The Mission of Marriage
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I was having a good conversation last night with about 25 really solid college students and I asked them what is the purpose of marriage? In their own way, basically every one of them said the purpose of Marriage is the pursuit of happiness – a sophisticated pleasure grab. The problem with that is as soon as they don’t feel their spouse is making them happy – they’ve lost the purpose of that marriage and leave. But that makes marriage about use – using the spouse as a means to happiness and to avoid loneliness. And how many times have we heard someone say: “I don’t want to be unhappy the rest of my life so I am getting a divorce.”
These young people we shocked to find out what the real purpose of marriage is to be sent on a mission from God to cooperate valiantly with the love of the Creator to have children and teach them to become saints so that God can build up His family.
CCC (1534) Holy Orders and Matrimony, are directed towards the salvation of others; if they contribute as well to personal salvation, it is through service to others that they do so. They confer a particular mission in the Church and serve to build up the people of God.
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Most people think that if you feel called to work for the salvation of others you should be a priest or nun. But the Catechism surprises us. Matrimony, like Holy Orders, is a sacrament with a mission, a mission that is directed toward the salvation of others. Matrimony is a mission to build up the kingdom of God by having kids and teaching them to be virtuous, to be excellent human persons and aspire to be saints.
The CCC 1601 says: The Sacrament of Matrimony is “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses the procreation and education of offspring;
Jesus gave only one mission to every Christian: “Go and make disciples of all nations.” Every Christian is supposed to be a disciple maker. If we are not making disciples then what are doing? Because that is what it means to be a Christian.
We are sent out by Christ to make disciples. The Church’s mission, then is to extend Christ through space and time. Great missionaries like St. Paul and St. Francis Xavier had the particular vocation of extending Christ through space – indeed to the four corners of the world. Catholic husbands and wives, on the other hand, have the challenging vocation of extending Christ through time, by raising up the next generation of Christians and saints.
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Because we have lost the true purpose of Marriage and made it about our personal pleasure rather than a mission from God to build up the Kingdom, marriages have plummeted by 2/3 since 1970. Divorce has risen from 20 to over 50 %. And Now that we have separated marriage, sex and babies, through contraception and abortion, every first world country in under replacement level for children. It takes 2.15 children per woman to keep your population at zero growth. The birthrate in America is currently at 1.7% because of contraception, abortion, the sterilization of women and men, the refusal to get married and the rise in divorce.
A recent study predicted 23 countries would see their populations cut in half by the end of this century. By 2100 it is quite possible that Europeans and Christianity in Europe will be well on their if not extinct, and Europe will become completely Muslim. Not because of Islamic invasion but because Europeans rejected Jesus, lost hope in life and refused to have children.
No society can sustain itself if it will not have children, including the Church. The refusal to have children is societal, cultural and religious suicide.
The devil wants to destroy the fundamental cell of society, marriage and family so that he can destroy everything. The devil has only one obsession – destroy.
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But there is much hope because the young adults I met with are bored with living for themselves, bored with living a life of use. They long for meaning and purpose. They long to receive the call from God to live a valiant and heroic life of love and self-sacrifice. When I read this passage from the Catechism to them they were completely inspired and wanted to answer this call:
CCC 1652 By its very nature the institution of marriage and married love (sex) is ordered to the procreation and education of the offspring and it is in them that it finds its crowning glory.
Children are the supreme gift of marriage and contribute greatly to the good of the parents themselves….wishing to associate them in a special way in his own creative work, God blessed man and woman with the words: Be fruitful and multiply. Hence, true married love and the whole structure of family life which results from it, without diminishing the other ends of marriage, are directed to disposing couples to cooperate valiantly with the love of the Creator and Savior, who through them will increase and enrich his family from day to day.
Young people are being barraged with the message that children would ruin their lives.
We must be heralds of the truth everywhere that the greatest blessing is to have kids and the greatest joy comes from having and raising children.
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This call from God to Heroic Love extends to the formation of our children. CCC 1656-57 says: In our own time, in a world often alien and even hostile to faith, believing families are of primary importance as centers of living, radiant faith. For this reason, the Second Vatican Council, using an ancient expression, calls the family the Domestic Church. It is in the bosom of the family that parents are "by word and example . . . the first heralds of the faith with regard to their children.
It is here that the father of the family, the mother, children, and all members of the family exercise the priesthood of the baptized in a privileged way "by the reception of the sacraments, prayer and thanksgiving, the witness of a holy life, and self-denial and active charity." Thus the home is the first school of Christian life and "a school for human enrichment." Here one learns endurance and the joy of work, fraternal love, generous - even repeated - forgiveness, and above all divine worship in prayer and the offering of one's life.
When parents teach their kids the truths of the faith, how to pray and how to be virtuous…
· The children have a better chance of reaching their full potential
· And Dad and Mom grow in love, faith and virtue by forming their children in the same.
o I have benefited way more than my children by trying to teach them the truths of the Catholic faith, by teaching them how to have a deep life in prayer and by trying to teach them to be virtuous.
The Church and Catholic Schools can support the parents by supplying what they are not able.
· But they are not to replace the duties of the parents as the first and primary educators in faith, morals and prayer.
When parents delegate these duties to others
· The benefits to Both the children and the parents are diminished