The responsibility of love

Unintentionally, the last two novels I read (Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina...the latter I am still reading) contained women, those for whom the novels are named, whose marriages at some point went awry. Both women experienced a tremendous restlessness (Bovary on the very night of her wedding) that led them to seek something else that would fill the longing that marriage could not. And for both, great pain and an over-complicated life followed.

I reached a point yesterday in Anna Karenina when one of the male characters also wrestled with this point. He found himself slightly irritated by his wife. He had been called to tend to some personal business and she wanted to accompany him. Thinking that she would only get in the way, he refused. But she persisted: “Then why did you marry me? You could have been free. Why did you, if you regret it?” In the end, they went together and she brought a feminine tenderness to the situation that he did not possess.

All this “novel” drama is to point to the fact that when need is shared and when longing is followed in community, particularly in the communion of marriage, it becomes fruitful. But this can only be if a sacrifice is made: a sacrifice to stay with what God has given. In simple ways it means being faithful to the challenges of everyday life: to sickness and sadness and joy and beauty. Fidelity to these things and to the people who surround us makes us capable of a greater love that we seem to think is always somewhere else.

This is the beauty of Our Lady. She was ever-faithful to the circumstances of life and she is faithful to us. She who embraced the Son of God embraces us in a communion that exalts every struggle and gives direction to every desire. How beautiful is Our Lady and how beautiful is her faithfulness to us!