Fr. Barron comments on Marriage and Relationships

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Fr. Robert Barron comments on Marriage and Relationships

When the great greek philosopher Aristotle spoke of the transcendent third here's what he meant:

He meant that a friendship will endure only in the measure that if the two friends fall in love no so much with each other but together with a transcendent third.

With some good that lies beyond the two of them. Think of two friends who together love their country. Who together love the truth. Who together love beauty, and it may be in films of books or whatever it is.

They move out of simply a shared egotism. Because Aristotle said that a friendship will devovle into that unless some transcendant good pulls the friends outside of themselves, and the irony is, the paradox is, that it is that transcendent third kind of frienship that will actually last.

If two friends or two lovers simply fall in love with each other in time that relationship will devolve.

I think that's one of the keenest insights in the history of philosophy when it comes to friendship and relationship.

I suggest that the catholic liturgy senses much the same thing when it has this prayer, "Glory to God in the highest and peace to his people on earth."

That's a formula for joy, for peace, for success.

When God is given glory in the highest, then peace obtains among us. When together we fall in love with a transcendant good, namely the good of God, then we tend to have peaceful relationships.

The trouble, again, is if we're simply trying to establish relationships among ourselves they will tend to devolve into bickering and ultimately into division.

Glory to God in the highest, then peace will break out among us.

I want to bring this down to earth a little bit, from Aristotle and the liturgy to something very pragmatic.

Years ago, when I was doing full time parish work, I'd work with engaged couples. Young people would come to the parish and they were preparing for marriage in the catholic church.

I'd get to know them, we'd chat, and then we'd move into more serious conversation. I would ask them, eventually, some version of: "Why do you two want to get married in church?"

"You can get married by the justice of peace, you can get married in the civil context."

"But why do you want, specifically, to be married in the catholic church?"

They would have different answers but usually they would come up with some version of, "Well because we love each other."

I would smile, typically, and I would say, "Well that's great I'm delighted you love each other!

But that's not a good reason to get married in the catholic church. If you love each other you could announce that before the judge, you could celebrate that out in the forest. That's a good thing but it's not a good enough reason to be married in the catholic church."

They would look at me puzzled and I would invoke this very principle saying, "To get married in the catholic church, that is to say before God, what you're saying is:

We've discerned that together we are in love with God and we've discerned that God, for his purposes, has drawn us together."

It's not just the two of us met, the two of us like each other, or the two of us fell in love.

It's something stranger and more mysterious than that.

It is that God has, for his purposes, drawn us together so that we might find our salvation in each other's presence and that together we may fulfill a common mission.

When you have discerned that, I would say, then you're ready to stand at the altar before God and His people and say, "Lord we want to be married in your presence."

That's falling in love with a transcendent third in the fullest sense.

This is why Fulton J. Sheen many years ago wrote a book called "Three to get Married"

It's the same idea he knew Aristotle too. It's not just the two people, that's not enough. It's not just the husband and wife who love each other.

There has to be a third involved, namely God.

Together we fall in love with God. Together we surrender to God's purposes.

Now we're ready for a christian marriage.

All the ways that we see relationships and we see frienship always keep this Aristotelean principle in mind and I think you'll walk a much happier path.

If we're simply looking for love, period, that won't be enough. You'll be looking for love in all the wrong places.

What we should be looking for is God's will, God's pupose, and then find somebody who is as in love with that purpose as you are.

No you've found someone to love.

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