A few years ago, I gave a sermon that started by saying that it is a good and holy thing to get married. Most people are called to marriage, marriage is instituted by God to be part of our human nature, and marriage has been raised to the level of the sacrament. For that reason, the
pursuit of marriage and the forming of a family is very praiseworthy.
The way in which that is done, however, is extremely important. It is a question of finding someone to whom you will dedicate your entire life, finding one person whom you want to be your collaborator in bringing new life into this world.
If you say to yourself, “I would like to get married one day. I would like to have a family”, then it is only natural for you to ask, “How do I go about this? What is the process by which I seek tofind a husband or a wife?”
Our modern world cheapens everything sacred and makes what is important seem trivial. Young people are not encouraged to give much thought to their relationships; rather, they are expected to just go wherever their emotion leads them. The model today is for random people to hook up with other random people and becoming immediately emotionally and sexually involved, as if building a deep relationship is not important at all.
It should be obvious that, the more important the decision you are making in life, the more sacred is the thing that you are doing, then the more prudent you need to be in making the decision. That is one of the reasons why we use the word “courtship” rather than “dating”. Courtship has the connotation of being a careful building of a relationship while dating implies getting together for fun.
No courtship before you are ready to get married. If you are not ready, you are a like a person who goes to the store, takes products off the shelf examines them, walks around and around for hours, and then leaves the store. Why? Because he has no money in his pocket. He is in a position to look at what is for sale but he is not in any position to make any purchases. He cannot commit himself to anything or invest himself in anything.
Those who court before being ready to marry have no purchasing power; they can only shop. They are not ready to sacrifice themselves or make any commitment. This makes the courtship at best pointless and worse, harmful and dangerous. Temptation to shoplift.
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