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Instruction to the Marrying Couple
My dear friends, you are about to enter into a union that is most sacred and most serious. It is most sacred because it was
established by God himself. It is most serious because it will bind you together for life in a relationship so close and so
intimate that it will profoundly affect your entire future. That future, with its hopes and its disappointments, its successes
and its failures, its pleasures and its pains, its joys and its sorrows, is hidden from your eyes. You know that these elements
are part of every life and should be expected in your own. And so, not knowing what is before you, you take each other for
better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death.
Truly, then these words are most serious. It is a beautiful tribute to your faith in each other that, recognizing their full
import, you are nevertheless so willing and ready to pronounce them. And because these words involve such solemn obligations,
it is most fitting that you rest the security of your wedded life upon the great principle of self-sacrifice. And so you begin
your married life with the voluntary and complete surrender of your individual lives in the interest of the deeper and wider
life which you are to have in common. Henceforth you belong entirely to each other. You will be one in mind, one in heart,
and one in affections. And whatever sacrifices you may hereafter be required to make for the preservation of this mutual life,
always make them generously. Sacrifice is usually difficult and irksome. Only love can make it easy; and perfect love can
make it a joy. We are willing to give in proportion as we love. And when love is perfect, the sacrifice is complete. God so
loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son; and the Son so loved us that he gave himself for our salvation. Greater
love than this no one has, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
No greater blessing can come to your married life than pure, conjugal love, loyal and true to the end. May this love with
which you join your hands and hearts today never fail but grow deeper and stronger as the years go on. And if true love and
the unselfish spirit of perfect sacrifice guide your every action, you can expect the greatest measure of earthly happiness
that may be allotted to humans in this vale of tears. The rest is in the hands of God. Nor will God be wanting to your needs:
He will pledge you the lifelong support of his graces in the holy sacrament you are now going to receive.
Cited in Liguorian (June, 1987), 15-16.
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