The Sanctification of Human Love

In this meditation, Fr. Peter Armenio reflects on God's plan for human love and the vocation of marriage as a reflection of Christ's love for his Church. Drawing from Scripture and the example of the Holy Family, we are reminded that authentic love is rooted in self-giving, sustained by grace, and centered on Jesus Christ.  

Fr. Peter invites us to renew our commitment to loving others out of love for Christ, to cultivate friendships and family life rooted in prayer, and to seek the spirit of Nazareth in our daily lives. 

Listen and reflect on: 

• God's plan for human love 
• Marriage as a reflection of Christ's love 
• The Holy Family as our model 
• Self-giving and sacrificial love 
• Keeping Christ at the center of every vocation 

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Transcript

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In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins. And the grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother Saint Joseph, my father, and Lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me. In this time of conversation with Jesus Christ and through Christ, our conversation is addressed to God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. We go through the humanity of Jesus. And I begin this way, since our theme of conversation is sanctifying human love. And let's focus on the love between husband and wife, since the great majority of the population revealed by Genesis. Genesis narrates the creation of the first man and the first woman. And immediately after the narrative of the creation of woman, God institutes a sanctification of human love and specifying a very special holy human love that we call marriage. And he reveals, and that revelation still holds, that this love between a husband and wife is the highest form of human love. Why is that? Well, because it's a love that is meant to reflect the very love of God. And for that reason, God mandated that the husband and wife leave mother and father and cleave to each other, become one flesh. Physically, emotionally, in terms of friendship, in terms of pursuit of Christ, that they be intimately united on many fronts, united as persons. God is not telling them that you can't have your mother-in-law live with you. Please let's not interpret leave mother and father and become one flesh as not having much to do with our in-laws, but rather it means that spousal love is your highest love. That nothing surpasses the devotion, dedication, self-gift between husband and wife. And in fact, the normal setting to learn about human love, whether it's friendship love, whether it's sibling love, fraternal love, or loving any potential person because their images of God, that is learned from this human love between husband and wife, mother and father, if that's the case. I remember a couple of women telling me that what's key in forming children, young people, in the sense that God loves them with heart of father, heart of mother, as Isaiah reveals. The most formative example is the actual bond of love between their parents, husband and wife. That gives security, if you will, that gives them an experience, a concrete experience of the love of God, albeit imperfect and finite, but nevertheless the love of God that is reflected in fatherly love and motherly love. Lord, give us the grace to penetrate this beautiful gift that you instituted at the dawn of creation of man and woman. And Heavenly Father, you have sanctified it through your Son Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ restored the original meaning of marriage, that this self-gift can never be withdrawn in what we call divorce and remarriage, that it is permanent while the spouses are alive. And so he restores the original meaning of marriage and raises it to the level of a sacrament, literally makes it holy. It was holy to begin with, but now he gives it the stamp of Christ-like holiness. And that's what we mean by sanctification in the fullest sense of the word. To give us some perspective, sacraments bring holiness to the human person in different ways, according to different needs. But there are three sacraments that are intimately linked with the Christian vocation. Baptism initiates a calling to discipleship, a union with Christ, an intimate union with Christ. And how is that understood? Well, we look at the sign. What's the sign? It's water. What does water do? Water washes, washes away original sin and personal sin. Water gives birth. You plant a seed, but you've got to water that soil for that seed to sprout up into a plant or a tree. Even mammals and the human person is born out of water. It's refreshing, it renews, etc. And so that symbol of water, that sign of water, is effectively spiritually. The sign is effectively in a spiritual manner. It does give rebirth in Christ. It does wash away sin. The sign tells you its supernatural or spiritual role. Confirmation completes that discipleship so that we receive grace to actually proclaim the truth of the gospel and have the strength to defend it and profess it even at the cost of our lives. But there's two other sacraments that specify this kind of human love. One is holy orders, that is a vocation to act in the person of Christ. Holy orders is a power men receive to act in Christ's place, to renew his sacrifice of the cross, that we call the sacrifice or liturgy of the Eucharist, the Holy Mass. And the other one is matrimony, where the couple receive the supernatural grace to love with the heart of Christ. Now, in this time of prayer, we need to cross our T's and dot our I's and not to be afraid to make sure that our contemplation of this sanctification of human love through the sacrament of matrimony squares with reason. Every truth of the faith does, but we want to meditate on how it squares with reason. And I say that because the tangible data contradict, at least ostensibly, the beautiful doctrine on sanctification of human love, which we call matrimony. Jesus works his first miracle at a wedding. That's a powerful message. And there's so many ways you could look at the conversion of water and wine. You could make it into an allegory in the spirit of the fathers of the church, on the Eucharist, on the Passion, on evangelization, because it's a work of conversion. But I want to focus a little bit on marriage. He worked this miracle in marriage, and the end result was a conversion of water into wine. And that, among many meanings, for our purposes right now, that is an allegory of the sanctification of human love. The Mosaic law states that we are expected to love neighbor as ourself, a tall order. Sanctified human love is, and it applies to everybody, but let's focus a little bit on husband and wife, signifies loving each other according to the new commandment, with the very heart of Christ. Impossible but approachable. We can always approach it and get closer to that. Impossible standard to actually duplicate the heart of Christ, who is perfect God and perfect man. I don't think I'm too far off. I say it's impossible, but possible to get close to it. Otherwise, he would not have issued that commandment. And Paul calls this sacrament a great sacrament, and it symbolizes Christ's love for his church. And we, many Christian homes, if you're praying in church, you will see a crucifix, you see that beat-up naked dead man. That is the culminating sign of Christ's love for his church. He communicates his love for every person by laying down his very life in a merciless and most painful sacrifice. The gift of self, self-giving, does not surpass that. It's the ultimate self-gift. And marriage is meant, or matrimony is meant to reflect that very love for Christ. That's what's revealed by the Holy Spirit through Saint Paul. And hence the church mandates that Catholic baptized faithful must receive the mess be married in church, and if they're in the conditions that they're both Christian, or one, at least one's Catholic, one's Christian, that they receive the sacrament of matrimony because the church is a mother and wants her children to receive all the graces possible to persevere in this human love called marriage. Now, the elephant in the room is that something's not working. I need to admit that there's been a good number of marriages. I mean, not countless, but enough, where the couple, and myself included, have decided we're going to have Catholic celebration of the sacrament of matrimony outside of Mass. We'll do the readings, we'll have a homily, we'll do the marriage ceremony or the matrimonial ceremony, but we will not do it within the Eucharistic celebration of the Mass. For the simple reason that in some cases most people were not Catholic. One couple were converts. But somehow the marriage fizzled. Many were many are divorced and remarried. And so we, the couple and I myself made a judgment call. Well, if the majority are not going to go to communion, or they're not in condition to go to communion, it's too awkward. And so let's just have a matrimonial celebration of and do without the Eucharistic celebration, have the liturgy of the word. Well, we need to answer the question, and we know the answer, but we need to answer the question anyway, prayerfully, with the light of faith and light of human knowledge. Something's not working. I mean, is this actually true that you receive the grace to love each other with that actual heart of Christ when you see so many failed marriages? Does the sacrament work or doesn't it? I mean, if we're going to judge by the date, it doesn't. But we know it does. Perhaps I could give an example. And this could be a good illustration. I remember now, many decades ago, when I was in high school. And one of the students at my particular high school was a phenomenal sprinter. In those days we ran yards. And as a freshman in high school, this kid was so fast that he ran under ten seconds. But he personally was not interested in track and field. Maybe it was not maybe it was ten seconds, but maybe I think it was under ten. My memory doesn't fail me. And that's that was phenomenal. I think still it is very impressive, especially in your freshman high school. But he had very little interest in track and field. He played football and he concentrated his efforts there. And he never got better. He reached his peak freshman year because he never was on the track team. He never worked out. Or maybe he'd run track beats but without working out. And so, given the keen competition, he never was the best. He wasn't all-state. Maybe I don't even think he was all county. Why do I mention that? Or maybe even a better example could be I had the uh fun privilege of seeing an NFL football practice. And my first reaction was these young men, in the positive sense, in terms of their agility and their strength and their speed, were freaks. Freaks of nature. You know, the ordinary mortal did not have those gifts. And uh it was a time of the year when there was probably eighty-five young men practicing, who was the final cuts were not made, or even the semifinal cuts were not made. And you had two or three potential superstars, and the rest were average great athletes. I mean, your your average NFL player. And basically the ones who will make the team, yes, there's luck, but there's a lot of hard work. And what was crystal clear, because yeah, great majority were, you know, all conference, all East, all West, all, you know, all America, all American. The ones who worked very hard, with some luck, would make the team. If you did not work, no matter how much talent you had, unless you were, you know, a known superstar already, you wouldn't make the team. We need to work at our human love, whether we're married or not. Baptism gives us the DNA to be saints. That doesn't mean we're going to be saints unless we work at it. Yes, that man and woman, in an unqualified way, have received a DNA to actually be able to approach that love Jesus has for every person. And because I have virtually not seen a severely dysfunctional marriage when both are working at it. Yes, they have that DNA, they have the matrimony, but they need to work at it. And our models for human love, period, but now we're talking about this specific form of human love, is the holy family in Nazareth. Again, let's prayerfully use our light of reason. Maybe our first reaction, it's understandable, is yeah, I agree, my model is. The Holy Family, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. But in terms of realistic expectations or realistic application, I cannot identify with the Holy Family. I admire the Holy Family, I venerate the Holy Family, I love the Holy Family, I pray to the Holy Family, but I cannot identify with the Holy Family. Why? Well, the woman of the house happens to be immaculately conceived. She's never experienced a temptation. There's no weaknesses connected to sin. Sorry, I'm not there. Not even close. Okay. St. Joseph, though the church doesn't teach that he was immaculate conceived, it doesn't take a brilliant theologian to figure out that if he's going to actually educate and form Jesus, and if the male frame of reference for Jesus and his humanity is Saint Joseph, no one, barring the Blessed Mother, has received the amount of grace and the special graces that Saint Joseph received. No one had a more important mission than to get Jesus ready as a man to go public. I mean, get Jesus ready for the most important three years in the history of the universe. So can't relate to him either. When your son has literally is your creator, according to his divinity. So I can't relate. Well, why are we told to imitate the Holy Family? Can we massage this in such a way that it's crystal clear that they're my paradigm, they're my model. Yes. Very simple. Though we're not immatically conceived, though we have not received the extraordinary graces of Saint Joseph, but their focus was Christ. And both have similar stories. One said yes to the angel Gabriel to serve or cooperate in the conception of the Son of God and to mother the Son of God throughout his sojourn here on earth. So she gave a colossal yes of a total act of self-giving, communicated in a dream. Saint Joseph also gave his total yes, accepting Mary as his wife, though conceiving a son that he did not cooperate in that conception. He would have no human father, and he would have to bring him up, educate him, be responsible for him. And he gave his colossal yes. So that's number one, I think we want to have very clear in our minds that this sanctification of human love requires that I give myself totally to this person, especially when it comes to matrimony. And number two, that it's intimately related, that my fulfillment is not in my ultimate fulfillment, is not my spouse, but my ultimate fulfillment is Christ. I need to be centered on Christ. I need to live my matrimonial calling, if that's my calling, or my celibate calling, whether it's a celibacy that I formerly embraced because I've received the gift to be celibate for the kingdom of God, or celibacy because I'm not called to marriage. He has to be the center of my life. And if not, given my pastoral experience, it's hard to vouch for the success of a marriage when Christ is not a key player in that marriage, to use an idea of Fulton Sheen takes three to get married. And so what our Lord is encouraging us here to consider that yes, this sanctification of human love through marriage and outside of marriage is possible with the sacrament, but my cooperation, the sacrament is not magic. My struggle would become fruitful, but I've got my freedom is key here. I do this because I was it was suggested to me after a wedding, I wedding mass that I celebrated a few years ago, not that long ago, that a couple burst into the sacristy when I was finished mass and divesting, hanging up my vestments, and they'd been married probably at least 40 years when they came in, elderly, in comparison to a newlywed, anyway, and told me, do not be afraid to speak about matrimony to young people. Young people are nervous because they they've come, many have come from dysfunctional families and and they see marriages that don't last too long. She said, We're all incompatible. My husband and I are incompatible, but we have made Christ important to us. We pray with each other. Uh we pray together. They were taking St. John Paul's advice that the rosary draws the couple together, helps them love each other more. It's part of living out the DNA of matrimony. She said we go to confession, which forces us to confess our sins, not our spouses' sins. And um we know that our spiritual lives, because we're married, is to love each other, not exclusively, but primary. But we have to really work on our communication and our friendship, and we are. And we've been we're more fulfilled now than when we were very young. And so that's one dimension of this sanctification of human love, and we go back to the Holy Family, and what do we see? Well, the greatest saints were a husband and a wife, a mom and a dad. They were the greatest saints because of the grace of God. They were great saints because Christ was the center. They lived their matrimony or marriage on account of Christ. Christ was the glue that kept them together. No husband and wife loved each other as much as the Blessed Mother and Saint Joseph. And so we go to that holy family for their prayer of intercession, that whether I'm paying for toothpaste in a local store, whether I'm online waiting to board a plane, whether I'm with a friend or family member, that I try to duplicate that ambiance of the Holy Family, which especially applies to a husband and wife, that we live for Christ, that we do everything for Christ, to quote Saint Jose Maria, that it's okay to love each other for one another's own sake, but if that's as far as it goes, he says that's not good. He said we have to love people out of love for Christ. That ensures that our love will grow and that our love will become even more human, if you will. Anyway, we close our meditation, perhaps going to the first aspiration that was taught us as children, Jesus and Mary and Joseph. Pray for us. Pray that we duplicate the environment of Nazareth, which is also translated in Love One Another as I have loved you. I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations you've communicated to me in this meditation. I ask your help putting them into effect. My Immaculate Mother Saint Joseph, my father and Lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.