This weekend I am in Chicago for a Worldwide Marriage Encounter Convention…and not just any convention but the 50th Anniversary convention. I have been part of WWME for less than 10 of these years but they have been fruitful and the mission of WWME is an important and life-giving part of my ministry.
One of the things I remind myself of over and over again is that if it is important then I must make time for this prayer, conversation or work in my busy life. It is a decision to love where I am called to spend my time, talent and treasure on where Jesus calls me to serve in His Catholic Church.
One of the greatest treasures I receive in working in this ministry is the continual discovery of the deepness of the Catholic teaching on the Sacramental love of husband and wife. It is especially clear in the intimacy shared between husband and wife that God is present and life-giving in these fruitful and joyous gifts of blessings.
In the document “Love is Our Mission: The Family Fully Alive” the United States Bishops write,“Material creation has spiritual meaning, which has implications for the way we live as male and female. Our sexuality has purpose. Our bodies are not simply shells for the soul or sensory machines for the brain. Nor are they raw material we can freely abuse or reprogram. For Christians, body and spirit are profoundly integrated. Each human being is a unity body and soul. (LIOM #39) This fundamental Christian understanding of how we are created begins to unfold the blessings shared in life. There is purpose and meaning to our physical, mental and spiritual differences and seeking to live and celebrate these differences open our eyes to the wonder of sacramental love in our lives.
The founder of the Marriage Encounter movement, Fr. Chuck Gallagher, S.J. in his book “The Marriage Encounter” blesses us with this wisdom, “Marriage calls for a full faithfulness—a striving for total awareness. It is not simply balancing life-styles and working out a give-and-take arrangement that leaves both parties content. The aim is full integration, true oneness, complete involvement.” (ME p143) This call to sacramental love and unity of fidelity, not simply of body, but of the soul. The unity displayed between the Father and the Son where Jesus declares we are called that in marital love the husband and wife “may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”
(Jn 17:21)
The spousal gift of husband and wife, as Pope Francis reminds us in “Amoris Laetitia” unites the married couple in a mission where, “He or she is a companion on life’s journey, one with whom to face life’s difficulties and enjoy its pleasures. This satisfaction is part of the affection proper to conjugal love. There is no guarantee that we will feel the same way all through life. Yet if a couple can come up with a shared and lasting life project, they can love one another and live as one until death do them part, enjoying an enriching intimacy. (AL #163) This “shared and lasting life project” is founded in the generosity and abundance of God’s love for us. But it takes work as we grow from single, to couple, to a family founded on the gracious gift of life where we are made in the image and likeness of God. It is a shared work, where husband and wife model and mold each other as instruments of God’s grace in escorting each other toward the heavenly goal.
Once more our Bishops write, “Marriage exists because procreation and communion, biology and God’s covenant, nature and super-nature, together undergird what it means to be “human.” Marriage exists because we discover and accept, rather than invent or renegotiate the vocation to self giving which is intrinsic to being created male and female under the covenant.” (LIOM #41) What are we called to discover and accept…simply we are happier and holier when we choose to give in sacrificial love. Marriage, in sacramental union, is not the demanding debasement of slavery to another but rather the self donation of the maleness and femaleness to the other in love. When the world seeks to remake marriage in its image it becomes a contract of debts and demands whereas the covenant of God’s love is one of gift and service without counting the costs.
Pope Francis shares with us a realistic and hope filled desire for marriage when he writes, “A person can certainly channel his passions in a beautiful and healthy way, increasingly pointing them towards altruism and an integrated self-fulfilment that can only enrich interpersonal relationships in the heart of the family. This does not mean renouncing moments of intense enjoyment, but rather integrating them with other moments of generous commitment, patient hope, inevitable weariness and struggle to achieve an ideal. Family life is all this, and it deserves to be lived to the fullest. (AL #148) Marriage calls us to live towards another as we unite our love to God. Husband and wife share the passionate embrace of marriage in the giving of one to the other in equal dignity and blessing. The “heart of the family” is the Sacrament of Marriage, the unity of one to the other in fruitful and faithful love where the call the forgiveness and reconciliation are celebrated and enjoyed through the sorrows of love.
Fr. Gallagher gives us this final word of blessing, “Marriage calls a man and a woman to be fully open to each other to give and receive their personhood. It calls for a total and irrevocable commitment to find themselves in each other. This is fidelity.” (ME p 142)

God Bless
Fr. Mark