It Takes a Village...To Make a Marriage...Forever

Your holy marriage is not your own private property: it belongs to God, it belongs to the Church, and it is an integral part of the larger society: the neighborhood, the town, the state. Therefore, you cannot manipulate it or dispose of it at will. This was the Holy Father's message to an engaged African couple from Madagascar in the same Milan interview cited above. It is interesting that the Holy Father speaks of the positive aspects of traditional arranged marriages. In those marriages it was the religious and social responsibility of the spouses to learn to love each other, and that was possible because love is an act of the will. That is why small towns and rural areas throughout the world, even today, have very low divorce rates. The commitment is all encompassing. It entails every aspect of one's religious and social life, it is not based merely on the passing infatuation of two individuals. Read the relevant passage below.

...You spoke of different types of marriage: we know the “traditional marriage” (mariage coutumier) of Africa and western marriage. In Europe too, to tell the truth, until the 1800s, a different model of marriage was dominant: often the marriage was in reality a contract between clans in which the aim was to preserve the clan, hoping to adapt the one to the other. This is also how it was in part where I come from. I remember that it was still very much like this in a small town where I went to school. But then, beginning in the 1800s, there was the emancipation of the individual, personal freedom, and marriage was no longer based on the will of others but on personal choice; first a couple fell in love, then they got engaged and then came marriage. At that time we were all convinced that this was the only correct model of marriage and that love alone guaranteed the “forever,” because love is absolute, it wants everything and therefore also the whole of time: it is “forever.” Unfortunately, the reality was not thus: we see that falling love is beautiful, but perhaps it is not always perpetual, just as sentiment is not: it does not remain forever. So, we see that the passage from falling in love to engagement and then to marriage requires different decisions, different interior experiences. As I said, this sentiment of love is beautiful, but it must be purified, it must follow a path of discernment, that is, it must enter into the reason and will; reason, sentiment and will must join together. In the Rite of Matrimony the Church does not say: “Are you in love?” but “Do you will?” (Vuoi?), “Are you decided?” (Sei deciso?) In other words, falling in love must become true love involving the will and reason on a journey, which is that of engagement, of purification, of greater depth, so that truly the whole person, with all of his capacities, with the discernment of reason, the power of the will, says: “Yes, this is my life.” I think often of the marriage at Cana. The first wine is delicious: this is falling in love. But it does not go all the way: a second wine must come, that is, it must ferment and grow, mature. A definitive love that really becomes a “second wine” is more beautiful, better than the first wine. And this is what we must seek. And here it is also important that the “I” is not isolated, I and you, but that they community of the parish, the Church, friends be involved too. These things – the proper personalization, communion of life with others, with families that support each other – are very important and only in this way, in this involvement of the community, of friends, of the Church, of faith, of God himself, can there grow a wine that lasts forever.