Happy Valentine’s Day!  While St. Valentine has been removed from the General Roman Calendar, he is still recognized as a Saint and martyr, and can be venerated today “in any place where [February 14th] is not devoted to some other obligatory celebration (Wikipedia).”  In any case, you can also celebrate today as World Marriage Day (PS- How’s that novena going??).  And any day is a great day to celebrate love!

Chris and I are celebrating a little extra love this year… Our third baby, David Frasier Bennett, arrived last Sunday night!  I guessed the gender wrong for the first time, and now my poor little son has a purple carseat.  Oops!  David came very quickly but luckily we made it to the hospital and Chris was in the delivery room a few minutes before birth.  The same cannot be said for my OB, who was still parking her car!  David is such a sweet baby and we are loving these early days with him, watching our two toddlers love on him and (hopefully) learn to be gentle with him.

Anyway, it’s the second Sunday of February, so I have some more Church teaching for you today.  Today’s post focuses on our mission as Catholic married couples.  What are we called to be and to do?  Why are holy marriages integral to the Church and the world?

Pope St. John Paul II famously called families to “become what you are… a community of life and love (FC , 17).”  Each Christian family (whether you have no children or many) is called to be life-giving and loving to one another and all their neighbors.  We need look no further than God Himself for an example to follow here.  “God in His deepest mystery is not a solitude, but a family, since He has in Himself fatherhood, sonship, and the essence of the family, which is love (Puebla, p. 86).”  God’s trinitarian nature makes Him, in and of Himself, the ultimate community of life and love.

To succeed in this beautiful mission, first consider some ways you might make your marriage more of a community of life.  Welcoming children into your family, whether through birth, adoption, or fostering, comes to mind first.  But you and your spouse can also be spiritually life-giving.  You can inspire one another’s faith to come alive through new habits of prayer, reading Scripture, or participation in the Sacraments. Even adding just one simple spiritual practice can breathe new life into your faith!  You and your spouse can also foster “spiritual children” (they could be kids, but they may be your age or even older) by being a source of encouragement and wisdom to others seeking to grow in their own faith.

Additionally, you can look for ways to make your marriage a more loving community.  A great place to start is to grow in understanding of what love truly is.  According to our marital vows, real love is free, full, faithful, and fruitful.  That is, you cannot truly love your spouse if you are being forced to love them, or if you are not master over yourself (free).  You are not really loving them if you are holding back part of yourself or refusing to accept some part of them (full).  Your marriage must be an exclusive and unique relationship, bound with covenantal vows, to nourish true marital love (faithful).  And finally, loving your spouse means cooperating with God to produce and/ or nurture children and spiritual fruit for His Church (fruitful).  If any of these “Four F” aspects of love is compromised, what you are left with is not actually love at all.  Stay tuned for posts in the coming months (and chapters in my book, one day!) offering more in-depth descriptions of each of these Four F’s and how to live them out in our families.

Friends, our mission is critical.  If we were to give up on this mission to be better communities of life and love each day, the implications for the Church and the world would be devastating.  In Amoris laetitia, Pope Francis asserts that “the weakening of the family…poses a threat to the mature growth of individuals, the cultivation of community values and the moral progress of cities and countries (AL 52).” Even infants (like my little David!) are beginning to learn from their families how to love, trust, share, and cooperate with others.  Immaturity, selfishness and lack of morality in adults can often be traced to the weakness of their childhood familial community.  These traits do not breed a pleasant society for anyone.  Through fervent prayer and the frequent reception of the Sacraments, let us always strive to improve the “domestic churches” in each of our homes, remembering that “the Church is a family of families, constantly enriched by the lives of all those domestic churches… The Church is good for the family, and the family is good for the Church (AL 87).”

Reference list:

Francis, Pope. Amoris Laetitia. Erlanger, KY: The Dynamic Catholic Institute, 2015.

John Paul II, Pope. Familiaris Consortio. Boston: St. Paul Books and Media, 1982.

John Paul II, Pope. Puebla- A Pilgrimage of Faith. Boston: St. Paul Editions, 1979.

“Saint Valentine.” Wikipedia. Last modified November 6, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Valentine.