Marriage (Part 3)

I’ve been speaking about the vocation of marriage over the last couple weeks, and in particular I’ve highlighted how each vocation of marriage is actually a vocation of being married to a specific person.

But the vocation of marriage does not stop with that person. The most natural expression of marital love is children, and the Church is right to highlight the importance of keeping one’s marriage open to life. Not all marriages produce children, of course, and despite all our medical advances, infertility remains a deep wound in the lives of too many couples, as it has been since Biblical times.

And some couples may even marry after the woman’s childbearing years are over. But the bearing and raising of children in marriage is seen as so fundamental to the whole endeavor that the Church regards marriages kept intentionally childless as not true sacramental marriages at all.

There’s just one problem: Children are terrifying. Just after birth they are basically as dependent on their parents as they were inside the womb, only without any part of their care being “automated." By toddler age they are walking engines of self-destructive curiosity, and require constant attention to keep them from accidentally killing themselves. The burden on time and on finances is immense, and is very likely never to be paid back.

My mother once told me that having children is “a crash course in unselfishness” because they start out totally selfish and can’t give anything back, aside from cute smiles. That in turn means that to care for a child, perhaps more than any other act on the planet, is to understand what God’s total self-giving love for us is like. Living out that love well is the challenge, and the gift, all parents face.

Challenge: How do you treat those who can’t “pay you back”? Think of a way you can give to someone this week where you expect to get nothing in return.