The Vocation of Marriage: Let the Quest Begin

Holding out for happily ever after?

Once upon a time, there was a brave knight who was given an important quest. He prepared his horse, donned his armor, and sharpened his sword. Then he planned the route he needed to take and bought his supplies for the journey. Finally, he mounted his mighty steed and announced for all to hear, “My quest is at an end!” 

How ridiculous is that? Yet, this is exactly what our culture tends to do with the quest for true love. A couple who gets married has supposedly come to the end of their search for true love and are destined to live happily ever after. Unfortunately, this romantic myth leads many couples to the curse of disenchantment and divorce when they discover that “happily ever after” doesn’t last beyond the honeymoon stage and that a real marriage takes a lot of work. Some people embrace the disenchantment and declare that the quest for true love, and therefore marriage, is nothing more than a childish fairy tale. 

However, these skeptics don’t understand that the need for true love is deeply ingrained in the human heart. We are made in the Image of God, and that means that we are made for love. Unfortunately, we have mistaken the beginning of the quest for the end.

Getting married is just the beginning!

The Catholic Church has a name for this quest: vocation. The word vocation means a calling. In the context of faith, it means a calling from God. Catholics often mistakenly believe that only priests and religious have a vocation. Marriage is seen as a default position for those who do not receive a vocation from God. But the truth is, the Church has always seen marriage as a vocation.

Our vocation begins with the universal call by Jesus to radical love, “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34). In this sense, all of us have a vocation—what Vatican II calls the “universal call to holiness.”

Therefore, all the faithful of Christ are invited to strive for the holiness and perfection of their own proper state. Indeed they have an obligation to so strive. Let all then have care that they guide aright their own deepest sentiments of soul. Let neither the use of the things of this world nor attachment to riches, which is against the spirit of evangelical poverty, hinder them in their quest for perfect love.

The vocation to charity is intimately tied to our quest for love.

This is our general vocation, shared by every baptized Christian. Your specific vocation is how God calls you to practice charity within a particular relationship. Married couples are called to learn how to love as Jesus loves by first loving each other and their children with selfless, self-abandoning love. 

In its pastoral constitution on the “Church in the Modern World” (Gaudium et Spes), the Second Vatican Council says, 

"Finally, let the spouses themselves, made in the image of the living God and enjoying the authentic dignity of persons, be joined to one another in equal affection, harmony of mind, and the work of mutual sanctification (52)."

These teachings are not new to Vatican II. The Church has always taught that every Christian is called to be holy through the perfection of charity, and that marriage is a vocation that helps us to achieve this goal.

So, here’s the thing. Getting married is just the beginning of the quest for true love. True love is not something that happens to you. It’s something that you build through painstaking practice. When you get married, you enter into a vocation that requires you to consciously and deliberately build love (charity) every day. Marriage is not just a promise that you make once and then hope you can adhere to. Marriage is a daily commitment. Here is what this daily effort looks like.

Offer your life as a witness to Christ.

While most Christians are not called to offer their lives to Christ by dying for Him in martyrdom, we are all called to offer our lives to Christ by living for Him. That’s one reason that marriage is a lifelong commitment. Your vow to love your spouse “‘til death do us part” is a dedication of your entire life to the quest for Christlike love. 

The martyrs were a powerful witness to the Roman people in the first few centuries of the Church. Like many secularized people today, the Romans could not imagine being so dedicated to a god that you’d be willing to die for your faith. Christians embracing death with firm faith and even with joy convinced many Romans that there must be something special about Jesus. 

Many people today look at marriage in the same way. They can’t figure out why anyone would  dedicate their lives to a single relationship or to a “traditional family.” To them, marriage is about self-fulfillment. This gives us a great opportunity to be a witness for them of dedicated, selfless love and to the love of Christ.

Commit yourself to growth in selfless love.

The quest for true love isn’t just to stay together for as many years as possible. The true quest is to grow in charity. This quest does not have a final goal—a point at which we say, “I’m good enough.” God calls us to become Christlike in our love. That requires a never ending process of transformation through grace.

Spouses truly wanting to live their marital vows should wake up every morning and think, “How can I give myself more completely and selflessly today? How can I sacrifice for my family? How can I love my spouse and children even more deeply? 

It takes commitment and work. But the quest is worth the effort. 

Expand your love to the world.

As you learn to love as Christ loves, your love must eventually spread into the world. As family members grow in charity for each other, it’s natural for them to seek ways to share their love with people outside of the family. This cultivated desire offers a great opportunity to find ways to serve others as a family. 

The end goal of every vocation is to build the Kingdom of God. When the Church calls the family the foundation of society, it means that society consists of families helping each other. To spread the love of Christ into the world by serving as a family is a natural fruit of family love. In fact, in his apostolic letter Familiaris Consortio, Saint Pope John Paul II calls serving the world one of the tasks of the family that helps Christian families live their mission.

Are you ready for the quest?

Recognizing that marriage is the beginning of your life’s quest to find perfect love—rather than the end—can be a life-changing reflection. You can let go of the pressure to find the absolutely perfect “Mr. Right” or “Mrs. Right.” Instead, find someone with whom you want to face the lifelong challenge of learning to love together. Understanding marriage as the beginning of the quest can also heal any negative views of marriage you’ve adopted due to the “Happily Ever After” fantasy promoted by our culture. Marriage is not a fairytale ending, but a grace-filled beginning.

True love is not something you find or fall into. It’s a quest to cooperate with grace in order to become a person who is more able to give and receive love. It calls you to cooperate with God, your spouse, and your family to create beautiful relationships. Ultimately, it’s a quest to exercise charity so that you can love the Holy Trinity and participate in the very love of God for others. For those called to the vocation of marriage, it all begins on your wedding day.