Here is an excellent video for those doing apostolate with married couples or those preparing for marriage. It leaves us with an impactful and real testimony of what it means to be authentically committed to loving one another in marriage.
What is marriage? I once had a friend that told me that marriage was like a business contract. Each one does his or her part, and they make it work… Is that it? Have our expectations fallen so low? What happens if one party isn’t efficient? Fire them?
With so much controversy surrounding the issue of marriage, the Church has been branded over and over as some sort of marriage tyrant. But, when I see this video, and I go over in my mind what marriage is for Catholics… I get the urge to go and tell people, “You don’t get it, you don’t understand that marriage isn’t just a contract, it’s a sacrament!” The goal isn’t merely prosperity or a long term
The goal isn’t merely prosperity or a long term honeymoon; it’s love in both the good times and the bad. It’s that intimate place in which each one dies to himself or herself, imitating and aided by Christ, in order to give life to the other.
The Story of Ian & Larissa
Still, I’m not sure how much my shouting will help. The issue isn’t so simple. Instead, it’s up to us to remind many what marriage is all about, whether by word or by example. Fundamentally, I think we should invite people to allow Christ (His teachings and His Church) into their relationships, to found their relationships on the “primary” things, on love above all, and not the superficial and ephemeral ones.
A quote by John Paul II in his apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio, 18:
“The inner principle of that task, its permanent power and its final goal is love: without love the family is not a community of persons and, in the same way, without love the family cannot live, grow and perfect itself as a community of persons. What I wrote in the Encyclical Redemptor Hominis applies primarily and especially within the family as such: “Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it.”
