Vocation to Marriage
Marriage is not a vocation for the fact that the young person feels normal and natural inclination toward the opposite sex or the desire to have someone near her would be so, as often happens, unfortunately, a simple "AUTO-CALL!
It becomes therefore important to make a serious process of discernment to see if this is the will of God for us.
The sacrament of marriage is in fact on two that come to be and is modeled on the alliance that binds to the Church Jesus Christ loved the church and gave himself for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing of water with the word, to make present the glorious church without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but holy and without blemish (Eph 5:25-27). The sacrament of marriage, modeled on the alliance of Christ His Church, conforms to this mystery of love, where the spouses in the covenant of allegiance, they walk toward their measure of holiness.
In the sacrament of the marriage the spouses takes in the other the presence of God, and implies a commitment where they are living in mutual love good times and bad, in joy and sorrow, till death do them part. Living as Christian spouses implies, today more than ever, great courage and strength to go against the stresses of our society that calls hedonism, selfish to retreat to civilian disengagement, the blatant infidelity.
In a book on marriage preparation with the significant title "It's just one love," Chiara Lubich, for a friend next to marry, so eloquently writes:
"Listen to me ... There is an ideal in life that surpasses all: love. Love whom? God He lives in the heart of all creatures. But you, because that is His will, you must see, particularly in a heart in that of M. Dearest M., you must love him more than you love him because ... God dwells in his heart. Understand. For you to love God is shown as: loving M. as you can. For him deny your selfishness, your star will shut up in yourself, your comfortable, all your flaws. For him, it will increase your patience, perfect your ability to muther, know quiet when someone is wrong. If You try to see Jesus in him, then your love for him will never end... "
As we read, Chiara Lubich had understood that for M. the will of God was the marriage, warning her that she still had to contend with both its limitations and with those of the spouse, because the ideal couple does not exist. Just as John Paul II reminds us:
“You are thinking about love and the choices it entails, and I imagine that you agree: what is really important in life is the choice of the person who will share it with you. But be careful! Every human person has inevitable limits: even in the most successful of marriages there is always a certain amount of disappointment. So then, dear friends, does not this confirm what we heard the Apostle Peter say? Every human being finds himself sooner or later saying what he said: “To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life”. Only Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God and of Mary, the eternal Word of the Father born two thousand years ago at Bethlehem in Judaea, is capable of satisfying the deepest aspirations of the human heart.
In Peter’s question: “To whom shall we go?” the answer regarding the path to follow is already given. It is the path that leads to Christ.
(John Paul II, Homily for the closure of the XV World Youth Day, Tor Vergata, Sunday 20 August 2000)
