The Mystery of Marriage

At the dawn of Christianity when new converts, mainly Jews, asked about the Messiah whom they had not met in person, they were introduced to him, not just by word of mouth  but through a new method of prayer called meditation. This was one of the main reasons why Mathew, Mark, and  Luke wrote down their recollections in the  Gospels so that new converts could meet their Messiah in person in their prayer life, as they themselves had met him while he was on earth  However, when many years later St John wrote his Gospel at the end of the first century, there was a different tone and texture, a different feel and even a different form that set him apart from the other three Gospel writers. Truth to tell,  he was writing to include new types of converts, who were not predominantly of Jewish origin. Although he was still writing to introduce his readers to the Christ who once lived in history, he was also introducing them to the Risen Christ who now lives in Majesty as their contemporary Lord and Saviour. And in doing this his Gospel was not only complementary to the other Gospels but written in a special way for us.

St John’s Gospel
It not only introduces us to the Christ of history but explains how we can enter into him now as the Lord of History as our Glorified Saviour. While he was on earth Christ was a sacrament of  God’s infinite love for his followers who could see, touch, listen to him, love him, and be loved by him. After his Ascension into heaven, he was still a sacrament of God’s infinite love even though his followers could no longer see, touch, or listen to him, because they could still be loved by him, experience his love for them,  and love him in return. Early Christianity was dominated by his risen presence, the ultimate sacrament of God’s Infinite loving. What came to be called the sacraments in the early Church were the actions of Christ, the supreme sacrament of God’s love pouring out upon all believers at key moments in their lives here on earth, as they were making their way to the destiny that God’s love had prepared for them in heaven. In his unique Gospel St John shows his readers how Christ our ever contemporary Lord and Saviour acts here and now through the Sacraments of his Church, even more effectively than he did before his death on the cross. Let me explain more precisely what I mean.

When Moses struck the rock in the desert, the water that poured out saved the lives of God’s people and enabled them to journey on to the promised land. As this historical event was being celebrated many years later at the feast of the Tabernacles, Jesus, the new Moses, promised a new outpouring of water in the near future (John 7:37-39). The Rock of Ages would become the source of this new outpouring of supernatural life at Baptism and then continue to sustain and support his people on their way to the new promised land.  This water was nothing other than The Holy Spirit who would be poured out onto and into all who would receive it on the first Pentecost Day and on every subsequent day when those who were ready, prepared and ever-willing would be able to receive it. Other sacraments were promised in St John’s Gospel to continually enable Christ’s love to be with them always, as he promised to the consummation of the world.  That is why although he may tell us of the same events as the other Gospel writers, he tells them in a new and different way. He does this to show how they can both take us up into the Christ who rose again on the first Easter Day,  and how he can continually sustain us on every subsequent day with the Love he poured out on the first Pentecost day through the new sacraments.

The Bread of Life
The story of the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand is a case in point. That is why, although it was indeed a  miracle, he calls it a sign, or a sacrament if you will, of something deeper and not quite understood at the time. It was something that  St John brings to the attention of his readers after he himself has been inspired to see more clearly what was not quite understood before. It was a sign that Christ had not just come to feed five thousand hungry people who had forgotten to bring enough provisions with them at a particular date and time in history, it was much more. It was a prophetic sign too that to the end of time he would continue to feed all in need of the spiritual food that they needed with the Bread of Life, which was nothing other than himself. That is why, after this miracle or sign, St John adds the famous discourse on ‘The Bread of life’ lest anyone should fail to understand the profound spiritual meaning of this event that was not explained by the other Gospel writers.   In other words, the One into whose life and love we have been drawn up and into at Baptism is continually nourishing and sustaining us,  for he is the Bread of Life.

The Marriage Feast of Cana
Now, and more to the point let me turn to another sacrament that St John singled out for special attention at the very beginning of Christ’s public ministry. When he tells the story of Christ going to the Marriage Feast at Cana he does not say that the turning of water into wine was a miracle but rather a sign or a sacrament.  It is another prophetic sign that what was a ‘sacrament’ in the Old Testament would be an even greater sign in the New Testament. Because it would be a sacramental sign of how the married love that would be the vital life-giving creative force of the fundamental community in the Kingdom of love, would be created and endlessly recreated. Just as the family had been the heart and centre of God’s plan in the Old Testament, it would be the heart and centre of his plan in the New Testament. But now in the New Testament, the love that would sustain those who would become the living, breathing building blocks of his Kingdom of love, would not be the ‘water’ that symbolised love in the Old Kingdom it would be something else. It would in future be the new ‘wine’ that symbolised the divine love that Christ promised he would share with them in the New Kingdom.

The Importance of the Family
This new wine would be nothing other than the life and love that had bonded him to his Father from all eternity, poured out in such a way that it would draw them up and into his mystical body at baptism. Then it would be poured out onto and into them in a unique way at the sacrament of marriage. At this sacrament, each of the ministers of this great sacrament would be filled with and inspired by, the Christ-given love that would not only fill them on their wedding day but on every subsequent day, as long as they were open to receive it. Then the water of human love would be continually superseded by a human love now suffused and surcharged with the divine love that Christ likened to the new wine that he will share with all in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Now perhaps it can be seen how important the family was in early Christianity. It was the crèche where those whom they called ‘the saints’  were born and brought up who would go out to proclaim the Good News of God’s love to the world, not so much by what they said, but because they were the living embodiment of that love,  Their very presence would speak far more powerfully than words. When, like St Paul, they could say that now it was Christ and his love that lived in them, then who could resist the mystical magnetic pull to become one of them?

The Example of my Parents
It is for this reason that I have dedicated my final book to my parents because it was from their mutually divinely inspired loving that overflowed onto me that gave me the inner security that only love can bring. It is this inner security that enabled me to undertake and persevere in a spiritual journey that would have been impossible without it. It was this self-same quality of love that overflowed into the families of the first Christians that, amongst other things, enabled them too, to persevere in the profound mystical purification that brought Christ to birth again in them which they were in their turn able to introduce to others.

When my mother died my Father spoke to me for the first time about his love for my mother which reached its height not at the beginning but at the end of their life together. This peak had been reached after a lifetime that perfectly parallels the mystical journey that I have been writing about but never fully understood until I came to understand it from the love that my parents had experienced over a lifetime of married self- sacrificial loving.  The love that reached its peak in the last few years of their life together had finally homed itself permanently within them, not in spite of, but because of, many years of travelling together in what St John of the Cross would call ‘The Dark Night of the Soul’. In this Mystical journey when all but ecstatic joy would alternate with darkness and grief,  the perfect love to which they were being led was being formed within them.

This would only be brought to completion thanks to the divine loving that was infused into them on their wedding day and on every subsequent day that they were open and ready to receive it. I do not just mean in their prayer life but in the selfless self-sacrificial loving that they showed to one another day after day despite ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ that they had to endure in the grit and grind of daily living. If they had only known it at the time instead of in hindsight, they would have seen that it was the way in which they bore the ‘whips and scorns of time’  that enabled their unflinching love to make them at all times open to receive the divine loving that continued to bond them together as one.

If I had ever told them that they were mystics they would have laughed at me. However, selfless other-considering loving is not a laughing matter, but it does lead to joy, the true joy that Christ himself said animated him and would animate those who would follow him by taking up their daily cross. This daily Cross that the first Christians called ‘white martyrdom’  involved learning the perfect loving that enables a person to love and serve him in this life and eternal unalloyed happiness in the next.

David Torkington’s books can be found on his website https://www.davidtorkington.com/publications/   His latest book, The Primacy of Loving – The Spirituality of the Heart, will be released in December 2022 but pre-publication copies will be available through his website.