This time of year, many young people take the plunge. No, not an ice bath. It’s the time proposals are made and plans set in motion for a wedding. I share an article from the Couple to Couple League, a Catholic organization dedicated to strengthening marriages and families, and hence society at large. More and more Catholic young people have lost the connection between the human love of husband and wife and the nature of God’s sacramental grace which is divine love. 

For anyone who doesn’t see marriage as a sacrament, this mediation may change their minds. If marriage is not a sacrament, then God is a fool. Deacon Turrentine asks… “Do you “fall in love”? Or do you choose to love? Is love passive or active? Our original experience of love is passive. We first receive love, from our parents, other people, from God. Love evokes love. In its full development, love is not only active but life giving. 

We choose to love even when sacrifice is required and our sacrificial love helps others learn to love. Love is receptive. Love is active. Learning how to blend these two principles to combine them in a fruitful unity, is essential to marriage as it has been designed by God. A couple tries to weave their lives together, giving and receiving to create their own story of “two becoming one”. Their unique story is truly a love story insofar as it is written in the context of God’s redemptive story. God is the ultimate mystery of love. It reflects both the sacrificial love of Jesus for his Church and the fruitful love of the Trinity. 

Marriage is intended by God to unite man and woman and to give life. The unshakable unity of this love creates the right conditions to bring forth children and educate them in love. And children expand and deepen the unity of the parents who truly become one flesh in each of their offspring. The challenging and ennobling mysteries of real love are obscured by the sadly impoverished view of sex and marriage prevalent in our society, which is focused on getting rather than giving, on pleasure rather than sacrificial love. So many couples have never heard a compelling presentation of the beauty of God’s plan for marriage. 

Christians should know that God intends marriage and family to be a school of love, a sacred community in which we constantly receive and grow in love and learn to share it with others.”