Marriage has a meaning of legally or formally recognized union of two people as partners in a personal relationship (historically and in some jurisdictions specifically a union between a man and a woman).
In our culture, an Indonesian marriage has three components: civil, religious, and a celebration which follows regional customs and traditions. Before the civil registration, we need to hold a religious blessing which eventually becomes the basis for the marriage registration. The religious blessing will be in accordance with the couple's religious view.
With marriage right now more focused on the celebration or we called it 'wedding reception', we often forget on what really matters - about the marriage itself. What kind of attitude we should be prepared on welcoming the new phase? Are we prepared enough mentally to be married?
There are three principles of marriage as taught in Catholic;
3. Marriage is for Life and meant to last for a lifetime. No Divorce. It is monogam dan indissolubile.
For Catholics, marriage, also known as holy matrimony, is considered a religious sacrament and it often involves specific, time-honored rituals. Before couples can get approved for a Catholic wedding, they may be required to submit certain documents, participate more in church activities, and go through an intensive marriage preparation process with a priest. The major portion of the marriage preparation is to sit down and to get into what the church teaches about marriage. In our diocese it’s a six-month required waiting period. There’s a whole program of marriage preparation directed towards the couple examining certain areas in their lives that they hadn’t before. Some of it is also the technical, canonical, or legal aspects necessary for the church. In the Catholic faith, the church is considered a sacred place where Christ is present, and since matrimony is believed to be a covenant with God, the only place a wedding ceremony can be administered is indoors, inside a church "to emphasize the sanctity of the ceremony itself. So unlike many other religious and civil ceremonies, Catholic weddings do not allow outdoor venues.
With such a length process, we are taught on what marriage is and how we start it right. When we commit our lives to Jesus, we become His disciples here on earth. We are called to be a light to the world, to follow His example of living, to love, to serve, to care, to be generous. We become God’s earthly representatives. Or as Mother Theresa puts it, we become “God’s love letter” to our spouse.
A good friend of mine, who's married for 2 years now, introduces me to this book, "The Meaning of Marriage" by Timothy Keller and "Starting Your Marriage Right" by Dennis & Barbara Rainey.
Actually what surprised me is that, "You Never Marry The Right Person", when I read this statement, it made me feel what's with all the fuss about finding the one and such? I realized the actual meaning is that actually our expectations, the self-fulfillment ethic that assumes marriage and the family are primarily institution of personal fulfillment, necessary for us to become "whole" and happy.
We always assume that there will be someone just right for us to marry and that if we look closely enough, we will find the right person - and this assumption overlooks a crucial aspect to marriage. It fails to appreciate the fact that we always marry the wrong person. Even if we marry the right person, give some time, maybe he/she will change...and we are not always the same person, we do not know what we would be in the future. The thing that we need to learn is how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married.
Over the years, we will go through seasons in which we have to learn to love a person who we didn't marry, who is something of a stranger. You will have to make changes that you don't want to make, so will your spouse. The journey may eventually take you into a stronger, tender, joyful marriage. But it is not because you married the perfectly compatible person - THAT person didn't exist. No one is perfect and we should accept that.
In any relationship, there will be frightening spells in which your feelings of love seem to dry up. And when that happens, you must remember that the essence of a marriage is that it is a covenant, a commitment, a promise of future love. So what do you do?
You do the acts of love, despite your lack of feeling. You may not feel tender, sympathetic, and eager to please, but in your actions, you must be tender, understanding, forgiving and helpful. And, if you do that, as time goes on, you will not only get through the dry spells, but they will become less frequent and deep, and you will become more constant in your feelings. This is what can happen if you decide to love. We live in the world, so we don’t have much power over things that happen around us and to us, but we do have the ultimate power of choosing how we will respond in any given situation. But we can choose our attitude every morning. Choose whether you are going to let things upset you or whether you are going to let them go. Choose whether you are going to be joyful and thankful or miserable and ungrateful. Choose whether you are going to forgive your spouse and yourself or whether you are going to hold onto unforgiveness and hurt.
Always remember this:
Choose to compromise, it is better to bend a little than to break.
Choose to let your love be stronger than your hate or anger.
Choose to believe the best of your spouse rather than the worst.
True friendship is the basis of every relationship. Choose to treat the person you are married to with the same kindnesses and courtesies that you bestow on your friends.
A long lasting marriage requires - commitment, understanding, give in take, open communication, honesty, compromise, forgiveness, being faithful, always being true to each other and LOVE.
“A soul mate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are: we can be loved for who we are and not for who we’re pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we’re safe in our own paradise. Our soul mate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction.” —Richard Bach
Cheers
