“…for a common life is above all things natural to the female and to the male.”
Aristotle, Oeconomica
Even as marriage between a man and a woman is undermined, ridiculed, or simply set aside, we naturally feel the power and poignancy of a man proposing to a woman. This particular form of human interaction holds an almost limitless interest for us. We want to hear the whole story, even when we already know how it turns out in the end.
Surely this is because in the proposal so much of that amazing reality called marriage is implied, foreshadowed and already embodied.
A man proposes to a woman. He is in love, and through the eyes of his love he starts to envision an utterly unique reality: life together in marriage. He senses that it is his to step forward and initiate it. He needs to know what he wants—for himself and for her—and how to go about achieving or at least starting to achieve it.
But one of the most remarkable things is just how little he actually comprehends when he proposes. How can it be that such a rich and solemn binding can be initiated by one in many ways unprepared to enact it? How can his proposal be worthy of a yes?
For sure, he must demonstrate some requisite things, such as an appropriate level of maturity and other-centeredness, not to mention a certain material readiness. He needs to be the kind of man who is ready to learn what he doesn’t even know he needs to learn.
At the same time, a central reason this proposal is so worth considering, is in the astounding natural reality of marriage itself.
The full reality of what he is proposed and (might be) received will long and to some extent always exceed the couple’s comprehension. What they are agreeing to do together has an objective structure outside of their choosing. It is a structure that will, if they let it, challenge them and stretch them to the point of breaking. Yet it also has the amazing power to reward them, and many of their loved ones too(!), by being the vehicle and context for their good intentions and their yet unformed and untested generosity to come to fruition. Their fidelity to one another and to a rich natural plan that continues to unfold itself before their eyes yields fruits that never could have been imagined, much less planned by these two lovers, even in their wildest hopes and dreams. Here is the catalyst and context to find their truest selves.
Marriage, and the consequent household, is as much something we continue to discover as it is something we make happen.
“Will you marry me?” What an incomparable invitation! -–an invitation to a road at once well-worn and likewise full of what must remain surprises until we get there. So while the reality itself remains surprising, perhaps we should not be surprised at this: once again, and here especially, the natural plan is astoundingly good. If we are but willing to see.
Next week: When a Woman Says Yes
Husband, father, and professor of Philosophy. LifeCraft springs from one conviction: there is an ancient wisdom about how to live the good life in our homes, with our families; and it is worth our time to hearken to it. Let’s rediscover it together. Learn more.
“ But one of the most remarkable things is just how little he actually comprehends when he proposes. How can it be that such a rich and solemn binding can be initiated by one in many ways unprepared to enact it? How can his proposal be worthy of a yes?”
I find this part rather amusing. My husband proposed to me in the parking lot at his college when I was dropping him off after we had spent the day with all his family celebrating Memorial Day. He had no intention of doing so that day. He hadn’t even considered buying a ring yet. I of course said yes, hugged and kissed him and got back in the car to drive the 2-1/2 hours back home to where I was in college. In June, we will celebrate 22 years and it just keeps getting better. Of course that awkward proposal only built upon our awkward first in person meeting at a casino where we sat along side each other and he taught me how to play craps, but we were both too shy to actually introduce ourselves to each other since we had met online and had only seen pictures of one another. Things are a little less awkward these days. ????
What a sweet story!
I absolutely love it. How delightful it is to look back at such beginnings…
I love how Pope Paul VI helps us to see marriage with the eyes of faith in Humanae Vitae:
“Conjugal love reveals its true nature and nobility when it is considered in its supreme origin, God, who is love,“the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.”
Marriage is not, then, the effect of chance or the product of evolution of unconscious natural forces; it is the wise institution of the Creator to realize in mankind His design of love. By means of the reciprocal personal gift of self, proper and exclusive to them, husband and wife tend towards the communion of their beings in view of mutual personal perfection, to collaborate with God in the generation and education of new lives.
For baptized persons, moreover, marriage invests the dignity of a sacramental sign of grace, inasmuch as it represents the union of Christ and of the Church.”
Marriage is a special way that God reveals Himself to the world, through the communion of love that is an icon of His own Triune nature.
Marriage as an icon–this is a very beautiful notion indeed!
Thank you for the eschatological instruction on the revealing ἀποκάλυψις, Dr. Cuddeback.
“Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” -from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s “Airman’s Odyssey”
Like the Saint-Exupery quote!
I’ve seen it re-used in by contemporary poets at least three times as an allusion in poems.
The original context of the quote refers to philios, but the poets have tended to “borrow” it in the sense of eros. This borrowing is not to fault their originality, as I’m sure you know. All art is mimetic as both Plato and Aristotle have expressed. Thus we have this oft repeated quote from T. S. Eliot’s essay “Philip Massinger:”
“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.”
Thank Kevin Knight over at New Advent for keeping us aware of your new posts!
“There is nothing new under the Sun.” Qoheleth (hidden in the old)
“What is this new teaching?” Stoics and Epicureans at the Areopagus (revealed in the new)
After 32 years of marriage and children and grandchildren, the day to day fusion of life with my wife is absolutely transcendant.
God grant that it continue to grow, Christian.