Families Help Communicate Christ's Love

By Bishop Paul S. Loverde
Bishop of Arlington
(From the issue of 10/9/03)

The following homily was given by Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde on the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time during the vigil Mass for the Parents-Teens Conference at Paul VI High School on Oct. 4, 2003.

Today’s conference has been addressed to parents and their teen-age sons and daughters. You have gathered here to discuss a variety of issues, some as parents and teens together and others in groups of all parents or all teens. The goal is to encourage and to foster more conversation and understanding between parents and their teens and to create an opportunity for parents to talk to their teens about their vocations.

Listening together, discussing together and responding together: this is what you have been doing today as parents and teens who are rooted in faith and bonded by love and respect. Now, at the close of this conference, you come together as families forming God’s Family, to take part in the Eucharistic Sacrifice. In this greatest of all prayers, you are united to Christ Jesus, Who makes present among us now His Dying and Rising and Who strengthens us, first, with His Word and, then, with His very own Self in Holy Communion. He deepens the bonds that join us to Him and to each other, so that we can faithfully walk with one another as family members and together from within the family transform our society.

As we all come together to participate actively and consciously in this Holy Mass, God’s Word in today’s scripture readings instructs us about marriage as seen from His viewpoint. In other words, the basic issue before us is: how does God understand marriage, not how do we understand it? For people of faith, the true understanding of marriage comes, not from the combined synthesis of human thinking, but from God’s plan and view. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us: "The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes. These differences should not cause us to forget its common and permanent characteristics" (no. 1603).

What is God’s view? First, married people do not simply choose each other, though that is how we think it happens. No, married people are chosen by God for each other. This vocation has been created and given by God to each of them. It is a true and holy vocation. The marriage relationship implies mutual trust, and demands hard work and sacrifice.

The kind of love which lies at the core of the marriage relationship is much more than a warm feeling or spontaneous response, it is a decision, a commitment to be for the other, for keeps, "till death do us part."

The marriage relationship is not based on uncertainty, although husbands and wives will face many unexpected events, some pleasant and others not. Rather, the marriage relationship is based on certainty that Christ is with the couple in a unique way. From that moment in the wedding ceremony when they hold hands to declare their consent before God and His Church, at that moment, it is as though the current of God’s powerful love passes between them uniting them in that same love. And so it is: now and everyday of their lives, Christ is present to them, their daily partner and companion. Archbishop Sheen was fond of saying: "it takes three to get married — husband, wife and Christ."

Christ’s presence does not guarantee protection against hardship, but it does guarantee that husband and wife can go on together through it all because they are not alone; rather, Christ is with them. When we understand the marriage relationship from God’s viewpoint, then we understand why Jesus was so opposed to divorce. Please understand: there are some situations which make marriage intolerable and these demand resolution. But, from God’s viewpoint, these are not that frequent; in fact, they are more rare than we think. Because we view difficulties not from God’s viewpoint, but from our own, we run the risk of concluding too quickly that divorce is the only solution, or the best solution.

So many marriage relationships would last and endure and grow in mutual love and trust, if husband and wife understood their male-female relationship from God’s viewpoint, prayed together for guidance and strength, and lived their love for each other in the same way as Christ loves us: faithfully, generously, even sacrificially, as today’s Second Reading points out.

Moreover, God’s Word is very clear in stating that He alone is the author of marriage. There are increasing efforts in our day to redefine marriage. We are already sadly faced with the proposal to change completely the definition of marriage by extending it from the union of one man with one woman to include the union of two men or of two women. I repeat, God alone is the author of marriage and from the beginning, He created human beings male and female and intended marriage to be only the union of one male with one female. Hear again Jesus’ own teaching in today’s Gospel in which He Himself refers to what the Creator did at the beginning: "…But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh."

Marriage is a great vocation. We need good strong Christian families for the good of the Church and of society. It is within the family that the seeds of your individual vocations are planted. Many of you teens will be called by God to marriage although others will be called to the equally great vocations of priesthood and religious life. My prayer is that your being together today has empowered you as parents and teens to communicate better about the really important issues in life. Communication can sometimes be challenging, but it is so necessary to our relationships. As you continue to communicate, may each of you become stronger in your love for Christ and His Church. May you appreciate more deeply the inestimable dignity of human life from its first moment of conception to its last moment of natural death and the beauty of Christian marriage — for the life of the world. Amen.

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