The absence of Christ will not always destroy a relationship between two good-hearted people. But those who wish to experience love in all its glory; those who wish to taste the main meal as well as the bread roll, must find out for themselves that love, by itself, does not have the special qualities to sustain anything but mere feelings and emotions. By themselves, love’s demons will mobilise two people who think that ‘love’ itself can be blamed in those bad times. 

 

All the time if it is not, in their eyes, the fault of love, it is the fault of him and her, for they are both trying, in the name of love, to do the work that Christ would be doing if they knew Him. Divine grace is the only thing that is able to do the work when ‘love’ itself cannot - for we must not mistake the self-existent parts of love for qualities within him and her. And also, we must not aggrandise parts of love, and extricate them from the totality of love in order to save ourselves from disconcerting feelings from within. 

 

Make any part of love higher than ‘love’ itself and it will become a misleading demi-god - losing all its qualities in the process. There are similar examples in life outside of love. Make a god of your occupational career and you will lose the true value of employment. Make a god of money and you will lose the true value of having it. 

 

In truth, we are only really tempted to make gods of things if we are not focussing fully on Christ. God says we should give our heart to no one but the one that He has chosen for us. The waiting is an essential part of our lives, for we learn in that time how to prepare ourselves for our beloved. All the time Christ is teaching us how to be creatures worthy of the love that our chosen beloved will bestow upon us. We are learning, by loving Him, what it is going to be like to love Him though another person. The only thing that can usually go wrong is if a Christian couple think that they love each other more than they love God. Admittedly this is rare, but I do not doubt that such confusion has, in some marriages, caused problems. 

 

But this point must be refined upon, otherwise I shall shock some courting couples who are on the right road but disquieted by the fact that they cannot feel a tangible supercession regarding their love for God over love for their beloved. I do not think that this is much of a worry, for it is probable that it is more a case of mistaken sources; that is, that which you can feel as tangible in your earthly relationship is really God showing Himself more in your beloved than you think it possible. At the worst, you are guilty of mistaking the qualities of your beloved for qualities that are part of the divine within her. The truest way to surmount this difficulty is to give yourself more to Christ. This does not, of course, mean loving your beloved any less - it is merely a step towards loving Him even more. In fact, it is not, in one sense, a quantitative term - for you will find that the more you love God the more you will love the one that He has chosen for you. 

And I think we are best able to experience the delights of true love on earth if we look to Heaven to find it. It is then that we shall see that all those delightful past moments when we felt in touching distance from divine love belonged to Him far more than to us, and were ours only because they were His. 

 

Love, if it is reflecting Christ, should wish for the beloved, all that is good for her, and all that will help her grow even more in Christ; for true love is when God is using your beloved to help you grow in godliness whilst He is simultaneously using you to help your beloved grow in godliness. You are both what you are by the grace of God, and minute by minute, day by day, He is using your love for Him and for each other, as instruments for spiritual growth and spiritual togetherness.

 

True love will indeed love the beloved when the divine part of her seems absent. True love will love the beloved when His Heavenly reflections seem dusky. Indeed love can do its work because Christ is doing His work - it can forgive when forgiveness is needed, it can provide alliance when alliance is needed, but it can never stop the desire to see the removal of unheavenly faults and dusky reflections of the divine - for parts of the divine in the marriage cannot help, by necessity, to will the removal of every blemish that is in between Christ

and the beloved. 

 

We call human love selfish when it satisfies its own needs at the expense of the beloved’s needs - as when a husband stops his wife going out because he cannot bear to relinquish the power he has over her, or because he cannot bear to allow her back into society for fear that she won’t be his own. This is love in its worst form; it implies a claustrophobic irrationality; one which stifles true growth. None of these conditions are present in the relation of God to man, for if God never became man, no two souls could be united. The incarnation perfectly makes way for each of us to imitate Christ - to empty ourselves of personal glory and dedicate ourselves to serving Him. The true harmony of marriage between two Christians is when both have emptied themselves for the benefit of Christ. They have loved each other with the pure willingness to serve, first Christ, and second, each other. Once again, this is not a quantitative term - for the more fully we serve Christ, the more fully we serve our beloved - and the more of our divine love that we take into loving our beloved, the more we serve Christ. We love the qualities that our beloved possesses, and we can now delight in them ourselves - because they are ours to share and because Christ caused them.

 

It is true that we were created with an innate need to know God, to rely upon Him and to serve Him. And part of the innate need to serve reaches fruition when we are able to serve His purposes in love and in marriage. A Christian marriage is the closest we can ever get to embracing love in the same way that our Lord embraces it. If we create for ourselves an existential path on which we are able to serve ourselves at every tense moment, we will have created an existence, which will, in the end, leave us without hope and with unfulfilled dreams. 

Chastity is, without question, the virtue that makes the Christian faith seems anachronistic to modern men and women. But it is easy to see why God recommends it. A relationship that is based on sensory things and physical beauty, puts into a primary position that which God has wholly reserved for secondary considerations. The most beautiful thing about your beloved, about any beloved, is the Christ that is inside her, for beauty in the non-physical realm is, of course, transcendent of physical and sensory things. 

 

It is not so hard, and thus, very unfortunate, that these wonderful things can, in the blink of an eye, be turned from wondrous to ignoble if the things themselves are not used in the way that God wants them to be used. Physical love, if employed correctly, is a wonderful exchange between two people; whereas physical love, if abused, causes unhelpful preoccupations and abandonment of real beauty. The evolution of sensory pleasures tells us nothing about ourselves if the dispensation of such things is deployed in a flagrantly ungodly manner. The salutary wisdom that Christ confers upon us helps us to find out about our true selves, and because of this, we are able to learn about the true self within our beloved. The unification of two souls, if the unification occurs for the sake of Christ, is the most wonderful of all earthly alliances. 

 

What follows in marriage is a simple and blissful preoccupation with the beloved - a wondrous preoccupation with her in totality. She is special not because she is a woman, but because she is herself. That is why abstinence is of primary importance, for they can go on thinking about each other outside of physical distractions - he is thinking of ‘her’, not about what she can do but about what she is.

 

Many people think that you cannot know your partner properly until you have explored the sexual side of the relationship, but to say that is to be guilty of mixing half-truth with falsehood. What you find out about a partner by engaging in a sexual relationship with them is virtually nothing in comparison to what you find out about the totality of them, by abstaining from sex. I do not deny, in the realms of contemporary thinking, that total abstinence until marriage sometimes seems like a sacrifice that is not worth making, but you would be making that assumption without the knowledge of what pleasures are derived from knowing the beloved, not as a sexual object, but as someone whose totality is a gift to you from God Himself. So when two people follow God’s instruction and wait until marriage, they will have fully realised and absorbed the totality of each other as ‘themselves’ rather than just ‘him and her’. 

 

A most unfortunate idiom is used when one says of a lustful man in a night-club that he ‘wants a woman’. He wants the body to which her inner-self is attached; he wants the physical part of her to stimulate his libido. A woman is not what he is desiring. Physical involvement wants the sensory pleasures themselves; love wants the beloved for everything she is in totality. 

But this thought can be taken further. Even a couple that look happy, and are enjoying a healthy sex life within their relationship still have the ultimate doubt of intentions staring them in the face. Usually they choose to suppress it, but as sex has got in the way of love, there is no secure knowledge of a love that transcends the physical, as that assurance can only be felt without the physical. And this, I think, is one of the most shocking duplicities in all of non-Christian love. It is not very often realised that virtually all acts to which the beauties of love should belong are almost always tenuously linked back to physical preoccupations. Christian love starts two people on the right road - for they are not building love’s foundations based upon the pleasures that each can give the other - it is based on something far greater. The pleasures are, in one sense, secondary to that which is causing the pleasures to occur. 

 

The faculty of receiving, far from being attached to selfish needs, is, in fact, provided for our betterment so that God can give abundantly, first to the individual alone, then to the individual and the beloved as one unified couple in Christ. Any who have ever felt the true value of these things, could no longer see the physical element in the same way. True love, given from the divine, is the great vanquisher of all other cognitive constituents. 

 

No lover, who knew the true value of love, ever desired that sensory pleasures would invade the divine pleasures which are taking over him, for this type of regression would be stepping out of love altogether. True love wonderfully transforms the pleasure of need into a pleasure of appreciation; it also transforms the pleasure of giving and receiving into a pleasure of devotional sharing; and the pleasure of togetherness into a pleasure of divine absorption. Divine pleasures show us fully, what we only knew in part; for in Christian marriages they show us how best the beloved pleases us in relation to our heavenly need, and how best our Lord’s Heavenly gifts are necessary to fulfil our need to receive from Him. We are able to observe the beloved, intensely observe her, as a thing be adored, not because of our cognitive need to adore, but because the divine need to give is outside of anything which is in relation to human needs. In one sense we need to need Him in order to know what we need and we need to receive from Him in order to realise why our receiving is our blessing. 

 

This leads me to another substantive point; lovers themselves, while God is continuing to bless this love, know that if divine blessings are the complete fullness of any feeling, or set of feelings, between two people, then the anticipation of anything else outside of love can only really tell us things about ourselves, not about love. If this is realised, it will be noticed that love, when trying to operate outside of divine provinces, is really seeking to draw a person into his or her own self, rather than into the beloved. 

 

The Christian doctrine is not demanding from us something with which we have no familiarity; in fact, just the opposite is true. It is insisting upon a full realisation of our need to complete, that which has only just begun. The passion of divine love, when it is operating inside of us, recognises every earthly need better than anything else. The demand made by love is that it should not trivialise the beauties of love itself by making it subordinate to sensory and physical feelings. And if I am understanding correctly God’s intention for us inside of Christian marriages - it is to make us fully aware, not only of the totality of all the beauty that the beloved posses because of Christ - but also of every facet of beauty, for which our Lord is wholly responsible. Love is a deep unity, maintained by togetherness and fortified by both his and her impassioned desire to know more and more of Christ. Thus true feelings for one another are continually reinforced by divine grace, and through the Heavenly blessings which are all the time bestowed upon couples united as one in Christ. 

 

Will there still be tension between two Christians who are joined together in Christ? Of course. Will there be arguments - moments of fractiousness which do not give very good impressions of Christ inside of them? Most definitely. But we must not, even for a second, think that we were any closer to understanding the whole picture in all those times when we followed our instincts irrationally. Our true self lives outside all of those instincts, and can, by itself, judge which instincts are helpful to us and which are not. We are not be disheartened, for all the time throughout every ill-conceived and refractory moment, and for every time that our behaviour towards our beloved did not honour the divine inside of her, you can be sure that Christ is speaking to us through those moments, for day by day, as we both grow in Christ and in marriage, we are learning a little bit more about ourselves. Through badness as well as goodness, He is teaching us to be more like Him. No good Christian couple, however stupendous their love for one another, can expect edification from perennial harmony - for true divine growth comes from both the good things that are God kindled but also from the deep parochial parts of our self that we are, day by day, trying to turn into things which reflect the Christ inside us - things which are consonant with His glory.

 

That is Christian love; that is what God intended for us all along. It is the gradual perfecting of two beings who are, through the process of loving one another as God intended, becoming a little bit more like Christ every day. This is occurring not because they love ‘love’ itself, but because they love Christ, and therefore love each other because of what He brings to both of them through the loving of each other. The golden rule of marriage, the rule that best honours Christ, is when we put our beloved first in everything, and when our beloved does the same it produces a marriage where love, respect, kindness, charity, generosity and sincerity are, every day, producing two souls who are starting to prepare themselves a little bit more for Heaven. 

 

The best marriages are obvious for most of us to see; so are the worst. Good marriages consist of building something new every day; they consist of a great combination of independence and togetherness. Furthermore, having already made Christ guardian of your hopes and dreams, good marriages allow husbands and wives to share in these things; for they are precious when kept in, but divine when shared. If the love is strong enough; that is, if the love consists of him and her, them, and Christ, then both parties will soon realise that they are forever indebted to Christ, for His dying, and for the fact that He created your beloved for you. It is a debt that can only be discharged through earthly dedication to your beloved and Heavenly dedication to God. 

There are numerous things which cause marriages to go wrong, but they can all be traced back to one thing - the attitude of each individual. The wrong attitude leads couples to all sorts of problems, but the biggest vanquisher of this is a good understanding of the beloved and her needs. 

 

You can be sure that all the bad things you think are in her are almost certainly in you too. And this applies to all walks of life. If you think the guy who works at the next desk to you is repugnant, you can be quite certain that he thinks the guy who works next to him is repugnant too. If you think that your sibling is unreasonable, you can be quite sure that he too thinks that he as an unreasonable sibling. That is why it is essential to know ourselves through knowing Christ, for only then will we be able to know and love our beloved in a way worthy of Him. 

 

Such knowledge of love and of the beloved brings about a real coalition between the human and the divine; thus each one is free and able to give themselves, their total selves, as a gift - from God to their beloved - stimulated by honesty, affection, devotion and adoration. Such love pervades the whole marriage; it grows through Christ, taking both him and her into the full growth process, transcending physical inclinations and preoccupations with self-preservation. The giving from both you and your beloved will be of the most glorious kind, for it will be mutually enriching and it will acknowledge God as the primacy in all gifts and all giving. Many people think that living for each other is all that is required. It is not so. Only when we live according to the glorious Spirit of Christ will we really live as fully as we can for our beloved. Only when we think, speak, and act according to all the qualities that the Spirit bestows upon us, will we honour our beloved and the Spirit that is in her. 

 

There is another common misconception which can, if allowed to breathe, put a strain on a marriage. It comes when both the husband and wife are too concerned with analysis of spiritual growth. God wants us to be mindful of our own growth and this requires a certain amount of self-analysis. But if we take that type of analysis into a marriage, we will forever impede the real growth that is occurring. To grow together involves trusting the fact that Christ has already planted the tree. We will see the growth every time we look at the tree; in fact, it is in our garden every time we wish to go outside and observe it. But we do not have to pull up the roots every day to inspect them; for we can see how a tree is growing without having to dig it up every day for reassurance. Love is like a glass of vintage wine; it will break if you grip it too tight; it will spill all over the floor if you are not holding it tightly enough; but hold it just the right amount and you will be able to taste it with all its truest delightfulness.

 

And finally, what of those who are still searching for love? Well, those of us who are searching are still in preparation. God knows that both you and your future beloved are not, at this moment, ready for each other. Our future beloved might be at present unknown to us, or he or she might be someone you know well and see every week. And that is why we will not find our beloved by looking in the direction of others; we will only find our beloved by looking to Christ. Christ died so that we could die with Him, and that includes the dying of our earthly passions - and supplanting them for Heavenly passions, for Christ did not die so we could receive only earthly blessings, His death consists of eternal blessings. 

 

St Paul says that God poured out His love into our hearts, therefore, if we do our very best to love everybody just as Christ loves everybody, we will naturally have a much better chance of finding our beloved. This is what I mean when I say that we have to look to Christ first. He does not want us to look for our beloved with earthly searching, for He knows that we can only find the Christ that is in our beloved by Heavenly searching. If we are not looking to Christ first, we shall not recognise our true earthly beloved. There are many earthly customary phrases, one of which is the statement often uttered -‘there’s someone out there for everyone’. But this is perhaps more true than people realise. Not just someone, but the one. For all those who are to be blessed in love, He has arranged your beloved for you, someone who you will feel was created specially for you; for when God had the two of you in mind, He was choosing for you, someone who would most help you grow in Christ. Our real earthly beloved is the one with whom we will be able to grow fully into divine unity. That is why all Christian marriages should be built to last. Just as no one can separate us from the love of Christ (Romans 8:35), no two people, united in their love for Him, should find any pressures that they cannot withstand. 

 

To those who are still searching, I have one more thing to say. We are told by St Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians that love is patient, and kind, that it does not envy, that it does not boast, that it is not proud, that it is not rude, nor self-seeking, nor easily angered, that it keeps no record of wrongs, that is rejoices with the truth, that it always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. And here is where the main truth lies when we talk of looking to Christ first. If we do not have these qualities ourselves; that is, if St Paul’s description of love is not also a description of us too, then we shall continue to be on the outside of love, looking in. In becoming all of these things, as best we can, we will make ourselves worthy of the beloved whom God has chosen for us. But our beloved will not be revealed to us until the nouns that St Paul ascribes to love are also nouns that Christ could ascribe to us. Appreciation and adoration are two wonderful things, but they will not be enough if left to themselves, for worship is necessary as well. To appreciate is to admire with the mind; to adore is to love with the heart; to worship is to take every part of the Christ that is inside you into every part of everything you do. 

 

And that leaves us with just one more question; how will we know for sure who it is that God has chosen for us? The most certain way of knowing is to trust that which is not always palpable to us. But there are, I think, many indicators along the way. Those are the best people for our Christian growth in whose presence we are able to grow in Christ because of their presence. In love we can expect that truth to be multiplied. There will be many people along the way who make us happy, but the real happiness we are searching for in love is the happiness which will be, eventually, shared into gradual perfection. Christ says that we should love our neighbour as we love ourselves; and notice that when we love fellow human beings we love God much more in the process, for we are really loving God in man. That is why we are able to love people that we do not much like. But to love our beloved is to love, both God inside of her, and all that God is doing for both of you inside each other. The love of our neighbour helps us to make inroads out of our bad self; to love our beloved helps turn us into creatures who are able to experience a little bit of Heaven in someone else. 

 

The first step is to know God, in doing this we begin the process of knowing ourselves; but when we become one with our beloved, we get to know all three; that is, the self, our beloved, and Christ more abundantly than we could ever have imagined. To desire your beloved in a way that makes you search harder for more of Christ is to take Christianity to another level beyond the rewards experienced by the self; for the true elevation of Christ in us is experienced when everything we have and everything we are is given to God. If we trust in transient things we shall be disappointed, for every material thing on earth changes - even the atoms in your body are constantly changing. But God does not change; in fact, His love for us will be no greater in Heaven than it is on earth - for it is already perfect love. And in finding our beloved, God wants us to experience a little bit of the Heavenly love through the qualities of our beloved. There is no more beautiful thing in ‘love’ than Heavenly love itself. 

 

God loves us so much that the plans He has for each one of us are plans in which He can reveal a little bit more of Himself to us. Love with the beloved reveals something about God to us that no other pursuance of earthly satisfactions of gratifications will ever reveal. The more a husband and wife work together, the more of Christ each will see in the other. And for all of us, those who are searching for love, those who are anticipating love - turn to those who are in love and they will tell you not to be concerned only with what you have, but also about what you are. The beloved who God has chosen for you will not just help you grow, she will help create you; the you that God sees when looking ahead at the future. Our earthly time will never see us becoming perfect beings; in fact, saddled as we are with disagreeable traits, our faults will always be very visible - more to those who know us than to ourselves. But love insists upon helping to create something new; for it is able to direct the beloved not to faults but to the virtues which will stand behind them - where Christ is doing His work. So long as we are kind, and virtuous, and caring, and open to continual growth, we shall see glory, we shall grow with our beloved in confidence, in wisdom, in gracefulness, and, most passionately, in love. 

 

For those who are about to step into love, into Christian marriage, I wish you all the luck in the world. For those who are still searching, I have one final thing to say. Let Christ be your guiding light - reflect Him so that every man or woman who meets you comes away wiser, happier, and more purposeful. Be the living expression of the divine, let everyone who meets you see the Christ that is in you, and then your beloved, when he or she is made known to you, will see the Christ that is in you and the Christ that is going to be part of both of you.