Today I saw the marriage between two people who know the meaning of community: loving people. Every law, rule, and idea is in service to God, the ultimate person, and then to His children, humankind. Loving friendships between people are fundamental to all the good that we do.
There is only one relationship where making love makes life: the love of a man and woman. There is only one relationship where making life is sanctioned: the love of a man and a woman before God. The miracle of marriage is that it is a bloodless martyrdom in willing to die for the beloved, but where the beloved refuses. The beloved gives all and in the mutuality, martyrdom, death to self, becomes glorification: the real self-actualization.
When I saw this couple, people I have loved for years, get married today, I knew they understood because they have three essential qualities.
They are loyal.
Both will give up position for people. You cannot motivate them with money and power, but they will do anything for friendship. Both were surrounded by family and friends from decades ago. Never trust a person who cannot maintain relationships, but join forces with any man or woman who is true to their friends.
We are in a disloyal age: you can “unfriend,” layoff, repulse with a click of a button. This is not love, because love requires loyalty and loyalty produces romance. Why? Romance requires drama, but some kinds of drama are incompatible with love. Loyalty in the hard times is the drama of romance: the bride and groom will love each other for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.
They are candid.
Want to know what they think? You can read it on their faces, but they will tell you in the next moment. They are not passive aggressive, spinning superficial niceness into webs that will trap those they dislike. Instead, they will laugh, cry, confront, and tell the truth. That they will endure everything and remain together is a given, so they can risk the truth.
Love tells the truth, but does it in a context where the relationship is not on the line. As a result, the truth sets free and does not destroy. Loyal people abide in love whether the love is a friendship or a marriage. Candor with loyalty produces a sense of abiding love and this allows the truth to set a person free. Candor without loyalty is too fearful for love to survive. Love without candor becomes hidden and false.
They are joyful.
If you know a friend will stay and that they will tell you the truth, joy is possible. I saw joy tonight in the deep, abiding, truthful love of two wonderful people. Intense romance, absolute romance begins in need, produces a loyalty that endures even death, and culminates in Paradise when God rewards loyal love with eternity.
God, help me to follow their example for as long as I live.
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