...today on World Marriage Day and St. Valentine's Day. Celebrating the fruits of our married love and celebrating with Arnaldo's ice cream the fruits of Our Lord's Sacraments, Confession and the Eucharist.
Marriage is an act of will that signifies and involves a mutual gift, which unites the spouses and binds them to their eventual souls, with whom they make up a sole family - a domestic church. ~Pope John Paul II
(Giving our sweet treasures a small sign of our LOVE for them with posies of rosies, yesterday before our 4th annual St. Valentine's Dance.)
Marriage is an act of will that signifies and involves a mutual gift, which unites the spouses and binds them to their eventual souls, with whom they make up a sole family - a domestic church. ~Pope John Paul II
(Giving our sweet treasures a small sign of our LOVE for them with posies of rosies, yesterday before our 4th annual St. Valentine's Dance.)
"We must grow in wisdom, as Christ did, by deepening our
understanding of the sacramental life through the very substance of
every day. Until there is nothing we see or touch that is not charged
with wonder for us, though it is something as familiar as the bread on
the table. And there is nothing that we do, though it be no more than
filling a glass with water for a child, which does not sweep God's
sacramental plan through our thoughts, like a great wave of grace
washing them clean from sin and the sorrow that is inseparable from it.
Then
we can increase joy through compassion, even where there is incurable
suffering, for if we even want to put on Christ's personality we shall
radiate his light, and he is the light which shines in darkness, which
darkness cannot overcome.
In matrimony, it is
the bride and the bridegroom who give one another the grace of the
sacrament; and it goes on, as they grow together in one another's love, a
gradual increase of joy, which nothing, ultimately, can take away from
them. In a sense, they are one another's priests, because their life is a
lifelong giving and taking in Christ's life. Everything in their lives
has a quality of miracle; all their words of compassion or forgiveness
are in a sense little absolutions; their union a communion with Christ.
Every breaking of bread at their table, a remembrance and more than a
remembrance of him.
Human marriage is only a
symbol, a shadow, of the marriage of Christ with his Church, of the
continual growing together in creative love, of the daily transformation
of everything that so much as touches the hem of his garment; and it is
WE who are the Church!
By our Baptism we are
bidden to the marriage feast where water is changed to wine. Cana is an
image of our Christ-life on earth, but Christ is only a guest; he is the
bridegroom with whom we must rejoice, who desires for everyone who
loves him 'that my joy may be yours, and the measure of your joy may be
filled up.' " (Jn. 15:11)
--Caryll Houslander
