FAMILIES NEED EVERYONE'S PRAYERFUL SUPPORT

aUGUST 5, 2007

From the vantage point of secular society, marriage is often viewed as merely a legally binding contract, which confers certain rights and responsibilities on each contracting party. In the Church's vision, however, it is a sacred covenant. It forms not just a legal bond, but a bond of minds and hearts. In marriage, two paths become one, two lives are joined together until death parts them. The two become one flesh and one spirit, forming an intimate community of life and love, a partnership of the whole of what they are and possess.

Marriage is not a human invention or the accidental outcome of blind cultural evolution. The Church, basing herself on the clear witness of the bible (see especially Genesis 1 2), and on Jesus' own instruction, teaches that marriage is of divine institution. In the creator's plan, it is ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of children.

Marriage what an amazing gift of God! He created us out of love and calls us to love. Love is the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being. For we were created in the image and likeness of God who is himself love.

Since God created us man and woman, the mutual love of the two becomes an image of the absolute and unfailing love with which God loves us. Marriage, like all the works of his creation, is very good in the Creator's eyes. And this love, which has God as its source and sustaining power, is blessed by God, who intends it to be fruitful and to be realized in the common work of watching over creation: "And God blessed them, and God said to them, `Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.'" (Gen 1:28; cf. 1:31)

How has this sacred covenant fared over the ages? In spite of the political and economic obstacles to family life, we can admire the countless shining examples of marital love and fidelity that have certainly existed in every age, and that exist in our own. Although so much attention is given to divorce, marital infidelity, and the like, isn't the stable, loving, closely knit family the overwhelmingly larger reality? Isn't it the norm rather than the exception?

What of family life today? In times of change such as our own, there is the anticipation and expectation of constant change, and this impacts directly on families, who have to cope with all the changes coming down on their heads. In evidence, a number of "how to" books been published to help families "survive" one thing or another, such as their child's adolescence or the loss of employment. The market for books on coping with divorce has also grown, bearing such titles as "Surviving the Breakup", "The Divorce Revolution", and "Going it Alone".

These realities present a strong challenge to the Church to support families of every shape and size, and to maintain the Christian character of family, both in the traditional family, and in the single parent family. Founding a family requires the total gift of oneself. Christ has elevated the bond between spouses to the dignity of a sacrament. The couple draw from the Sacrament of Matrimony, the strength and courage they need to love each other in good times and in bad; they are also given a certain joy and openness to the prospect of accepting children and raising them. The sacrament consists essentially of the free, mutual, lifelong, exclusive commitment of the spouses. It gives to them the same love that unites Christ to his Church forever. Moved by the Spirit of Christ given them in baptism, they give themselves to each other with pure and open hearts.

The Christian family they form becomes a basic unit of the Church the domestic Church. Each member shares in the priesthood of Christ. It is in the family that spouses and children become holy and, in turn, sanctify others. By communicating to others the love, help, trust, and peace they have received from Christ, they participate in the mission of the whole Church for the building up and sanctification of the world.

According to faith the disorders we see so sorrowfully in marriage do not stem from the human nature of man and woman, nor from the nature of marriage, but from the mystery of sin, which has distorted all human relations and weakened all efforts at faithful love.

Thus, in the Church's faith, while marriage is greatly in need of social supports, it is most in need of God's help, which he never refuses. Without this help, man and woman can never achieve the kind of blessed union God wishes them to possess. Families need to pray together to stay together, and we should all offer a daily prayer for God's blessings on all those whom he has joined in marriage by the love he himself has placed in their hearts for each other.

+Bishop Raymundo J. Peña

last updated 05-Jun-2008 9:48 sitemap