Husbands and wives are called to imitate Christ's love

By Archbishop Charles Chaput

(This is the second in a three-part series on marriage preparation.)

Those charged with the task of preparing engaged couples for marriage must see themselves as missionaries, and as missionaries must have what I call a missionary realism. They must be willing to proclaim the full truth of conjugal love without concealing the radical element of the cross.

Those who do this faithfully, as Christ himself forewarned, should expect to be resisted. Expect to be persecuted. Expect to be humiliated.

The good news is not a message of "niceness." It is a radical message of new life in Christ through death to self, and, sadly, many engaged couples do not want to hear it. Of course we must be sensitive to where they are coming from, and learn how to lead them patiently towards the fullness of the truth. But a genuine concern for their future marriage can never allow us to compromise what is true, or to refuse to teach them the full truth of how radical the demands of love are. Engaged couples have a right to hear the full truth. We have the duty to proclaim it.

Too often today, religious affiliation is just a veneer which covers up a practical unbelief. Many of today's engaged couples have been educated in the Church, and they may think they know everything about her, but they really know nothing at all.

For many Americans who call themselves Christians, Jesus' words—"I am the way, the truth, and the life"—have become little more than appealing, but obscure, poetry. Our culture has begun to lose a sense of God, a sense of objective truth, a sense of absolute right and wrong. This has had a painful impact on marriages and families. At the heart of this moral relativism lies a misunderstanding of freedom. The truth is what makes us free, and Jesus is the truth! If a husband and wife have lost a sense of truth, they no longer have a way of ordering their choices according to what is truly good, according to what is truly loving. Love is not arbitrary. Love is revealed in following the truth, in following Jesus Christ.

In Galatians 5:1, Paul reminds us that, "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery."

What does true freedom look like?

We are not to use our freedom to serve ourselves, but to serve others in imitation of Christ. Real freedom is to be free from self-interest, from sin, so as to choose what is right, good, true, and beautiful—in other words, so as to choose to love. This is the truth of freedom and love to which Paul calls husbands and wives in Ephesians 5: " . . . be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. . . . Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her."

Ironically, this Scripture is sometimes misrepresented as encouraging a type of "serfdom," particularly for the wife. But this is clearly not Paul's message. He is calling husbands and wives to the true freedom of serving one another in imitation of Christ.

Freedom is not license. Freedom is not imposing my will and desires on reality. Freedom is to accept the truth, and to live according to it.

Freedom is " . . . to walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us." And, let us remember, it is a walk that leads to the cross. We need to take that walk ourselves, and model it to the couples we prepare for marriage.