Christian polygamy

The following is an extract from the parish (St Anne's, Chertsey) newsletter for the week, based on the reading of last Sunday's gospel about marriage.  Viewed from this perspective, religious ought to revere married people - not the other way round! 

Marriage is probably the most complex of human relationships and is certainly the one on which civilisation has been founded over the centuries. It is the most natural thing in the world for men and women to leave the safety of the family home and branch out with another partner to restart the whole process of love, companionship and procreation. 

But any married couple will tell you that if a marriage is to be successful then you have to get married to several different people! This is not a plea for divorce but for accepting that people change as they mature and that if a marriage is to be successful then both partners have to adapt to the changes in each other. In a certain sense each one has to keep “remarrying” the same person as he or she changes over the years. A Christian polygamy but with only one wife and one husband! 

The young love of the courting couple is beautiful but unlikely to stand the test of time if one of them thinks that the other is going to behave in the same way when he or she is forty, sixty or eighty. If we refuse to allow each other to develop and grow then we are guilty of trying to “infantilise” the other person. We are trying to freeze them at a moment of time, the wedding day, and prevent them from ever developing and expanding the embryonic gifts and personality that God has given them. 

All of this is just another way of saying that Christian marriage is not simply a state of life but is a sacrament. A wedding takes a day but a marriage takes a lifetime. The love between two Christians is a reflection of the love that God has for each of us and that Christ has for his bride, the Church. Being married means striving at all times to be signs to the world of God’s love through the way we love our partners. And that means “remarrying” them many times before we both grow old

Transposing this reflection to my religious life, I wonder at some of my students who are doing great in their active ministry now, how they have 'grown'.  One was so lazy or laid back, but now is a great pioneer.  Another was so mischievous that I was sure he'd never be entrusted with any serious responsibility; but today is multi-tasking several delicate and demanding portfolios.  So I ask myself, would they have been the same, had they been with me all along?  Would my continued presence with them have enabled them to 'flourish' as they are now actually doing. 

On the other hand, there are those whom I've worked with, or my own batchmates and colleagues.  My present impression about them is still the same one that I had or formed of them when we were students.  They surely have 'grown'; but have I - at least with regard to my view of them?