Two ways of living and loving: beautiful, demanding, fruitful. Not in competition, but showing two aspects of God’s love. Each has much to give to, and receive from, the other.
Fr Joe Mannath SDB
“The best advice I have heard about marriage is a simple sentence my husband told me on the day of our wedding,” Annie, a wife and mother in her fifties told me. “The reception was over. We both were on the stage. My husband turned to me and said: ‘During the party, waiters came around with nice things on a plate. We simply had to stretch our hand and pick it up. Marriage is different. Let’s remember that happiness will not be served us on a plate. We both will have to work for it.’ This is so true. I fully agree with what he said.”
The same is true about celibate life. Joining a convent or seminary will not assure my happiness—or my becoming a good and loving human being.
We find wonderfully inspiring and radiantly happy persons in both walks of life.
We can find cruel, crooked and deeply unhappy people in both groups.
It is not marriage or celibacy that makes a person good or happy or holy.
Let’s have a look at both paths.
Both paths are meaningful and beautiful—if lived well.
And awful if lived badly.
Both need to face disillusionment and let-downs.
Both need the support of faith, and good human beings to lean on and learn from.
They are not in competition, nor one above the other. They are paths of life meant to be walked in love.
Here is a frank look at both.
MARRIAGE
George and Edith are a couple who inspired many. George, a teacher, would also take classes on marriage for young pre-nuptial couples. One thing he would always tell them: “Marriage is not a fifty-fifty arrangement. It has to be a hundred-hundred commitment.”
“What does that mean, George?” I ask him.
“See, Father, marriage is not like a business contract. In business, one partner can say: ‘I contribute 50 percent, and you put in the other 50. This is my job; that is yours.’ In a marriage, we cannot think like that. Each of us has to give oneself one hundred percent. There are times when I am down or weak, and Edith has to carry the whole burden. Other times, I have to take the whole hundred percent. Only this way will a marriage work.”
So true, isn’t it?
In a marriage, two persons, very different in temperament, upbringing and tastes, have to learn to love and adjust to each other the rest of their life. This 24-hour, 365-days adjustment is far from easy. It is wonderful if both adjust, forgive, see the positive, find inner strength and make huge efforts to put love above one’s ego. If not, it can really become hell. Because of the constant closeness and the intensity of feelings involved, marriage can really feel like heaven or have the tone of hell.
The Key Factor
One key word can summarize what distinguishes marriage from celibacy. That word is ATTACHMENT. A man or woman becomes deeply attached to one’s spouse and children. There is hardly any human emotion that can match the intensity of man-woman love and parental tenderness. [photo of a family with hildren]
Anna Maria said this about her husband’s sudden death: “I didn’t want to live. I thought my pain would drive me mad. Thank God a grand-child was born soon after; that prevented me from going crazy.”
Margaret, a middle-aged religious sister, shared this: “I asked my mom once, when she was already old, ‘Mom, do you remember the time a car was about to hit me, and you jumped in front of that car to save me?’ My mother replied, ‘No, I don’t. But I would be ready to do that for any of my children.”
This is what parental love does to a human being. It makes a man or woman care for another human being even more intensely than for oneself.
For Lara, a really transforming experience happened when her sister adopted a baby. The child was brought home, and family members were holding the kid. Lara said she knew that day the meaning of the expression, “dearer than life.” That is how she felt when she held the baby in her arms.
This intense attachment has strong and beautiful results. Let me list four.
Four Fruits
The first is DEDICATION. We can see this in the way a husband or wife puts the needs and comforts of the spouse above one’s own, and loving attention to children. Parents work for children every day, for years, often in the face of coldness, ingratitude and many hardships. The typical mother or father puts in longer hours to raise their children than a factory worker does for payment. In our early years, we depended on them literally twenty-four hours of the day—for everything. As a young mother once said—when I pointed out to her that she had not had her breakfast, although it was almost noon—“Being a mother means that your own needs come last.”
The second is COMMITMENT: Husbands and wives, parents and children, can count on each other—in health and in sickness, in wealth and in poverty, in youth and in old age. I remember the intense devotion with which my mother looked after my father, especially in his last illness. Committed people find an inner source of energy that physical health alone cannot explain. That is what Philo found when her husband was in semi-ICU for eight days. She sat or stood next to him for all those eight days. I asked her, “How did you manage without lying down for eight days?” She said, “I do not know. I think that, when we are in need, God gives us the strength.”
This commitment—being there for someone who can count on us with absolute certainty—gives children (and, later, grown-ups) emotional security. The strongest basis for our emotional security is the committed love and care we received at home when we were children.
The third fruit of healthy attachment is SACRIFICE. In fact, making sacrifices becomes such a “normal” part of family life that people do not speak about it. It is generally taken for granted. Gerard, by no means a soft or sentimental man, once told a group, “I am ready to expose myself to any danger without hesitation, to protect any of my children.”
A couple I used to visit and bring Holy Communion to, really impressed me. Tom was 98; Annie, 93. She would pray to God not to let her die before him, “otherwise, Tom won’t be able to look after himself.” Impressed by the way this frail 93-year-old woman looked after her still older and weaker husband, I told her one day, “Annie, I am really edified to see the way you look after Tom.” Do you know her answer? It was the summary of a good marriage. She said, “I am sure he would have done the same for me.”
A fourth result of mutual family attachment is PRAYER. Don’t we all have lovely memories of our parents praying—for the children, for sick members of the family, for special intentions? For many of us, priests and religious, the most moving examples of prayer have come from our parents and other family members. Married people pray, not as a result of novitiates or seminars or long retreats, but moved by two deep experiences—love and hardships. Love for a husband or wife, love for a sick or troubled or wayward son or daughter, makes a father and mother run to God in heart-felt prayer. So, too, hardships of life push people to the limits of their resources, and they take hold of the Lord’s hands or feet in humble prayer.
The Pitfalls
This beautiful picture, is, alas, not what most marriages are!
The following vices can creep into marriage and turn it into a dark prison, or worse. To make retention easier, I shall use four words beginning with the letter ‘A’—addictions, avarice, attachments, aggression.
Addictions: An addiction is anything that has become stronger than my good will. I feel almost powerless to resist. Thus, more marriages are ruined by alcoholism than by infidelity. For the alcoholic, the drink comes first—not spouse or children, not peace or honour. Or—to quote a true case—a man was so addicted to gambling that he would gamble away his wife’s whole salary in one evening or two. A person can get addicted to different things—to alcohol, drugs, food, gambling, shopping, TV, Internet (including pornography), gossip… The addict often does not recognize the damage being done, or does not want to admit it; but others can see it clearly. Addictions need to be faced and tackled head on. Tolerating addictions or treating them as a joke, or pretending they don’t exist will not work.
Avarice: Behind the wide-spread corruption we complain about in public life, is avarice—the greed to have more. The greedy person never feels he/she has enough. One feels an almost insatiable desire to have more—to have more money, to possess the better gadget, to own the costlier car, to live in the bigger house. Abraham, an officer known for his upright life, had this conviction, “Nobody feels he has enough money. When we earn Rs 10,000, we think we will be fine if we earned Rs 20,000. And the one earning a lakh is looking at the fellow who makes three lakhs and wanting that…The only way to be happy is to be content with what we have.”
One result of avarice is the reluctance to help or share. You may know richer persons who refuse to do charity, to lend or give money to poorer people, or even to pay just wages to their workers. Accumulating wealth is what interests them, not helping others with their money.
More fights and divisions in families are caused by money matters and disagreements on property and finances than by practically any other single factor. Love of money can also make a spouse put down the other for earning less, or measure people’s worth by the wealth they have.
One of the essential things a married couple needs to learn is to how to manage money—without either greed or neglect.
Attachments:
I said earlier that the specific trait of married and parental love is attachment. Then, why am I mentioning it among the pitfalls?
The human heart is fickle and easily misled. I can get attached to other people and get closer to them than I am to my spouse or children. Such attachments can lead to infidelity. Or I can get attached to my comfort, pleasure or preferences. Thus, a man may want his wife to cook the food that he likes, or she may insist on travelling to the places she prefers to visit. Some are very attached to their possessions, or to luxury. These attachments can easily become a millstone around our neck and pull us down to our doom.
David, known to family members as a very loving man, shared this conviction, “the toughest challenge in marriage is to overcome our ego, and to truly love our wife and children. If we are honest, we will admit that our ego is the biggest hurdle. We make ourselves the centre.”
Aggression:
Violence in families is, sadly, commoner than we would want to believe.
There are married female lecturers and secretaries and cooks coming to work, trying to hide the marks left by the beating received from the husband. Wife-beating occurs in more homes than we think.
Verbal aggression is even more prevalent. As a marriage counsellor half-humorously put it, “In the first year, he speaks, and she listens; in the second year, she speaks, and he listens; in the third year, both speak (shout!), and the neighbours listen!”
Angry words and bouts of silence are often the fruit of misunderstandings, lack of communication, or minor hurts which are not addressed and handled. Often, accumulated irritations can lead to a huge and loud flare-up.
Thus, an over-worked wife or mother, who feels ignored and taken for granted, can reach the end of her tether, and suddenly burst out in anger, or burst into bitter tears, or become severely depressed.
Or a man may take out on his wife and children the anger he has accumulated at work, where he cannot shout back at his boss.
Or shouting can be a way of avoiding a real discussion of issues.
CELIBATE LIFE
A much misunderstood call.
The heart of celibate life is not attachment to any human being, or to one’s religious order or diocese.
If there is a core attachment at all, it is to God’s will.
Celibacy involves saying ‘No’ to two of life’s deepest, most meaningful and most beautiful experiences—spousal love and parenthood. It would be crazy to give up these two core commitments—unless one has very good reasons for it.
Doing social service, or teaching, or medical work is no reason for choosing celibacy—or for coaxing others to be celibate.
Celibacy, to be meaningful and happy, is based on a simple and deep awareness: This is where God wants me; my heart has found what it is looking for. This is the best way for me to express the love deep in my heart, in a way that is true to myself. So, it is the best choice I can make.
Clara, a friend about whom I have written elsewhere, is a good case in point. Coming from a very wealthy family, and employed, and with a loving fiancé whom she was planning to marry, she experienced this “other call.” She told her boy friend, who did not understand it. She went to a convent to see for herself what religious life was, stayed for a few days, found it too hard, and went back home. She reflected for a week, and found, “Yes, I have much at home; but I do not need these things to be happy. Jesus Christ is enough for me.” She went back to the convent, and joined. Now, more than thirty-years later, she says, “I have never lost the joy of my vocation.”
I have met such celibates—sisters, brothers, priests—in different parts of the world. They are not frightened little children from over-protected families or afraid of speaking their mind in front of their superiors. They are confident, HAPPY women and men who have given themselves to a different way of loving—as real as a marriage or parental commitment, but different in expression, and hard to understand for those who do not share the same spiritual vision.
I put “happy” in capitals, because genuine celibates (like truly loving married couples) are deeply happy. They were not pushed into this by overly controlling “vocation promoters” or sent off from unhappy families. They made a choice based on the awareness of responding to a Love. This Love is true and faithful, and sustains the celibate on his or her inner and outer journeys.
Celibacy is a happy choice on four conditions—that it is based on the life and teachings of Jesus, sustained by meaningful personal prayer, leading to a loving and compassionate heart, and expressed in service.
The world, or the church, does not need many celibates. What it needs are happy and inspiring celibates, about whom the Catholic community and the rest of the world can say: “They live as Jesus lived and taught. Just seeing them helps me to become a better person, and closer to God.”
It is a well-known fact that celibate men and women have done and still do an amazing amount of inspiring service. Here is what a non-Catholic journalist writes in The New York Times:
“I am awed that so many of the selfless people serving the world’s neediest are lowly nuns and priests…overwhelmingly it’s at the grass roots that I find the great soul of the Catholic Church.
“I met Father Michael …To keep his schools alive, he persevered through civil war, imprisonment and beatings, and a smorgasbord of disease… Father Michael may be the worst-dressed priest I’ve ever seen — and the noblest…
“I met Cathy Arata, a nun from New Jersey who spent years working with battered women in Appalachia. Then she moved to El Salvador during the brutal civil war there, putting her life on the line to protect peasants. Two years ago, she came here on behalf of a terrific Catholic project called ‘Solidarity With Southern Sudan.’
“There are so many more like them. There’s Father Mario Falconi, an Italian priest who refused to leave Rwanda during the genocide and bravely saved 3,000 people from being massacred. There’s Father Mario Benedetti, a 72-year-old Italian priest based in Congo who fled with his congregation when their town was attacked by a brutal militia. Now Father Mario lives side by side with his Congolese congregants in the squalor of a refugee camp in southern Sudan, struggling to get schooling for their children.
“It’s because of brave souls like these that I honor the Catholic Church.” (Nicholas Kristof, “Who Can Mock This Church?” The New York Times, May 1, 2010.)
And there are so many other consecrated priests and religious who, by living the Gospel of Jesus in very selfless and practical ways, walk beside the poor and needy and love them into life. Many of us, for example, remember Sister Nirmala working among leprosy patients with so much love and evident joy.
Or Fr P. P. Louis SDB, about whom the communist party leader said, “That Father had no ego; his only concern was the good of the people.”
Or a parish priest I know who donated his kidney to save a man he was not related to.
Or sisters, brothers and priests volunteering to serve in the poorest parts of the world or in the poorest regions of our country.
Or a bishop telling us why he was not afraid staying in a violent setting where even the police were scared to enter, “I am ready to die for my people.”
Or religious and priests speaking up for the rights of the poor, and paying a heavy price for it.
Or Pope Francis, who radiates such evident love and goodness. No wonder The Washington Post wrote about him, “We like to listen to this Pope, because he speaks like Jesus, acts like Jesus, and is like Jesus.”
While the inspiring service provided by celibate women and men is undeniable, the core reason for celibacy is not social service. Its meaning can only be understood by someone who has heard the same inner Voice—the voice of God’s Spirit in the depth of their hearts.
Celibacy is neither a way of claiming to be superior to married persons, nor a way of providing hands for work. Hardly any work done in the church—in schools, hospitals, social ministries, retreat centres, media platforms—needs celibacy.
Much of the so-called “vocation promotion” going on in India seems to be attempts to find hands for work—staff for our institutions, partly resulting from our unwillingness to involve laity in administration as equals or as leaders.
Someone “roped in” to do work, may not have his/her heart in the right place. Such a person may be a “reluctant celibate,” who feels more caught or trapped in a structure, rather than called in love, to respond to a Love. A sign of reluctant celibacy (or reluctant anything) is that the person will not be happy. Unhappy people will also try to cover up the inner emptiness through power games, quest for positions and money, love of comfort and mediocrity. This, too, unfortunately, is a part of the reality of the church. Celibacy, chosen for the wrong reasons can lead people to direct their attention mostly to the potted plants, the cat or the gold fish. They grow into sour lemons instead of radiating the love of Jesus and his Gospel to those with whom they live and to all they encounter in their ministry.
Danger
The greatest danger in celibacy is not addictions or violence. The real danger is to live an unloving life and take it as normal. I may live under the same roof with others, go to the same chapel, share the same meals, but not really care for anyone. This can, and does, happen to a number of religious and priests. (Married couples say that the same danger is great and frequent in family life as well.)
The second danger is to make the self the centre. Since I have no children of my own to care for, nor an aged mother to look after, I may become centred on my own comfort and pleasure. My food, my sleep, my comforts and my conveniences may come first for me.
Thirdly, I may not be committed to the mission, but follow my own selfish ambitions and pursue power and money.
In fact, Sister Melanie Svoboda, an American novice mistress and writer, says that she used to warn her novices of two dangers in celibacy—that of going too far in relationships, and that of not going deep enough into relationships. The first, she says, will cause scandal, but is rare. This is not the greatest danger in celibacy. The real danger, Svoboda insists, is the second—that of living next to people without really relating. Many of us, celibates, disappoint and hurt people, not through sexual misbehavior, but through our unloving and uncaring ways. Celibacy then becomes dry, unhappy, uninspiring bachelorhood or spinsterhood. It will do more harm than good.
Helps for a Happy Celibate Life
This would be a whole book by itself. I have written more about it elsewhere. Here, let me list five absolutely essential helps:
Personal and community prayer.
Meaningful relationships.
Confidential help (counselling, spiritual direction and confession)
Learning to face solitude creatively.
Taking responsibility for one’s happiness and for the person one becomes.
May I say something about the first of these, namely, prayer?
I said earlier that many married people are very prayerful and God-centred. Then why this special insistence on prayer for celibates?
The reason lies in the difference between these two commitments (marriage and celibacy):
Marriage, strictly speaking, does not require any faith commitment. In fact, men and women came together and formed families and raised children even before any organized religion existed. People marry and have families even if they do not practice any religion. What marriage requires is that this man and this woman want to live together, love one another into life, have children and bring them up.
Celibacy is very different. Except for a faith vision that makes this choice meaningful, why say “No” to marriage and parenthood, or propose celibacy to others? I have no right to deprive a young person of spousal love and parental life just to get some work done, e.g., teaching in a religious school. (There are people who do not marry, and are positively engaged in society, e.g., Professor Abdul Kalam; this is not the Catholic meaning of celibacy.) What unites me and the other religious in my community is not sameness of culture or ideas or personal fondness, but our commitment to God. What makes me obey my superior is not that he is smarter, but my promise to God to do so. Without this faith vision, religious life has no basis to stand on.
Only one vocation
The Catholic Church is a very pro-marriage and pro-parenthood institution. It does not glorify bachelorhood or spinsterhood.
Celibacy is different. It is a well-discerned response of the heart to what one perceives as an inner call from God. One of the surest signs that there is such a call is a life lived out in JOY and LOVE.
This is true of both celibacy and marriage.
There is really only ONE VOCATION in the church—the call to holiness, the call to live as Jesus lived and taught. The settings differ, but that is a secondary matter. The call is the same—from the same Love, and leading to a life of love in imitation of what Jesus lived and taught.
To walk this path of life, we celibates and married people have much to learn from each other. In fact, only a man who would have made a good husband and father will be a good priest or brother. Only a woman would have been a good wife and mother can be a good nun. The same qualities are needed in both settings.
Both paths are called to find the “joy of love,” as the Pope’s recent encyclical reminds us. Finding that joy takes faith, effort, sacrifice and generous self-gift in love. As any happy married person or celibate will agree, the path is not easy, but it is worth walking on it in love. On both paths, we are sustained moment by moment by the same all-powerful Love. That Love called us into being. The same Love knows best where and how our hearts find fullness and rest. Whether married or celibate, the longings of our heart are for the Infinite; God alone can slake that thirst.
As Susan, married to Stephen, said about her marriage, “Stephen is not my first love. My first love is the Love that created me, sustains me every day, and meets me every moment.”
In both marriage and celibacy, the FIRST LOVE is the same. It is up to each of us to decide whether marriage or consecrated celibacy is our way of responding most authentically to that First Love.
– Fr Joe Mannath SDB
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