St Thomas Becket (Tevington submission to Catholic 365)
P.S. to "National Marriage Week and World Marriage Day"
Photo by Vadim Paripa on Unsplash
Just a few weeks back, I wrote in anticipation of the upcoming National Marriage Week and World Marriage Day (1/12/23)
Just this past Friday (January 27), Pope Francis addressed the Roman Rota, which serves as a "supreme court" for marriage cases. The full text is available on the Vatican web site:
....Today I would like to share with you some reflections on marriage, because in the Church and in the world, there is a strong need to rediscover the meaning and value of the conjugal union between man and woman on which the family is based. Indeed, an aspect, certainly not secondary, of the crisis that is affecting many families is the practical ignorance, personal and collective, regarding marriage....
The gospel of the family recalls the divine plan of the creation of man and women, that is the “beginning”, according to the word of Jesus: “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one’? So they are no longer two but one. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder” (Mt 19:4-6). And this being one flesh is part of the divine plan of redemption. Saint Paul writes: “This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the Church!” (Eph 5:32). And Saint John Paul II comments: “Christ renews the first plan that the Creator inscribed in the hearts of man and woman, and in the celebration of the sacrament of matrimony offers a ‘new heart’: thus the couples are not only able to overcome ‘hardness of heart’(Mt 19:8), but also and above all they are able to share the full and definitive love of Christ, the new and eternal Covenant made flesh” (Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris consortio, 22 November 1981, 20)....
every true marriage, even non-sacramental, is a gift of God to the spouses....
We can apply this commandment to conjugal love, also a gift from God. This commandment can be fulfilled because it is He Himself who supports spouses with His grace: “as I have loved you, love one another”. It is a gift entrusted to their freedom, with its limits and its lapses, so that the love between husband and wife needs continual purification and maturation, mutual understanding and forgiveness....
The permanent reality of marriage needs to be rediscovered, and it is marriage as a bond....
Dear brothers and sisters, we have highlighted that marriage, a gift from God, is not an ideal or a formality, but marriage, a gift from God, is a reality with its own precise consistency. Now I would like to underline that it is a good! A extraordinary good, a good of extraordinary value for all: for spouses themselves, for their children, for all the families with whom they enter into relations, for the entire Church, for all humanity. It is a good that is diffusive, that attracts young people to joyfully respond to the vocation of marriage, that continually comforts and revives spouses, that bears many and various fruits in ecclesial communion and civil society....
Dear brothers and sisters, let us always nourish in ourselves the spirit of thankfulness and gratitude to the Lord for his gifts; and in this way we will also be able to help others nourish it in the different situations of their lives. May Our Lady, faithful Virgin and Mother of Divine Grace, obtain this for us. I invoke the gifts of the Holy Spirit upon your service to the truth of marriage. With all my heart I bless you. And I ask you please to pray for me. Thank you.
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About the Author
Joe Tevington is a proudly orthodox Catholic, a husband of 36 years, a dad to two married adult children, a grandpa to two, and a civil service retiree. He is a sign language fluent certified rehabilitation counselor with graduate degrees in deafness rehabilitation, religious studies/moral theology, & Christian counseling psychology. He deeply appreciates Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life and the sanctity of the transmission of human life, as well as how they are to inform us in our apostolates and ministries.
On much lighter notes, he fancies himself to be the foremost authority on his native Brooklyn, when it comes to architecture, geography, history, Italian food, Saturday Night Fever, stick ball, stoop ball, or wiffle ball.
