MARRIAGE AND CELIBACY

Homily for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B.  1 Cor. 7:32-35.

AIM: To explain Catholic teaching about marriage and celibacy, especially for

          those currently without a spouse.

          “An unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord,” Paul writes in our second reading, “how he may please the Lord. But a married man is anxious about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and he is divided.” And Paul goes on to say the same about unmarried and married women. But aren’t Paul’s words a terrible put-down of married people?

          To answer those questions we need to know about the situation in which Paul was writing. He was addressing people who considered marriage the only healthy, normal way of living. To such people Paul was saying: ‘Think again. The single life, especially when embraced for love of God, is something good and holy.’

          Our world is very different from Paul’s. Yet today, as then, most people assume that everyone must have a partner. I put it that way because, sadly, more and more people today consider marriage optional. Living with a partner without marrying, and only “as long as we’re in love,” is increasingly the norm in today’s society. When such conditional partnerships break up, it is often children who pay the heaviest price.

The Catholic Church rejects the assertion that everyone must have a partner. It affirms instead that everyone, married or single, should strive for chastity. “At  the moment of his baptism,” the Catechism says, “the Christian is pledged to lead his affective life in chastity.” (No. 2348) This is done, the Catechism explains, in different ways. “Some profess virginity or consecrated celibacy which enables them to give themselves to God alone with an undivided heart in a remarkable manner. Others live in the way prescribed for all by the moral law, whether they are married or single.” In support, the Catechism quotes the fourth century bishop of Milan, St. Ambrose, who writes: “There are three forms of the virtue of chastity: the first is that of spouses, the second that of widows. And the third that of virgins. We do not praise any one of them to the exclusion of the others. ... This is what makes for the richness of the discipline of the Church.” (No. 2349)

          In honoring celibacy the Church proclaims that the single life, embraced responsibly for love of God, is a good life – and a happy life. It is estimated that at any given point in time roughly a third of the adult population is without a spouse: either not yet married, separated or divorced, or widowed. It is a great disservice to such people to allow them to regard themselves as disadvantaged and somehow incomplete. To those not married, whether through choice or circumstances, the Catholic Church proclaims the good news: ‘Your life can be happy, fulfilled, and meaningful. As long as there is love in your life – love of God and love of others – you lack nothing essential. You can hold your head high.’  

          But the Church which honors celibacy also highly honors marriage.  Marriage is one of the seven sacraments. “On the threshold of his public life,” the Catechism says, “Jesus performs his first sign – at his mother’s request – during a wedding feast. The Church attaches great importance to Jesus’ presence at the wedding at Cana. She sees in it the confirmation of the goodness of marriage and the proclamation that thenceforth marriage will be an efficacious sign of Christ’s presence.” (No. 1613)

          The Church condemns today’s liberated sexuality – expressed in the slogan, “If it feels good, do it” – because it is responsible for so much disappointment, so much loneliness, so much cynicism about the possibility of ever finding true love – and hence so much despair. It drags us down to the animal level. It deprives sexuality of the reverence with which all high cultures have surrounded it, because it comes from the hand of God, enabling us to participate in the divine work of creation.

          The Church also rejects what is today called “gay marriage.” Homosexual people, the Catechism says, “must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.” (No. 2358) This does not mean, however, that we can re-define marriage at will.  “Marriage is not merely a human institution,” the Catechism says, “despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries ...” (No. 1603) Marriage, in other words, is something given in the order of nature. It is not ours to reshape as we please.

          But what about Paul’s claim in our second reading that single people are more devoted to God’s service than the married? We must remember that Paul was writing for people who saw nothing good at all in the single life. Hence he points out that the freedom from family responsibilities which single people enjoy makes it possible for them to serve God and others in ways not available for married people. Moreover, Paul was writing a letter. Had he been composing a balanced treatise on celibacy and marriage, he would have had to point out a unique danger in the single life: the constant temptation to please not the Lord but one’s self; to sink into a comfortable and selfish bachelor life.    

          Even when we have said all this, however, we are still left with the question: Why celibacy? Specifically, why does the Church require this of her priests? Speaking a few years ago to seminarians at Conception Abbey in northwest Missouri, I answered this question as follows: Everything in this world is good, sex included, because it comes from God, who is pure goodness. Yet the goodness of everything in this world is finite. Perfect goodness exists only in another world: the world of God. It is one thing to say this. But people will never believe it unless they see examples of people who are actually living here and now by the standards of that other world. So when God calls a man to celibacy, he is asking him to live in this world as a citizen of another world, the world of heaven.

The Chicago priest, Fr. Robert Barron, who is widely recognized as the Bishop Fulton Sheen of our day, writes: “The mission of celibates is to witness to a transcendent form of love, the way that we will love in heaven. There, in God’s world, we will experience a communion (bodily as well as spiritual) compared to which even the most intense forms of communion here below pale into insignificance; and celibates make this truth viscerally real for us now. I believe that celibacy only finally makes sense in this eschatological context.”

I can hear someone objecting already: “How many priests are actually living by the standards of God’s world?” There are two answers to that question, and they are both correct. The first is, “Not all that many.” And the second is, “More than you would think!” Moreover, if we posed a similar question about marriage, asking how many married people truly sacrifice everything for their spouses, and for the children God gives them, we would get the same two answers. Failure to achieve the ideal is no reason to abandon the ideal, whether it be total love of God for celibates, or total sacrifice for others for married people. 

To achieve the fulfillment and happiness each of us is seeking, all of us, married or single, must put God first in our lives, others second, and ourselves third. That is not something we can do, over the long haul, by willpower alone. It requires faith – trust in a God whose love for us surpasses our wildest imagination, and whose love will never let us go. All of us, therefore, married or single, need to pray always: “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.” (Mark 9:4)