I take pleasure in three things, and they are beautiful in the sight of God and of mortals:

agreement among brothers and sisters, friendship among neighbours, and a wife and husband who live in harmony.

 

If you gathered nothing in your youth, how can you find anything in your old age? 

 How attractive is sound judgement in the grey-haired, and for the aged to possess good counsel! 

 How attractive is wisdom in the aged, and understanding and counsel in the venerable! 

 Rich experience is the crown of the aged, and their boast is the fear of the Lord.

 

Happy is the husband of a good wife the number of his days will be doubled. 

A loyal wife brings joy to her husband, and he will complete his years in peace. 

A good wife is a great blessing; she will be granted among the blessings of the man who fears the Lord. 

Whether rich or poor, his heart is content, and at all times his face is cheerful.

 

 

God created man in his own image and likeness: calling him to existence through love, he called him at the same time for love. God is love and in himself he lives a mystery of personal loving communion. Creating the human race in his own image and continually keeping it in being, God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of love and communion. Love is therefore the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being.

 

As an incarnate spirit, that is a soul which expresses itself in a body and a body informed by an immortal spirit, man is called to love in his unified totality. Love includes the human body, and the body is made a sharer in spiritual love. Christian revelation recognizes two specific ways of realising the vocation of the human person in its entirety, to love: marriage and virginity or celibacy. Either one is, in its own proper form, an actuation of the most profound truth of man, of his being created in the image of God.

 

The communion of love between God and people, a fundamental part of the revelation and faith experience of Israel, finds a meaningful expression in the marriage covenant which is established between a man and a woman. For this reason the central word of revelation, ‘God loves his people’, is likewise proclaimed through the living and concrete word whereby a man and a woman express their conjugal love. 

 

Their bond of love becomes the image and the symbol of the covenant which unites God and his people. And the same sin which can harm the conjugal covenant becomes an image of the infidelity of the people to their God: idolatry is prostitution, infidelity is adultery, disobedience to the law is abandonment of the spousal love of the Lord. But the infidelity of Israel does not destroy the eternal fidelity of the Lord, and therefore the ever faithful love of God is put forward as the model of the relations of faithful love which should exist between spouses.

 

The communion between God and his people finds its definitive fulfilment in Jesus Christ, the Bridegroom who loves and gives himself as the Saviour of humanity, uniting it to himself as his body. he reveals the original truth of marriage, the truth of the ‘beginning’, and, freeing man from his hardness of heart, he makes man capable of realising this truth in its entirety. This revelation reaches its definitive fullness in the gift of love which the Word of God makes to humanity in assuming a human nature, and in the sacrifice which Jesus Christ makes of himself on the Cross for his bride, the Church. In this sacrifice there is entirely revealed that plan which God has imprinted on the humanity of man and woman since their creation; the marriage of baptized persons thus becomes a real symbol of that new and eternal covenant sanctioned in the blood of Christ. (Pope St. John Paul II)

 

 

 

Soul afire in God’s presence, heart that smolders in God’s flame,

Life transforming in the yearning, hearing whispered a new name:

“Be you peace, now, be you mercy, be my love and care for earth.”

So the Spirit in God’s wisdom brings us to the second birth.

 

Tho’ we suffer into healing, tho’ we die to live anew,

Yet our soul and spirit prosper ever seeking what is true.

In our blindness we have vision, in our weakness power shown;

By the way of contradiction is God’s deepest wisdom known.

 

Through the dark night of the spirit, through the nights of flesh and soul,

We are taken into mystery, and our brokenness made whole.

In the knowing of unknowing shall the mind be filled with light;

Thus illumined and unfettered we behold with deeper sight.

 

Feast of joy and feast of pleasure, banquet of the bridal heart-

In the rapture of communion she will learn the Lover’s Art.

Herald now the sweet espousals; let the wedding anthem start:

She will marry every creature in the One Beloved’s heart.