“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. So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.” (Mk 10:6-9)
“Marriage is the intimate, exclusive, indissoluble communion of life and love entered by man and woman at the design of the Creator for the purpose of their own good and the procreation and education of children; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a Sacrament.” Gaudium et Spes, 48
Sacred Scripture begins with the creation of man and woman in the image and likeness of God and concludes with a vision of the “wedding feast of the Lamb.” Through- out the Old Testament God’s love for his people is described as the love of a husband for his bride. In the New Testament, that love is revealed in person of Christ who comes as the Heavenly Bridegroom to unite Himself indissolubly to His Bride, the Church. Children are not additions to marriage and conjugal love, but spring from the heart of the spouses’ mutual self-giving as its fruit.
In a series of public audiences, Pope St. John Paul II brought about a dramatic development in Catholic thinking by exploring how God has revealed Himself in man and woman, who are made in His image and likeness. These series of audiences are now called the “theology of the body.” In a dramatic way, the Holy Father discussed how the human body reveals the mystery of God. And that mystery – which has been fully revealed in Jesus Christ – is that God is love. And since God is love in a relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the theology of the body means that the differences in the bodies of men and women reveal the mystery of divine love in the world by the call of the two to become one flesh.
Briefly stated, the mystery of the marital union is a sign on earth of the eternal mystery of love found in the Trinity. In the words of classical theology, the Father “generates” the Son, and from them both “proceeds” the Holy Spirit. The love of each person of the Trinity for each other is full and complete. Nothing is held back. The Holy Father saw the total self-giving that takes place in marital love as a reflection of the Trinity. From the total self-giving of the spouses to each other proceeds the gift of life in children.
On this Respect Life Sunday, we thank God for the gift of marriage, and especially for the gift of so many children in our parish. May we be fruitful and multiply, and may we always participate in God’s loving plan. And let us repent and fast and pray for an end of the great spiritual poverty that is legalized abortion. Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the unborn, pray for us!
(Rev. Msgr.) Christopher H. Nalty
msgr.nalty@goodshepherdparishNOLA.com
