God answered my prayers for a husband, especially given how long I tasted the pangs of prolonged singleness.

My husband and I have achieved a lot of “oneness” in our ten years together. However, we were in our early forties when we said, “I do.”  As such, we both had a long time to develop a healthy dose of independence beforehand. This is a natural consequence of marrying later in life. Nonetheless, such self-reliance does not lend itself well to becoming one nor submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. 

We all have our own battle with independence to fight, in our relationships with our spouse and with God. Fortunately, the Church provides us with the necessary weapons: the sacraments, prayer, and scripture. 

Each of us needs to show up with our commitment and willingness to persevere.

What steps can you take to work on your independence while single to help prepare you for marriage? These can be baby steps, as all growth begins as such. Some ideas include letting someone else handle the remote control; letting someone else pick out a restaurant or cuisine specialty for a meal; deferring to someone else’s choice for an outing or game preference, or doing a chore for someone. Contemplate the scripture in John 12:24, taking it to prayer. Ask God for additional suggestions or ideas based on your own life circumstances.