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Introduction
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- Feast of the Holy Spouses
Contemporary Attack on Love and Life through Contraception
and Abortion
We know in Christ that God is love, a Trinitarian communion, one
God in three persons. God is a “living God,” and in
his love he shares his life through creation, particularly the
creation of humanity. All that exists owes the totality of its
being to God alone, who is love and life itself.
From the creation of the human race in his image, God established
the natural bond of marriage between man and woman to be a personal
and physical union of total openness without shame. The very complementarity
of their masculinity and femininity images God, and their unity
in love is destined to share in his creative work of giving life.
As love and life are one in God, so are they meant to be one in
the union of man and woman.
Adam and Eve’s sin, breaking communion with God, causes
division and recrimination between the two called to be one. The
powerful gift of human sexuality becomes subject to lust. The beautiful
vocation to procreate becomes burdened by pain and toil.
Nevertheless, the natural bond of marriage endures “as the
one blessing that was not forfeited by original sin or washed away
in the flood.” Through the salvation brought in Christ, marriage
is not only redeemed and restored, but is elevated to being a sacrament,
a sign of the covenant love between Christ and his Church. No one
is to separate what God has joined. The sacramental communion between
husband and wife is ordered to their mutual benefit and to procreation.
Today as never before in history is humanity attempting to separate
love and life. Technical “advances” in methods of contraception
have led to a mentality of seeking the pleasure of physical union
without the openness to life that was meant to accompany that union.
This separation of love from life leads also to a loss of love,
since once fertility is excluded from the sexual act, division
is introduced into the relationship of man and woman. Self-giving
is not total, and therefore is prone to self-satisfaction and selfishness.
Neither the Trinity nor the union of Christ and his Church are
imaged. The natural plan of creation itself is violated. Pride
and lust reign. Divorce rates rise. Adultery is regarded by many
as merely a private matter, not incompatible even with the role
of national civic leader. It becomes common to consider fornication
the norm for youth at the most tender age. Powerful pressure is
exerted to treat homosexual relations as normal, healthy and worthy
of being granted all the same benefits as marriage.
The separation of love from life further causes a devaluation
of all life. Contraception inevitably leads to widespread abortion,
and the accompanying denial of the parental instinct, which is
often followed by years of repressed guilt, depression, disrupted
marital relations, and thoughts of suicide. The disabled and the
elderly are the next victims, as acceptance of euthanasia and “assisted
suicide” follows the acceptance of abortion. A “culture
of death” has been created.
The divorce between love and life comes full circle when not only
is procreation eliminated from the act of love, but when also the
intimate union of married love is eliminated from the engendering
of human life. Artificial insemination interferes with this intimacy
by introducing third parties. “Surrogate” parenthood
subjects children to legal battles for possession. In vitro fertilization
replaces the warmth of the womb, and frozen embryos become simply
material to be discarded or perhaps rendered “useful” by
having their cells harvested as the embryos are destroyed. Genetic
engineering and cloning forebode monstrous manipulations of life
without love.
Never before has there been such a need for rediscovering God’s
plan for the inseparability of love and life.
St. Joseph’s Unique Suitability as Model and Patron
of Love and Life
This rather bleak description of the modern attack is countered
most effectively by a human model of love and life. In the incarnation
of Christ, the Trinity draws humanity anew to communion in love.
The Son of God is conceived of the Holy Spirit and not through
carnal union. He is conceived nevertheless in the womb of the virgin
who is betrothed to Joseph.
The uniquely exceptional marriage of Joseph and Mary is the context
of love and life in which the incarnation takes place. The virginal
nature of this marriage makes it no less authentic. In fact we
may deduce that God chose the most loving of all married couples
to serve as parents to his Son. Nor does the lack of physical engendering
render this marriage less open to life, since Mary and Joseph together
accept and nurture the one who is Life itself.
Saint Joseph’s virginal married love and his paternal acceptance
of life not physically engendered by him continue to provide a
challenge to the contemporary attempt to separate love and life.
His virginity testifies to the inseparability of love and life,
since it is occasioned by the incomparable gift of Life in the
person of Jesus. This divine offspring conceived by the Holy Spirit
infinitely transcends any human offspring engendered in the normal
course, thus totally fulfilling marriage’s purpose of openness
to life, so that no merely human offspring are to be contemplated
and therefore neither are those acts capable of engendering offspring.
Excepting of course the Mother of God, no one more than Joseph
is aware that love and life are totally God’s gift. No husband
more than he loves his spouse with such total selflessness, seeking
not his own pleasure but rather the union of hearts centered in
the very love of God. No father more than he realizes the awesome
honor and responsibility of being open to God’s plan of accepting
life and exercising fatherhood in the image of God the Father.
Saint Joseph is uniquely suited to be the model and patron of love
and life, so needed by our world today.
Especially since publication of Redemptoris Custos by
Pope John Paul II in 1989, the Oblates of St. Joseph of the California
Province have undertaken two pastoral responses to counteract the
current contraceptive and abortive mentality and their destructive
consequences. They are the “Holy Spouses Society” and
the ministry and statue of “Saint Joseph, Patron of the Unborn.”
St. Joseph’s marital and virginal love (Redemptoris
Custos 3, 7-8, 18-20)
VOCATION
Joseph and Mary were betrothed, meaning that they had celebrated
the first of the two stages of Jewish marriage, the legally binding
commitment to each other. They were wedded and already called husband
and wife, before they lived together. Mary “preserved her
deep desire to give herself exclusively to God” in a manner
that could be understood only in light of future events. In accepting
betrothal to Mary, Joseph was accepting his vocation to love in
ways that he could not yet fathom. “God chose Joseph to be
Mary’s spouse.” “The fact that Mary was betrothed
to Joseph was part of the very plan of God.”
SELF-GIVING THROUGH VIRGINITY
Joseph’s betrothal was an open and free consent to give
himself as spouse. It is after the incarnation in Mary’s
womb that Joseph’s vocation was made more explicit. The angel
of the Lord addressed him as Mary’s husband and confirmed
the marriage bond in the light of the divine conception by the
Holy Spirit. Joseph “heard once again the truth about his
own vocation.” His love as a man was molded and given new
birth by the Holy Spirit. He was to proceed with the final phase
of the marriage by taking Mary into his home, but he was not to “know
her” intimately through sexual relations. His marital self-giving
love for Mary was to be expressed virginally, “respecting
the fact that she belonged exclusively to God.” This love
that was at once marital and virginal represents in an integral
way the mystery of Christ and his Church, virgin and spouse. Joseph’s
virginal, self-giving love is pure, free of all selfishness. He “showed
a readiness of will like Mary’s with regard to what God asked
of him through the angel.”
FRUITFULNESS
Imaging the Trinity from the beginning, marital love is meant
to be fruitful, to be open to procreation, sharing in God’s
power to give new life. The unique marriage of Mary and Joseph
is not less fruitful because of their virginity. It is the most
fruitful of all marriages precisely through their virginal cooperation
with God’s plan for the conception of his own Son in Mary’s
womb. It is because of Joseph’s marriage to Mary that he
is called to be father to this Son in every sense except the biological.
Called to be husband to Christ’s mother, he is called to
oversee Christ’s birth, to name the child, to guarantee his
juridical legitimacy, and to exercise fatherly authority over him
as a minister of salvation. Such fruitfulness is without compare
and we are all beneficiaries of it. The incarnation occurs in this
context so that at the heart of redemption is the purification
and sanctification also of marriage and family.
SPIRITUAL DEPTH OF LOVE
Joseph’s deep marital companionship and communion with Mary
allowed him to share in her sublime holiness in a way that deepened
his own holiness. The Holy Spirit was the source of their spiritual
closeness, the source of a love beyond the limits of any merely
human love between man and woman. This holiness was not simply
for their sakes. “Whereas Adam and Eve were the source of
evil which was unleashed on the world, Joseph and Mary are the
summit from which holiness spreads all over the earth.... How much
the family of today can learn from this! ... It is in the Holy
Family ... that every Christian family must be reflected.”
These truths are fundamental for today’s couples to rediscover
their “mission to guard, reveal and communicate love.” The
Oblates of St. Joseph in California are trying to teach these truths
pastorally through the Holy Spouses ministry by means of a feast,
a rosary devotion, an image, a workshop, and a spiritual society
based on a couple’s personal eight-fold commitment. We describe
each of these here.
Contents • Next
- Feast of the Holy Spouses
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