Musonius Rufus, Lectures 14.7

How great and worthy an estate is marriage is plain from this also, that gods watch over it, great gods, too, in the estimation of men; first Hera (and for this reason we address her as the patroness of wedlock), then Eros, then Aphrodite, for we assume that all of these perform the function of bringing together man and woman for the procreation of children.

Where, indeed, does Eros more properly belong than in the lawful union of man and wife? Where Hera? Where Aphrodite? When would one more appropriately pray to these divinities than when entering into marriage? What should we more properly call the work of Aphrodite than the joining of wife and husband?

Why, then, should anyone say that such great divinities watch over and guard marriage and the procreation of children, unless these things are the proper concern of man?

Though I at first had to be dragged along kicking and screaming, I eventually learned that nothing human can make any sense outside the context of the Divine, that the meaning of the part is only apparent through the purpose of the whole.

An appeal to the gods, or to God, or to whatever terms we might like to use, simply reflects the profound acceptance that nothing can exist in isolation.

And so it is that any love coming from me is only possible through a sharing in the Love that unites all things together. I have seen many people speak of love as something that is merely about them and their selfish desires, and I have succumbed to that error myself, and I finally wished to escape from my self-imposed limits.

I was a bit surprised when my future wife, in the first proper letter she ever sent me, quoted one of my heroes, the Emperor Charles of Austria. On the day before his wedding to Zita of Bourbon-Parma he said to her:

Now, we must help each other to get to Heaven.

Here I was, so cynical about other people, that I thought she might just be playing with me. She could not possibly, at that point, have known of my great admiration for Charles. Who said something like that, and actually still meant it?

Piety is not about putting on a show, or going through some mindless motions, or abusing the concept of God to stroke an ego. Piety is reverence, and for the Romans this covered all the bases, and included a deep respect for the gods, for family, and for fellow citizens.

All love flows from a sense of responsibility and duty, and so the love between a husband and a wife mirrors a Universal Love. The lower is only possible through a participation with the higher.

A selective love, an affection that depends upon conditions, isn’t a love at all. There is a perfectly good reason the Divine smiles upon marriage, because we become most fully human, and therefore most fully play our part in Nature, when we give all of ourselves to another.

Written in 1/2000