Pro-love, pro-marriage, pro-family, pro-life and pro-society
Marriage Mass 2024
It is right that we as the Catholic community acknowledge and celebrate those couples who have significant marriage milestones.
In rejoicing with them we are also declaring our appreciation of the beauty and dignity of the Sacrament of Matrimony and its vital role in the fulfilment of God’s plan for human life. Such marriages are a blessing for the Church and a gift to the society.
We congratulate them knowing that they have been faithful to each other “through good times and bad”, as the marriage vows state.
They are a witness and encouragement to all of us that marriage is a normal path for human life and the way to find an abiding happiness and peace. These couples today declare that a bold declaration made in the marriage ceremony that “I will love you all the days of my life” is possible to be fulfilled.
Marriage and family are integral to God’s good plan for human life. He created Adam and Eve, a man and a woman, with the specific intention that they come together and enter a lifelong union.
God wisely created masculinity and femininity as complementary to each other, so that, very simply, the two could become one. In the wisdom of the Creator marriage is far more than a partnership or simply a contractual agreement.
At the physical, emotional, psychological, and indeed at the spiritual level, a man and a woman find a bond grounded in a mutual need for the other which, in fact, brings about a completion of themselves.
When the Scriptures declared that “it is not good for the man to be alone”, God’s plan was to create woman so that life could be lived in companionship.
Equal in dignity yet complementary in character the union of man and woman in marriage forges a union at great depth with an extraordinary capacity for endurance.
And it does not stop there. This union is not only for the good of the man and woman. Marriage was intended by God to be fruitful, as the Lord commanded Adam and Eve: “Increase and multiply and fill the earth”.
Marriage is about family, and the marriage union is completed by the generation of new life.
Very simply we can say that “love gives life”. This is a biological fact and the wonder of the way in which new life is formed and nurtured. We cannot speak about marriage without speaking about family.
Family is the natural community in which human social nature is experienced and nurtured. It makes a unique and irreplaceable contribution to the good of human society.
The family as a community of persons is the first human ‘society’. It is at the very heart of the common good of humanity.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains it in this way:
The family is the original cell of social life. It is the natural society in which husband and wife are called to give themselves in love and in the gift of life.
Authority, stability, and a life of relationships within the family constitute the foundations for freedom, security, and fraternity within society.
The family is the community in which, from childhood, one can learn moral values, begin to honour God, and make good use of freedom. Family life is an initiation into life in society. (CCC 2207)
Marriage and the family are of public interest. They are fundamental to the public good of the society and, so, entitled to special consideration and care from the State.
Other relationships do not have the same fundamental relationship to the good of society and to the bringing up of children as the family based in the marriage union.
Thus, the Catholic Catechism teaches:
A man and a woman united in marriage, together with their children, form a family. This institution is prior to any recognition by public authority, which has an obligation to recognize it. It should be considered the normal reference point by which the different forms of family relationship are to be evaluated. (CCC 2202)
It is very true that the health and wellbeing of marriages and families directly affects the health and wellbeing of society.
Attacks on family and threats to the true meaning of marriage and family threaten to weaken the quality of human life in general and undermine the social fabric.
The Church and society need good, strong marriages and families. Thus, the Church does and must continue to defend God’s good plan for marriage and family.
The Church is and will always remain pro-love, pro-marriage, pro-family, pro-life and pro-society.
To the couples celebrating significant milestones today we salute you and to all couples here today may the Lord continue to grant you the grace to embrace and live God’s good plan for marriage and family.
Archbishop Julian Porteous
Sunday, 11 February 2024