After I finished my freshman year of college I spent a summer at a Benedictine monastery in New York state. There were about five of us or so candidates that lived together, worked together, and prayed together as we discerned a potential calling to monastic life.
Once a week the Abbot would meet with us in the community room and give us a teaching on the Rule and the Christian life. One I remember was the parable laid out by G.K. Chesterton in the 9th Chapter of Orthodoxy that Fr. Martin recounted to us (it wasn't until about fifteen years later that I realized where the story came from, that it was not original to Fr. Martin!):
Ever since I was young, I have idolized the expansiveness of creative potential. I wanted to do all things and be all things and experience all things without limit. Unbounded freedom was the highest pinnacle of virtue. I didn't tie myself down with girlfriends or internships or morality growing up and into college. All I wanted to do was live and suck the marrow out of life without restriction, ride the rails of experience and rucksack my way to old age on the way to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Now that I am coming up on middle age, I look back and realize how off the rails I could have gone were it not for grace. For if there are two things that have completely restricted my choices for my own benefit and the good of my life and my soul, it is marriage and religion. Nothing has saved me from the oppression and restrictiveness of my self, has benefited my mental health, and taught me how to love, more than these two freely chosen frames.
But why? Growing up I never really wanted to get married and railed against religion and the sheep it produced. I structured my life in a way that precluded those things, even though deep down I struggled with loneliness, depression, and a deep need for purpose and meaning in my life. I hated to be limited, and yet it was the very act of having no outer walls that made the prospect of living near the edge a source of constant anxiety.
Chesterton's image of children huddled together for fear of falling off the edge of a cliff, not knowing where the edge is, was my life to a T. We can construct our own Rules for Living and build our own walls, of course. But there is something untested and immaturely subjective about living by one's own rules, making a god unto oneself. Studying the Rule of St. Benedict at nineteen years old introduced me to a way of life that was balanced, timeless, charitable, and so very human. It made me realize the limitations of creating my own curriculum for life, and how much time and energy that takes, and how, ultimately, it did not lead to the coveted goal I sought: happiness and contentment. The Rule was a path laid out that others before me had trod and been refined by.
Marriage, like religion, forces you (and I do mean force) to dig deep into your commitments, when everything screams and tempts you to abandon them for your subjective whims of fancy. "That's not for me anymore," or "I'm looking for something new," falls on the deaf ears of vows. It is a non-option. St. Benedict chastises in the harshest terms these "most detestable kinds of monk" in the very first chapter of the Rule:
Once a week the Abbot would meet with us in the community room and give us a teaching on the Rule and the Christian life. One I remember was the parable laid out by G.K. Chesterton in the 9th Chapter of Orthodoxy that Fr. Martin recounted to us (it wasn't until about fifteen years later that I realized where the story came from, that it was not original to Fr. Martin!):
“Those countries in Europe which are still influenced by priests, are exactly the countries where there is still singing and dancing and coloured dresses and art in the open-air. Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground. Christianity is the only frame which has preserved the pleasure of Paganism. We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff’s edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased.”
Ever since I was young, I have idolized the expansiveness of creative potential. I wanted to do all things and be all things and experience all things without limit. Unbounded freedom was the highest pinnacle of virtue. I didn't tie myself down with girlfriends or internships or morality growing up and into college. All I wanted to do was live and suck the marrow out of life without restriction, ride the rails of experience and rucksack my way to old age on the way to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Now that I am coming up on middle age, I look back and realize how off the rails I could have gone were it not for grace. For if there are two things that have completely restricted my choices for my own benefit and the good of my life and my soul, it is marriage and religion. Nothing has saved me from the oppression and restrictiveness of my self, has benefited my mental health, and taught me how to love, more than these two freely chosen frames.
But why? Growing up I never really wanted to get married and railed against religion and the sheep it produced. I structured my life in a way that precluded those things, even though deep down I struggled with loneliness, depression, and a deep need for purpose and meaning in my life. I hated to be limited, and yet it was the very act of having no outer walls that made the prospect of living near the edge a source of constant anxiety.
Chesterton's image of children huddled together for fear of falling off the edge of a cliff, not knowing where the edge is, was my life to a T. We can construct our own Rules for Living and build our own walls, of course. But there is something untested and immaturely subjective about living by one's own rules, making a god unto oneself. Studying the Rule of St. Benedict at nineteen years old introduced me to a way of life that was balanced, timeless, charitable, and so very human. It made me realize the limitations of creating my own curriculum for life, and how much time and energy that takes, and how, ultimately, it did not lead to the coveted goal I sought: happiness and contentment. The Rule was a path laid out that others before me had trod and been refined by.
Marriage, like religion, forces you (and I do mean force) to dig deep into your commitments, when everything screams and tempts you to abandon them for your subjective whims of fancy. "That's not for me anymore," or "I'm looking for something new," falls on the deaf ears of vows. It is a non-option. St. Benedict chastises in the harshest terms these "most detestable kinds of monk" in the very first chapter of the Rule:
"Third, there are the sarabaites, the most detestable kind of monks, who with no experience to guide them, no rule to try them as gold is tried in a furnace (Prov 27:21), have a character as soft as lead. Still loyal to the world by their actions, they clearly lie to God by their tonsure. Two or three together, or even alone, without a shepherd, they pen themselves up in their own sheepfolds, not the Lord’s. Their law is what they like to do, whatever strikes their fancy. Anything they believe in and choose, they call holy; anything they dislike, they consider forbidden.
Fourth and finally, there are the monks called gyrovagues, who spend their entire lives drifting from region to region, staying as guests for three or four days in different monasteries. Always on the move, they never settle down, and are slaves to their own wills and gross appetites. In every way they are worse than the sarabaites.
It is better to keep silent than to speak of all these and their disgraceful way of life. Let us pass them by, then, and with the help of the Lord, proceed to draw up a plan for the strong kind, the cenobites."
Marriage vows and the commitments of doctrine tie us to the mast when the storms come and the refiner's fire engulfs. And they complement each other as well. For what is marriage but a path to holiness? And what is religion but learning to love? We simply cannot grow without roots, and roots take time and place to establish. The fruit?: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal 5:22). The things the world and its subjective fancy does not offer except in the form of phantom dreams and unattainable ideals.
Let me tell you, though--I would have had little hope left to my own devices. Without the love of Christ and his Church and by extension, without the provision of my wife whom he had reserved for me, I don't know if I would have made it to this day. I am so so grateful for the walls that keep me reigned in and from self-destruction, and thank God for the gift of marriage that sanctifies, and true religion that teaches us how to love.
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