December 02, 2022
A Chaplain’s Thoughts: On Catholic marriage
By Rev. James F. Quigley, O.P. ’60
Associate Chaplain, National Alumni Association
Getting Married?
Why bother? It seems a good number of young people don’t. The number of weddings in the Catholic Church has dropped. What is going on?
I think as a priest for some 57 years that I have officially witnessed more than 300 sacramental Catholic weddings. A large number of them were for former Providence College students and alumni. They were celebrated mostly in churches, chapels, a few in a non-denominational hall. Almost all were Catholic sacraments of marriage, i.e., a marriage between two baptized persons. What is going on in a sacrament of marriage? It is of course not simply a civil ceremony. It’s more than that for people of faith.
In the church of St. Peter in Chains in Rome there is a marvelous statue of Moses carved by Michelangelo for the tomb of Pope Julius II. A popular legend has it that when the artist finished, he tapped the toe of the statue and said, “Speak!” When asked how he had done such a work he supposedly responded by saying that he merely chipped the extra marble away and the statue emerged. Perhaps that statue can serve as a metaphor for the sacrament of matrimony. The art of marriage shapes, forms, reveals the beauty of each person, husband and wife. It chips away over time what shouldn’t be there, and then together wife and husband become a great work of art, a witness to a generous, self-sacrificing, tender, caring, mutual love. Is that kind of love realistic? You bet it is. I’ve seen it. Think of couples who in good times and bad have stuck with it, become great souled persons precisely because of the love they share with each other. Such love is ultimately possible with the help of God, with God’s grace.
Thomas Aquinas defines love as doing good to another. A married couple in the sacrament of matrimony promises to spend the rest of their lives promoting the other’s physical, psychological, social, spiritual good. That kind of love is tough, it is hard work. You marry every day. The secret to a holy, happy married life is not complicated. It is simply a love which is more concerned with the happiness of the other; a love which is open to the other’s needs; a love which is happy to be of service, which is able to understand, to forgive; a love which allows each see how much God loves them. To love like this, of course, you have to become an artist. That kind of marriage is holy, spiritual, religious, a sacrament. Some Catholics have for a number of reasons chosen to cohabitate or marry outside the Church, to skip the sacrament of matrimony. If at any time such a couple have second thoughts and want to religiously, sacramentally marry in the Catholic Church, even after a number of happy years, I encourage them to speak to an informed person in marriage ministry, e.g., a priest, a deacon, someone involved in church ministry, to see how receive the sacrament. And I still pray for all those couples I knew and celebrated with over the years. It was a privilege.
