ARCHDIOCESE OF PHILADELPHIA

Dear Friends,

Thank you for the gracious invitation to join with you this afternoon as you conclude this day dedicated to the study of natural family planning under the theme, Marriage: A Decision to Love.  I am grateful for the collaboration of the Philadelphia Natural Family Planning Network, the Philadelphia Catholic Medical Association, St. Mary Medical Center and the Archdiocese of Philadelphia Family Life Office in this important effort.  How fitting that this day takes place on March 19, the Solemnity of St. Joseph, the Husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

This afternoon, in Southampton, the Culture of Life meets the Civilization of Love.  The two meet, as they always do, first in husband and wife in marriage.  On the day of their marriage, when a baptized man and a baptized woman come together and freely express consent in their marriage vows, something utterly new comes into existence.  Something that did not exist prior to their vows now comes to be.  This reality did not exist during the readings of the wedding Mass, it did not exist at the rehearsal, it did not exist throughout their engagement, or the time when they were dating.  When a man and a woman utter their consent in marriage, something completely and entirely new comes into existence:  an indissoluble sacred bond. When they exchange consent an unbreakable sacred bond arises between them―the bond of marriage.  And in the bond of marriage life and love meet.

This sacred bond is not the sum of their life history.  It is not the sum of their communication skills, their ability to resolve conflict or agree on every issue.  This sacred bond plunges much deeper and is firmly fixed in one overwhelming reality.  Their bond of marriage is fixed deep in the love that Jesus Christ has for His Church.  Every Christian marriage participates directly in the absolute, unending love that Jesus Christ has for His Bride, the Church.  This is why the bond of marriage is unbreakable, because Jesus Christ never stops loving His Church.  Husband and wife in marriage are a window that allows everyone to see not simply their own efforts at love but, above all else, the love that Jesus has for the Church.  This is why Christian matrimony is a Sacrament:  Marriage is a cause and sign of grace so that husband and wife are strengthened to live their supernatural mission.

At the heart of this supernatural mission is the openness of husband and wife to new life.  The indissoluble bond that arises with their consent is consummated in and through the two-in-one-flesh union, the conjugal sexual act in marriage.  The vows of marriage―“I take you to be mine, I promise to be true to you, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, I will love you and honor you all the days of my life”―these vows express a total gift of self.  In the conjugal act these vows are reiterated in the language of the body.  The husband takes everything he is and makes a gift of self to his wife.  The wife takes everything she is and makes a gift of self to her husband.  The conjugal act is the culmination of the daily and ordinary love that husband and wife express every day.  In the daily moments of life the spouses are to be a gift of self.  In so many different ways they show forth the love of Christ for the Church.  These include when they negotiate their financial budget, how to pay the rent, how they socialize, or how they will cooperate on issues in which they often disagree. 

As the Servant of God Pope John Paul II said: “God’s plan for marriage and the family touches men and women in the concreteness of their daily existence…” (Familiaris Consortio, 4). As they share the household duties, coordinate work schedules, spend time together, discuss the education of their children, deal with hardship and tragedy, pray and worship together, consider questions of health and transitions in life; their first and last words must always be the vows on which their marriage is founded:  “I take you to be mine, I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.”  These words must continue every day of their life.  These words are their center of gravity.  These words are not confined to the wedding video or  the marriage album.  They must animate their every act.  In particular, these words animate the conjugal act, the marital act which culminates the expression of their love.

As Pope Pius XI taught in 1930, one of the purposes of marriage is the “mutual inward molding of husband and wife” (Casti Connubii, 24). Natural Family Planning, lived in truth and authenticity, is the genuine lifestyle that expresses the vows of marriage in a most clear manner.  The moment of their love in the conjugal act is also the moment of life.  When husband and wife make a complete and total gift of self in the conjugal act, that moment of love is the moment of life.  It is then that God has designed and natural reason discerns that a human life can come into being.  The nature of love is life, and the nature of life is love.  Natural Family Planning as a lifestyle, not simply as a method, fully actualizes and protects the moment of love as the moment of life.  In fact, it is more than a lifestyle, it is a spirituality of marriage.  Natural Family Planning―again, lived as an authentic way of life―illuminates marriage as a total gift of self in love, in particular as a sacrificial gift of love.  Every act of husband and wife is a gift to each other, a gift to their children and a gift to society.  This is the beauty of sacrifice.  Pope Benedict XVI, in his most recent encyclical letter, Caritas in Veritate, points out that the married couple is located at “the foundation of society” as they mutually accept one another in openness to life (Caritas in Veritate, 15).

The promise of the marriage vows, and the expression of that full and complete promise every day, and in particular, in the conjugal act, is the manner in which husband and wife show forth to the world the love of Jesus Christ for His Church.  Marriage is a sacred institution, a vocation to holiness, with its own proper apostolic work in the midst of the world.  The sacred bond between husband and wife illumines the whole behavior of the married couple.  It gives them a moral power that shows forth heroism in day-to-day life.  In this, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, they transform one another, their children, and the world.  They transform each moment to be a moment for Christ and His Church.

The secular culture with its emphasis on relativism attempts to deconstruct the meaning of marriage.  The popular culture reduces the meaning of marriage such that marriage is about the individual rather than about husband and wife.  Through the ideologies and false theories of consumerism, materialism, and pleasure seeking, marriage is reduced to being simply a means to highlight one’s own individuality.  Painfully, these ideologies lead to acceptance of promiscuity, adultery, contraception, sterilization, and divorce.  These symptoms of the culture of death reject the sacred bond, fidelity to the total gift of self, and the crowing good of the child in marriage. 

Pope Paul VI predicted in Humanae Vitae that, if the birth control pill and the contraceptive mentality entered society, various things would happen:  there would be a general lowering of morality accompanied by a rise in marital infidelity; there would be a lowering of respect for women; and governments would begin to impose contraception on their people.  He predicted these things in 1968.  Unfortunately, the birth control pill was accepted, and all these effects have come to pass.

Especially troubling today is the contemporary claim that persons of the same sex can legally “marry.” Marriage, life-giving love, finds an essential coordinate in the sexual difference of man to woman and woman to man; only from their difference does an authentic union arise.  Right reason tells us that sexual difference inscribed in the nature of man and woman is essential to the institution of marriage.  Divine Revelation confirms the witness of reason.  It is not in any way discrimination to stand up for marriage as the union of one man and one woman.  In fact, it is a bold witness to true freedom.

The contemporary culture wants to silence the authentic language of the body.  It wants to drown out and reduce the meaning of the body simply to pleasure.  As Pope John Paul II proclaimed so clearly, the contraceptive mentality “contradicts the full truth of the sexual act as the expression of conjugal love.” (Evangelium Vitae, 13). Pope Benedict XVI likewise proclaims, “Openness to life is at the center of all true development” (Caritas in Veritate, 28). The deliberate separation of life and love is the tragic mistake at the center of the culture of death.  Only the intersection of the Culture of Life with the Civilization of Love, the intersection spread out before us in Southampton this afternoon, can show the world the true path of beauty, the beauty of marriage between one man and one woman, the beauty of Christ’s love for His Church.  Among the great legacy of Pope John Paul II is his extensive teaching on the human person and marriage.  His five years of teaching on the theology of the body, his Apostolic Exhortation On the Family, his Letter to Families, and his Apostolic Letter On the Dignity and Vocation of Women form the nucleus of his extensive outreach to married couples and the family.

 The sacramental ministry of the Church, especially the Sacrament of the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Penance, are the basis of the Church’s pastoral outreach to married couples. The pastoral outreach of the Church continues.  Through the daily ministry of priests and deacons, through the work and staff of the family life office, marriage preparation teams, doctors, nurses and other medical professionals, parish leaders, married persons, engaged couples and Respect Life teams, we are summoned to a cultural imperative―to reclaim marriage as a total gift of self whose crowning gift is found in the child.  Married couples who experience the pain of infertility can and do still reach this crowning gift because they possess, even in their times of suffering, a deep spiritual fruitfulness by which they fully actualize the gift of self.  They also do this in and through adoption of a child and the generous gift they give to society and the Church.  Natural Family Planning is the lens which permits us to see how the total gift of self in marriage is renewed and reclaimed. 

Pope Benedict XVI, in his Post-Synodal Exhortation on the Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church, Verbum Domini, emphasizes that “it must never be forgotten that the word of God is at the very origin of marriage (cf. Gn 2:24) and that Jesus Himself made marriage one of the institutions of His Kingdom (cf. Mt 19:4-8), elevating to a sacrament what was inscribed in human nature from the beginning” (Verbum Domini, 85). Among the preeminent tasks of the New Evangelization is the renewal of marriage in the life and ministry of the Church and in society as a whole.  This afternoon, in Southampton, at the parish of Our Lady of Good Counsel, as the Culture of Life meets the Civilization of Love, we have taken a great stride forward in the New Evangelization, as we proclaim the beauty of married love and the inviolable dignity of human life.  Thank you for your personal witness, for the many sacrifices you make and for the opportunity to be with you this afternoon.  May God richly bless you and your families as we travel together  the path to holiness.  Thank you.