Marriage as Great Love and Great Sacrifice

Just as Christ sacrificed for us, just as Adam gave a rib for Eve, just as a mother gives her body for her child and changes her life forever for someone she doesn’t know, we are all called to sacrifice for each other.

For those called to marriage this has a distinctive calling for complete sacrifice. It means that one makes a decision maturely, reservedly and adamantly to give themselves and tie their journey in this life.

To tie their success or failures, to tie their good times and bad times, to color and shape who they are and what they are and where they are going by this other person being one with them.

It is truly a sacrifice. One that demands and assumes that the one is for the other before themselves.

There is no other way to become one from two than to give up oneself as a true sacrifice, for that is what it truly is, a sacrifice.

It is difficult to comprehend this fact for most newlyweds or engaged couples because they see the relationship primarily driven, built upon a feeling of love, a chemical reaction by two biological creatures.

So two sacrifice to become one and the result is a great love that can only come from great sacrifice. It is a philosophical question whether great love comes before sacrifice or great sacrifice comes before great love. I think what we must hold onto is that great love is within the grasp of all of us.
But it does require great sacrifice.

Great sacrifice, great love, must be built on balanced, mature and will ordered individuals who have a love for God above all else and a desire to walk the journey to God with another.

Yes, both must commit and sacrifice.

Without both committed completely in a sacrifice there can be abuse, misuse, hurt, pain and a disaster where great love should be. It’s because unless both in the couple are prepared and balanced and mature they cannot make the sacrifice required and will not be able to make the commitment that ends in great love.

This is why as ministers we spend the time to explain the sacramental nature of marriage.

Marriage is something different than any other human decision. It is a calling like a priest or Deacon or religious make. A calling to enter a new relationship with God and a new relationship with all other people around us. Even our relationship with our own mother and father and best friend changes. Think about that.

The couple actually enters into a new order. An order that just like all vocations require putting it ahead of all other endeavors. Marriage is our attempt at Trinity and so it is ordered forever. Once entered into, two are marked and set aside as one. No longer two but one. Moving together, journeying together in all aspects to God.

There is no other way. There is also no other way great love is possible. The world doesn’t even comprehend this great love but instead teaches the false romance of Hollywood. The world teaches to put us, me… first as a right. Unfortunately, that is not how it works for followers of Christ. Just as Christ gave himself for us he gave us the model to live and love and become one, as the Father and Son and Holy Spirit are one. At least as close to Trinity as humans can come.

Want to have a great love?

Follow Christ and both commit to sacrifice to each other, pray for each other daily, ask what do they need today. Make decisions based on the one.

Anything else is no longer an option. This is not a position of submission but of raising the two into something great. It is hard for the independent, self driven man and it is difficult for the woman who has had to fight for her rights and equality. Neither of these are wrong of course, but required in most work struggles for success. But for those entering marriage they both now must learn to yield or form their driven natures to put the other first.

Then when two fiercely driven and fulfilled people make the sacrifice of marriage, of giving up power for the other, that is truly a holy thing to see.

It is not a weak thing because no one is taking anything away but it is given by choice. Think about that too.

That is true power. To be confident and trusting in oneself, in God, and in the other to tell the world, I choose to give and sacrifice and join with this other being so that together we can be greater.

Great love naturally walks with great sacrifice.