We talk about love being a sacrament, but so often we miss the practical aspects of that sacramental life. We often, and only, see it as a sacrament in terms of the unity of man and woman. We get all excited in speaking of this mystical union which we do not understand. But, we miss the practical side of the sacrament. There is practical sacramental grace that is given to us as we live out our life in marriage. The comic above, from Calvin and Hobbes, is a perfect reflection of how the grace that is given in and through the sacrament of marriage issues out into changed practical behavior.
You see, the goal of every sacrament is to minister God’s grace to us, whether it is in receiving his Body and Blood, whether it is in receiving new life and being made regenerate, whether it is in receiving forgiveness and the strength to go back and face the world anew, or whether it is in receiving the grace to be able to live out the life to which marriage calls us. The point of every sacrament is to allow us to grow more and more into Jesus’ likeness, in living out a Christ-centered lifestyle. And, nowhere is there a rougher school than the school of parenthood. With rare exceptions, a set of parents are a set of young persons who have no experience in raising another human being so that they may become productive adults. Worse, the people they are raising up also have no idea how to behave like a productive adult. They do not even know how to keep from fouling themselves, at first. In the midst of all this, parents are trying to learn what they are having to teach. Many parents are happy if they can simply keep a couple of steps ahead of their oldest child.
Many times, those children whom you love are the very ones that threaten to drive you insane. Many is the parent who has gone to bed at night with the simple happiness of knowing that they allowed their child to live and see one more sunrise. And, while that appears to be a joke, almost every parent knows that at some time during their child’s life they have come all too close to doing or saying something that would be very harmful to their child. It is at those points that the grace of the Lord so often comes through, even using that experience as a way of showing a married person those areas where they need to change.
Marriage with children helps parents to grow more and more into the likeness of Jesus. But, it is one of the hardest roads to theosis that there is. We are between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day right now. Make sure to keep the parents that you know in your prayers, that God may give them the grace they need to grow more and more into the likeness of Christ.
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