You know how they say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Well, I’m that old dog, so don’t even try.
However, when it comes to marriage, I still don’t know what I’m doing. Every day there’s a new surprise or a new challenge. As they say, “The hits just keep on coming…” My wife Sandy agrees. (At least I hope she does.)
Nevertheless, I had a chance to learn some new “tricks” recently when I attended the Wedding Jubilarian Mass that Bishop Frank Caggiano celebrated for 60 couples, who had 25 to 69 years of marriage. He told them they were powers of example “in a society that considers marriage a contract rather than a covenant.”
Whenever I ask people what their secret is to a long marriage, I take it. That day I talked to 12 couples, who said you need patience, understanding, love, prayer and a commitment to God, not to mention the willingness to forgive and “give in.” I should add that you have to take it a day at a time—to borrow wisdom from 12 Step programs.
These couples knew what they were talking about. They understood marriage is a sacred sacrament and not just a Vegas impulse.
I still remember when our third daughter and her fiancée told us they were planning a wedding on the beach in the Hamptons in Hawaiian outfits. I gulped. My wife was less sympathetic. She told them: “That’s such a creative idea, Sweetheart … but if we’re paying, you’re getting married in church with a priest.” End of discussion.
When my cousin got “hitched” a few years ago, there was no priest, no minister, no rabbi … and not one mention of God. After the New Age readings, my wife looked at me, but I didn’t look back because I knew what she was thinking since we were both thinking the same thing: “What the (words omitted) is going on here?”
Let me share the best marriage advice you’ll ever get. Infinitely better than anything from Dr. Phil, Dr. Ruth or Dr. Oz. It’s something that was read at weddings pre-Vatican II and should be used today. It’s called the Exhortation Before Marriage, which the priest read at our wedding. It says, in part:
“You are about to enter upon a union which is most sacred and most serious. It is most sacred because it was established by God himself … This union is most serious, because it will bind you together for life in a relationship so close and so intimate, that it will profoundly influence your whole future. That future, with its hopes and disappointments, its successes and its failures, its pleasures and its pains, its joys and its sorrows, is hidden from your eyes. You know that these elements are mingled in every life and are to be expected in your own. And so not knowing what is before you, you take each other for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death,
“And because these words involve such solemn obligations, it is most fitting that you rest the security of your wedded life upon the great principle of self-sacrifice. And so you begin your married life by the voluntary and complete surrender of your individual lives in the interest of that deeper and wider life, which you are to have in common. Henceforth you will belong entirely to each other. You will be one in mind, one in heart, and one in affections. And whatever sacrifices you may hereafter be required to make to preserve this mutual life, always make them generously.
“Sacrifice is usually difficult and irksome. Only love can make it easy, and perfect love can make it a joy. We are willing to give in proportion as we love. And when love is perfect, the sacrifice is complete. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, and the Son so loved us that he gave himself for our salvation.
“No greater blessing can come to your married life than pure conjugal love, loyal and true to the end. May, then, this love with which you join your hands and hearts today never fail, but grow deeper and stronger as the years go on. And if true love and the unselfish spirit of perfect sacrifice guide your every action, you can expect the greatest measure of earthly happiness that may be allotted to man in this vale of tears. The rest is in the hands of God.” You’ll never get better advice than that.
