Marriage

“ The marriage-sacrament therefore is not simply a living image of the mystery of Christ and the Church, along the lines of a “portrait in a mirror.” Not only can it reveal this mystery, but it can also contain it. The union of Christ and the Church encompasses the dimensions of space and time and yet is contained in the union of two hearts who love each other. Because where there is love, there is the secret of the world and there too is the mystery of God. ”

“ Two human beings approach one another. They place their two hands in each other, their two souls, their two lives in each other. What are they? Eddies of aspirations and instincts, tumults of vague desires and failings. What do they give each other? Their humanity as it is, their life as it will be: halfway between good and evil. Those who assist them and who have “experience” smile at “their illusions” or take pity on them: they know that life takes it upon itself to dissipate the most generous chimeras.
And they would be right, if a Third did not enter the game. For Christ himself comes to seal the union of these two creatures. Every marriage, like every sacrament, is conferred by Christ. It matters little whether the priest-witness is “Bishop So-and-So,” “Reverend Father What’s-his-name,” or an unknown curate: it is Christ who marries the young spouses, and they themselves serve as his ministers. From then on, everything changes. This human union, this love of clay, the Lord himself takes charge of it. ”

“Have I succeeded in showing that marriage, through its demands and its riches, through its victories and its defeats, and above all through all the sacramental graces it entails, is indeed a path toward holiness? As we have seen, it matures the human heart through all that it requires in terms of gifts and renunciations; it fosters the growth of charity in the home and in each of the spouses, to the point of bringing them to the threshold of a personal encounter with Christ, a true departure in the direction of holiness. If it happens that the comfort of a conjugal love that is still too human is then disrupted, it is only to allow the spouses to access an entirely new love ‘in the Lord.’”

“At the end of this conference, I would like to leave you in the presence of the home of Joseph and Mary. Not to imply that Christian life in marriage would require total continence, but to invite you to contemplate the most perfect conjugal love. This marriage is unique in that it is the union of two beings previously consecrated to God and whom God gives to one another: they begin where others only arrive—and even then very imperfectly—after a laborious journey. But they only love each other all the more for it. What conjugal love could claim to rival theirs? They love each other with the very love of God: ‘The force by which I love you is no different from that by which you exist’; does this phrase from a heroine of Claudel not suit to translate their experience? Had Christ given them the great instruction he left to his apostles: ‘Be one as my Father and I are one’? I do not know, but it is quite certain that they realized this ideal better than anyone. And that is why there is no higher model, for spouses who aspire to holiness, than the marriage of Joseph and Mary.”