“Of all the kinds of human fruitfulness, marriage is unique,” Pope Francis said on August 25, 2018. “It is about a love that gives rise to new life.”
His remarks came in an address to 350 married and engaged couples in Dublin’s historic Pro-Cathedral of Saint Mary’s. It was a gathering he requested as part of his participation in the World Meeting of Families.
Referring to “the culture of the provisional” he said we live in a world in which it seems nothing lasts for long. It seems as if nothing “precious” lasts for long.
“If I feel hungry or thirsty, I can eat; but my feeling of being full does not last even a day,” the Holy Father said. “If I have a job, I know that I might lose it against my will, or I may have to choose a different career.
“It is even hard to keep track of the world as it changes all around us, as people come and go in our lives, as promises are made but often broken or left unfulfilled.”
But he pointed to marriage as something permanent. A marriage in the Church, a sacrament, in which’s the Lord’s grace sustains and strengthens.
“When a Christian man and a woman enter into the bond of marriage, the Lord’s grace enables them freely to promise one another an exclusive and enduring love,” Francis explained. “Their union thus becomes a sacramental sign of the new and eternal covenant between the Lord and his bride, the Church. Jesus is ever present in their midst”
The Holy Father said that love is God’s plan for the whole human family. In fact, it is His dream and we need to make it our own.
“The virtues and truths the Lord teaches us are not necessarily popular in today’s world, which has little use for the weak, the vulnerable and all those it deems “unproductive”, the Pope lamented. “The world tells us to be strong and independent, with little care for those who are alone or sad, rejected or sick, not yet born or dying.
“By your example, may your children be guided to become a kinder, more loving, more faith-filled generation, for the renewal of the Church and of all Irish society.”
The Pope’s Full Address
