Hi, readers!  Last month, we started learning about the specific vows of our marriage covenant.  First up was our vow to love “freely.”  Check out that post here.  Today, we discuss the second vow, loving our spouse fully. 

So, what does it mean to love fully?

It is only human nature to want to hide parts of ourselves we find less perfect or less lovable from others.  Maybe we are ashamed of our habits of sin, our mountain of debt, or mental illness in our family.  Sometimes it is easier to just pretend everything is ok and not reveal too much to our friends and coworkers.  But things should be different in our relationships with our spouses.  If we are to love one another fully, we must first know one another fully.  We have to intimately know the struggles and worries of our spouses, and adopt their crosses to carry along with our own.  We offer our lifelong assistance in carrying our spouses’ burdens and strive to help them break habits of sin so that we can make it to heaven together.  For me, loving my husband fully means that I am his partner and helper in all these things.

Loving fully is not always easy.  I am sometimes nervous to reveal certain things to Chris.  What if he rejects my whole gift of self?  What if my faults and crosses make me less desirable and lovable to him?  On the other hand, there have also been parts of Chris’ life and personality that have been harder for me to accept than others.  These are all occasions to call on that beautiful marital grace to strengthen my love for him, imperfect and burdened as he may be.

Modern Challenges to Loving Fully

Modern society does not exactly encourage couples to entrust their full gift of self to their spouse, or to accept their spouse’s full gift of self.  For example, living together before marriage allows people to “test drive” what married life might be like without actually making the commitment and full gift of self required by marriage.  Prenuptial agreements allow spouses to hold back their finances from one another.  Finally, contraception keeps couples from giving one of the most precious parts of themselves to one another: their fertility, and, with it, the ability to “cooperate in a unique way in the Creator’s work” together (CCC 372).  All of these things seem almost universal these days, and they certainly offer some degree of “protection” from future harm at the hands of your spouse if things don’t go well.  But they are all ultimately poisonous to marriage, because they impede the ability to fully love and be loved.

Practices like those mentioned above tell your spouse, “I will give you some of myself- but I can’t risk giving you all of myself.”  But there can be no half-hearted effort when it comes to real love. Reflecting on such practices in his amazing book Love and Responsibility (Amazon link because you should totally read it), Karol Wojtyła (soon-to-be-known-as Pope John Paul II!) had some words of warning:

“Take away from love the fullness of self-surrender, the completeness of personal commitment, and what remains will be a total denial and negation of it.”

— Pope St. John Paul II

A few other notes. To love your spouse completely, you yourself must already be complete.  The allegedly romantic phrases “He completes me!” and “She is my missing piece!” indicate that a person is not yet mature enough to participate in the total giving of self and receiving of another required by marriage.  Meanwhile, loving fully does not mean that husband and wife “meld together” into one identity, either.  Though we have become “one flesh” in the Sacrament of Marriage, my husband and I still have unique interests, goals, and relationships. 

You Can Do This!

With God’s grace, Christian spouses can be true life partners, helping one another grow in holiness and sharing their burdens.  We should celebrate our spouse’s strengths, but love their weaknesses, too.  Loving fully can be scary, uncomfortable, frustrating, and even painful.  But when both spouses honor their marital vow to love one another fully, God’s grace can flow through their marriage and make it so much stronger.  Moreover, to love fully is to love like Jesus loves.  Romans 5:8 tells us that “God proves His love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”  Even at our worst, God loved us fully. Even when we hurt Him most, He gave us the complete gift of Himself.  In return, He wants all of you— your whole heart, mind, and soul.  Your spouse deserves to fully love and be loved by you, too.    

Reference list:

Roman Catholic Church. The Catechism of the Catholic Church. 3rd ed. New York: Image, 1995.

The Holy Bible, RSV- Catholic Edition. Charlotte, NC: St. Benedict Press, 2009.

Wojtyła, Karol. Love and Responsibility. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993.