The Betrothal States
in Marriage
A Sermon by the Rev. James P. Cooper
Toronto, January 10, 2010
For as a young man marries a virgin, so shall your sons
marry you; and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your
God rejoice over you. (Isaiah 62:5)
Marriage is the natural state of life for all men and women. Everyone
in heaven is married, and remains married to eternity Marriage is the
most important relationship we will establish in our lives. It is
therefore in our own best interests to learn as much about marriage as
possible.
When we look at marriage as a purely natural thing, a customary
arrangement for the sake of sorting out the inheritance of offspring,
it is very difficult to treat it seriously, to resist the temp-tations
to break the marriage vows. If marriage is just a social contract, what
harm can there be in a little adultery as long as it is kept quiet so
no one is hurt? The low success rate of modern mar-riages is probably
the result, at least in part, of the increasingly natural view of
marriage as a temporary social contract between two adults that can be
easily broken and new relationships arranged.
But marriage is not a purely natural thing: it originates in God
Himself God is Divine Love itself and Divine Wisdom itself From His
Divine Love, God wanted to create a heaven from the hu-man race. From
His Divine Wisdom, He conceived a plan to accomplish this goal. When
the de-sire and the plan were conjoined and made one, the universe was
created over a period of time, and in an orderly way. The creation of a
heaven full of human beings is God's greatest pleasure. This is the
origin of marriage, for the wife represents the Divine Love, and the
husband repre-sents the Divine Wisdom. When they come together in
marriage and conjoin themselves, they can create new human beings for
heaven. The pleasure of conceiving and rearing children is the greatest
delight of human life, and it is a gift from God because it is a
correspondence of the great delight He Himself felt in creating the
universe.
Marriage seems a natural thing because it involves the fulfilment of so
many natural desires. However, the doctrines of the New Church have
revealed not only that it is a spiritual creation, but they have also
revealed how we can prepare for marriage so that the spiritual things
come before the natural things and so the marriage can continue to grow
in wisdom and delight to eter-nity We prepare ourselves for a lovely,
eternal, spiritual marriage with one through shunning evils as sins,
looking to the Lord to provide a partner, and the states of betrothal.
We usually think of betrothal as a ritual that takes place after then
engagement and a few weeks or months before a young couple gets
married, and that is quite true as far as it goes. But the pur-pose of
that ritual is to mark the bride and groom's mutual belief and consent
that they are going to enter into a spiritual marriage before they
enter into the natural marriage.
Do these convictions and heartfelt beliefs end with the marriage
ceremony? Why do young cou-ples give each other tokens and gifts at the
time of betrothal except to mark this important spiri-tual step so it
can be remembered for the rest of their lives? Why else do they
continue to wear these tokens throughout their life except to remind
them of the beautiful, tender first states of mutual love?
The betrothal ceremony marks the beginning of a lifelong effort to
bring what is spiritual into marriage so that what is natural can serve
its proper use and be in its proper place, supporting and upholding
that which is spiritual and eternal, not to be an end in itself.
Let us now review the main states of betrothal so that they can be
recognized, cherished, and re-newed.
The first state is that of consent, and it can be argued that when a
couple in freedom, and from love, consents to be married, they are
– from the spiritual point of view – already married
because everything they think and do from that point forward will be to
bring that consent into being, into a marriage. That's why the Heavenly
Doctrine goes to such lengths to encourage the young couple to approach
that consent very carefully – not just from warm feelings of
strong friendship, but knowledge, judgement, and love.
Once a young couple discover each other and fall in love, they begin to
think seriously about marriage. The Doctrines tell us that a woman
should consult her parents before she consents to marry her young man.
The same thing is true for the young man, of course.
There are three reasons given for this: parents should be
consulted because they counsel from judgement, knowledge, and love.
From judgement because they are more experienced. They have seen more
of life, have themselves made the mistakes their children are inclined
to and have already learned those lessons. From knowledge because they
know their own children having guided their growth from infancy. From
love, because true love wants to make the one who is loved happy.
Those early states of falling in love and planning a life together, and
especially the first states of marriage, are full of delightful moments
of incredible tenderness and joy. These states are not the result of
the couples own spiritual states, but they are "borrowed" from the
angels who are drawn near to their innocent and lovely states. The
young couple has the opportunity to taste the happi-ness of heaven,
long before they have gone through the journey that will earn it for
them, so that they will have some sense of what awaits them, some faith
that what they are working for is of lasting value and will bring them
happiness beyond measure.
Conjugial love ascends and descends: it ascends first from their
minds toward their souls and the effort to conjunction there, and then
it descends by influx into their body where it clothes itself with
affections for and delights with the married partner. Conjugial love is
of the same nature in its descent as it is in the height to which it
has ascended If it is in its height (an orderly conjunction of souls)
then it descends chaste (and delightful). If it does not ascend so
high, but only to the lower parts of the mind, then it descends
unchaste, for it picks up its character of the part of the mind in
which it resides.
This shows the importance of betrothal, for by focusing the minds of
the couple on spiritual prin-ciples of marriage, conjugial love can
reach a greater height, and can descend from a more ele-vated and more
pure position. If the young couple are only interested in making their
sexual pleasures acceptable in the eyes of society, and indulge in them
before their marriage, then they cannot expect a spiritual marriage to
result as if by magic because they have participated in a church
service.
With those who think about marriages from religion, the marriage of the
spirit precedes, and that of the body follows. They are thus separated
from the love of the sex in general and it is replaced with a tender
love of one of the sex as they look to an eternal and everlasting union
with one. Those who think only of marriage as a conjunction of bodies
during life in the natural world will not be able to elevate themselves
into a spiritual marriage because they do not even know that such a
thing exists – so how can they work toward it?
Betrothal is not only a state for young lovers, but a state that can
and should be enkindled in ma-ture marriages as well. The state of
betrothal, the determination to have the spiritual marriage precede the
natural marriage, is the spiritual force within a marriage, it
represents the desire for an eternal spiritual marriage with one
partner. All marriages have states of warmth and cold that fluctuate
from time to time as the partners go through their individual trials
and temptations in life. In the difficult times, there is value in
remembering the promises made during courtship, there is value in
remembering the hopes and dreams that made you fall in love with each
other. By remembering those early states, by thinking about the tokens
of your love for each other, by reading Conjugial Love again, together,
you will find that your marriage could be revitalized You can talk
about the things you have learned since you were married, and enjoy
those "borrowed states" of heaven once again. Such reminders can carry
you over the rough spots that naturally occur in every one's life.
In the New Church, we know that marriage is more than a natural
agreement, but the grind of daily life can make us forget our ideals,
our spiritual goals. The point is to take time for each other and for
the care and feeding of your marriage. Time and personal attention are
they key to success in most areas of life, and marriage is no
exception. The goal is to restore and uplift the desire for an eternal,
spiritual marriage with one.
The conjugial union of one man with one wife is the precious jewel of
human life and the reposi-tory of Christian religion. In a word, a
person is a living soul as a result of that love (CL 457) AMEN.
First Lesson: Genesis 29:1-20
(GEN 29:1-20) So Jacob went on his journey and came to the land of the
people of the East. {2} And he looked, and saw a well in the field; and
behold, there were three flocks of sheep lying by it; for out of that
well they watered the flocks. A large stone was on the well's mouth.
{3} Now all the flocks would be gathered there; and they would roll the
stone from the well's mouth, water the sheep, and put the stone back in
its place on the well's mouth. {4} And Jacob said to them, "My
brethren, where are you from?" And they said, "We are from Haran." {5}
Then he said to them, "Do you know Laban the son of Nahor?" And they
said, "We know him." {6} So he said to them, "Is he well?" And they
said, "He is well. And look, his daughter Rachel is coming with the
sheep." … {9} Now while he was still speaking with them, Rachel
came with her father's sheep, for she was a shepherdess. {10} And it
came to pass, when Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban his mother's
brother, and the sheep of Laban his mother's brother, that Jacob went
near and rolled the stone from the well's mouth, and watered the flock
of Laban his mother's brother. {11} Then Jacob kissed Rachel, and
lifted up his voice and wept. {12} And Jacob told Rachel that he was
her father's relative and that he was Rebekah's son. So she ran and
told her father. … {20} So Jacob served seven years for Rachel,
and they seemed only a few days to him because of the love he had for
her. Amen.
Second Lesson: CL 71-72
71. No others can be in a state of truly conjugial love but those who
receive it from the Lord - namely, those who go to Him directly and
live the life of the church from Him - for the reason that this love,
viewed in terms of its origin and correspondence, is celestial,
spiritual, holy, pure and clean, more than any other love that is found
in angels of heaven or people of the church. And these attributes of it
cannot exist except in people who are joined to the Lord and brought by
Him into association with angels of heaven…
72. Only those people come into truly conjugial love and only those can
be in it who love the truths of the church and do the good things it
teaches, for the reason that no others are accepted by the Lord. That
is because people who love the truths of the church and do the good
things it teaches are in a state of conjunction with the Lord, and
consequently they can be kept in that love by Him....
The evident conclusion from this is that people are blessed with truly
conjugial love not if they only know the truths of the church, but if
they know them and do the good things it teaches.