This Sunday Catholics celebrated the feast of the holy Trinity, three Persons in one God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – existing in an eternal exchange of love. From all eternity the Father makes himself a gift to the Son and the Son receives this gift and makes Himself a gift back to the Father in return. This love between the Father and the Son is so perfect, so powerful that it is an entirely other eternal Person – the Holy Spirit.
The book of Genesis (1:27) tells us that humanity was created in the image of this God, which means that:
Man becomes an image of God not so much in the moment of solitude as in the moment of communion. He is, in fact, “from the beginning” not only an image in which the solitude of one Person, who rules the world, mirrors itself, but also and essentially the image of an inscrutable divine communion of Persons. (JP II, November 14, 1979 – TOB 9:3)
Now, human beings “commune” in many different ways, but the image of the life-giving love of the Trinity is most evident when a husband and wife become “one flesh.” Only in this mutual gift of self – body and soul, freely committed to one another in a covenant of God’s making – is the love between man and woman, like the giving and receiving of love between the Father and the Son, capable of bringing forth new life. This is what is at the heart of marriage and this is why, no matter how much they may love each other, two people of the same sex can never be sacramentally married as far as the Church is concerned.
Erin Manning recently had a very good essay breaking down, in purely biological terms, why same sex “marriage” is not possible:
A same-sex couple cannot engage in sexual intercourse. They can, of course, perform a variety of sex acts on and with each other, but none of those acts has ever been considered to lie at the heart of what marriage is (and, indeed, some of them are forbidden even to married people from a Catholic moral perspective). But that act which alone among human acts is potentially capable of creating a new human life is not an act which they can engage in together.
One cannot be married if one is not capable of engaging in the marital act. This is not meant to be an insult to people afflicted with same-sex attraction, but to preserve the sanctity of the marriage covenant and the central act of married love.
Do go over and read all of Erin’s post on this subject – great stuff!
6 Comments on “TOB Tuesday: The Trinity and the Heart of Marriage”
Hey Chelsea,
A question: Where do consecrated celibates fit into the picture? To my understanding, the Church has always, while affirming the great good of marriage, maintained consecrated celibacy as the preferred state of life. How do we explain how the love of the Trinity is manifest in the life of a consecrated celibate versus the life of a married couple?
God bless,
Bob
Hi, Bob,
I’m not Chelsea (obviously), but: the Church offers consecrated celibacy as a “higher calling” because of the very definition of marriage; marriage is a “signpost” pointing toward the ultimate union of the soul with God (and with all other souls in Heaven)–the ultimate fulfillment of “Love God, Love neighbour” to which Jesus calls us. Those who are married (such as I) are called to image the unity of the Persons of the Blessed Trinity, the unity of Christ with His Church, and our (ultimate) unity with one another… but when we attain Heaven (God willing), the “signpost” of marriage will give way to the ultimate reality for which it was only a signpost (cf. Matthew 22:30, etc.). Those who lay aside marriage in favour of celibacy are, in essence, declining the signpost in favour of an even closer union with the “Real Thing”.
Does that help?
If whoever wrote that last comment disguised at Karol Józef Wojtyła is reading this – use your real name and email address and try again. Then maybe I’ll consider approving your comment – if you actually care to have a discussion, that is.
CZ
If whoever wrote that last comment disguised at Karol Józef Wojtyła is reading this – use your real name and email address and try again.
Oy, vey… I don’t think I even *want* to know what they were going to say, given that! Servant of God John Paul II, pray for him!
Paladin – after allowing a few in the past, I have now made it a policy that “anonymous” comments (if I can really tell they’re anonymous) will not be approved…unless they actually add something do the discussion. Hey – it’s my blog. Thanks for your other comment, by the way (I never had time to get around to answering it). You’re right on! Very succinct, right to the point – more than I would have been. May have to save it for later use… 🙂
The disparity is between (a) what same-sex opponents claim they advocate (the law’s recognition of only Traditional Marriages) and (b) what they actually advocate (having the law recognize completely untraditional marriages, such as Gingrich and Limbaugh’s multiple, serial unions). They don’t really advocate the law’s recognition of Traditional Marriage, as they claim; rather, they only advocate that the law bar the untraditional marriages they don’t want to enter into (same-sex marriages) while recognizing the ones they do (multiple, serial “marriages”). The point is that one cannot oppose same-sex marriage on the ground that the law should only recognize Traditional Marriages, while simultaneously demanding that the law recognize third, fourth and other multiple marriages following divorce: at least one cannot do so coherently.