News Item: : Our 15th Wedding Anniversary - Deo Gratias!
(Category: Torch of The Faith News)
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Thursday 27 April 2017 - 08:47:40

Canticle of Canticles (Song of Solomon) 2:10-11: Behold my beloved speaketh to me: Arise, make haste, my love, my dove, my beautiful one and come. For winter is now past, the rain is over and gone. When we were married on 27th April, 2002, Angie had these words inscribed on the front of the Mass booklets that she had designed and made for the guests to our wedding ceremony and Nuptial Mass.  

With Thanksgiving

We give thanks to God for the fact that we were joined together in Holy Matrimony 15 years ago today. It is hard to believe that the time has gone by so fast!

We want to take this opportunity to again testify to the great beauty and graces of the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, especially when it is consciously lived in and for Our Lord Jesus Christ.

The true teachings of the Catholic Church on Holy Matrimony were given by Christ; and it is from His Holy Spirit that they continue to receive their life-giving power today. Those clear teachings have been safeguarded and handed down from the Apostles. They may be found expressed with pristine clarity in the Sacred Scriptures and through a whole body of authorative teaching documents, such as: Arcanum Divinae; Casti Connubii; Humanae Vitae; Familiaris Consortio; The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality; The Catechism of the Council of Trent; The Catechism of the Catholic Church; and The Code of Canon Law.

These truths cannot be reduced to a mere ideal. In reality, they are the very essence of genuine marriage. They are the foundational bedrock of authentic living for God and one's spouse, the wellbeing of children, the strength of the Church and the health of society.

Christ's Truth Has Rescued Us and Given Us Life

By God's grace, it has been our experience as a married couple, that by rooting our lives in the revealed truths of the Catholic Faith, Our Blessed Lord has enabled us to become increasingly converted to Him; and to thus become ever more receptive to the graces and blessings He gives to help bring growth through the many hopes, joys, disappointments and sufferings of this passing world.

Without Christ and the grace He gives, we had only darkness and sin; with Him we have been given light and life.

As with all of the Sacraments of the Catholic Church, the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony is an efficacious sign that makes actual the thing which it signifies. This is why it makes no sense whatsoever for Modernists to attempt to sunder Catholic doctrine from pastoral practice.

Rooted in the sublime teachings of St. Paul in Ephesians 5, the Catechism of the Council of Trent authoratively teaches:-

For as marriage, as a natural union, was instituted from the beginning for the propagation of the human race, so was it subsequently invested with the dignity of a sacrament, for the procreation and education of a people in the religion and worship of the true God and of Christ our Saviour. For when Christ the Lord would give some sign of that very close union which subsists between Him and His Church, and of His boundless love towards us, He made known the dignity of so great a mystery principally by this holy union of man and wife; and the extreme aptitude of the illustration may be understood from this, that of all of human relations no one is more binding among men than the tie of marriage, and by it a man and woman are united in the closest bonds of affection and love. Hence it is that the Sacred Scriptures frequently place before our eyes, under the similitude of marriage, this divine union of Christ and His Church (Catechism of the Council of Trent, Part II, Chapter VIII, Question XV).

In light of these beautiful truths, regarding the very essence - rather than the mere ideal - of Holy Matrimony, it becomes even more clear why things like cohabitation, sexual activity outside of marriage, contraception, IVF, divorce/re-''marriage'' and homosexual activity offend against God and both the Natural and Divine Law; whilst in some sense also obscuring, or even wounding, the efficacious sign which Holy Matrimony gives to the world of God's Love.

The Gift and Challenge of Chastity

All people are called to live chastely and fulfill the requirements of chastity which accord with their given state in life. Due to the fallen nature of mankind, chastity is often both difficult and demanding. This is especially so in a society which has rejected God and scoffs at the very notion of chaste love. Nevertheless, chastity is no less beautiful for all of that.

We must never forget that, whilst chastity requires great effort and self-mastery, it is always primarily a work of God's free and unmerited gift of grace.

Our Lord Jesus Christ requires that His followers be chaste; at the same time, He gives them the means to accomplish that chastity.

It is the part of Catholics to willfully and humbly co-operate with that grace, through prayer, fasting, charitable acts and, above all, worthy, loving and frequent reception of the Sacraments of Holy Church.

St. Philip Neri used to teach that it was impossible to live chastely without Confession and the Holy Eucharist. St. Padre Pio spoke of these Sacraments as the medicine to withstand the contagion which increasingly surrounds us in these times. We need to receive Divine Love first, if we are then to be able to love ourselves, our spouses, our children and others beyond our families with the love of Christ. This is also where active devotion to Our Lady and St. Joseph play a key part.

Who among us can claim to have been truly chaste? Before the purity of Our Blessed Lord, most of us are, in varying degrees, just like the woman in the Gospel who was caught in the very act of adultery. And yet, Jesus has not condemned us. Instead, he has offered us forgiveness and instructed us firmly to sin no more. Further than that, knowing that we are made with clay, He has given us His teachings, sacraments, fellow Catholics, and the many other helps of Holy Church, to enable us to overcome our sins, receive healing and enter into the New Life in Christ.

This is why the heretical notion of ''gradualism'' is so cruel and evil. Like most heresies, it locks us in our own strengths - we had better to say weaknesses - and self-sufficiencies. It falsely suggests that we are OK as we are; as though God demands no more of us and would not provide further helps to us.

This is a travesty! Gradualism is a lie from the Devil and it leads to Hell. Have no part in it. It is a subtle denial of both our fallen nature, wounded as it is with Original Sin, Actual Sins and Concupiscent tendencies, as well as a denial of God's prevenient, accompanying and sacramental graces.

In contrast to the polluted milieu of the post-sexual revolution society in which most of us grew to adulthood, the Catholic Church's teachings and accompanying graces provide access to a perennial springtime of true love.

Like a lifeline, they rescue human personhood, dignity and the sexual faculty from the frozen winter of selfishness and hardness of heart, which presently engulfs society with a degrading swamp of lust, selfishness and sin, and instead sets them aright as warming lights on the mountain-top of self-sacrifical love.

As Christ shows us all from the Altar of the Cross, real love is that which selflessly seeks the good of the other, even to the point of ultimate self-sacrifice for their eternal wellbeing.

All of this comes as Christ's gift to the Church; and through Her to those that love Him. No wonder that the Devil and his minions want to destroy all of this in society, and even in the Church! 

But as those words above remind us, taken as they are from the Canticle of Canticles 2:10-11, the present winter shall pass and the Love of Christ and His plan for human love will ultimately prevail in both Church and society. Because Christ lives, it cannot remain like a perennial winter, without the joy of Christmas, in some fictional Narnia forever. As we know from Christ's Glorious Resurrection: Love wins!

Christus Vincit! Christus Regnat! Christus Imperat! 

Choose Life!

As we celebrate our 15th Wedding Anniversary today, please join us in praying for, and renewing our committment to, the grace of resisting all heresies against love, goodness, beauty and truth.

Let us ask Our Lord Jesus Christ, Our Blessed Lady and St. Joseph to help us to receive and co-operate with the graces needed to live with a pure heart. May we each love God, neighbour and ourselves with patience and true charity.

May we all begin again today to commit to being converted and living a New Life in Christ!

Please pray for the protection of our marriage and of the witness Christian marriage gives in today's Church and society.

We'll conclude today with a marvellous statement that the great St. John Chrysostom (349-407 AD), recommended for young husbands to say to their young brides.

Although we've gained a bit of weight and a few grey hairs - and in my case have managed to lose a few hairs too! - since these wedding pictures were taken 15 years ago, that great saint's words for newlyweds still seem appropriate for us to make our own again today.

I have taken you in my arms, and I love you, and I prefer you to my life itself. For the present life is nothing, and my most ardent dream is to spend it with you in such a way that we may be assured of not being separated in the life reserved for us... I place your love above all things, and nothing would be more bitter or painful to me than to be of a different mind to you.

May the Most Holy Family Pray For and Protect Our Marriage, the Marriages of All in the Lord and the Church's True Teachings on Chastity and Marriage. Wherever and Whoever We Are, May We All Choose this Day to Make a Renewed Committment to Chastity and to Live Lives of True Love in the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen!

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This news item is from Torch of The Faith
( http://www.torchofthefaith.com/news.php?extend.1630 )