Day 309: Faithful and Fruitful Marriage (2364-2372)

• It’s Day 309!!

• CONJUGAL FIDELITY

• What is it to be faithful?

• THE FECUNDITY OF MARRIAGE

• Paragraph 2363 from yesterday says, “The spouses’ union achieves the twofold end of marriage: the good of the spouses themselves and the transmission of life. These two meanings or values of marriage cannot be separated without altering the couple’s spiritual life and compromising the goods of marriage and the future of the family. The conjugal love of man and woman thus stands under the twofold obligation of fidelity and fecundity.”

• What is the end of marriage?

• Let’s pray!!

Prayer by Fr. Mike: “Father in Heaven, we praise you. In the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, we ask you to receive our praise. In the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, we ask you to send out your Holy Spirit into our hearts, into this world, Lord God, into our relationships. And into every relationship, God, we ask you to send your Spirit of faithfulness, your spirit of patience, your Spirit of trust and of forgiveness, a Spirit of reconciliation. Send your Spirit of fruitfulness, that all of our relationships may be not only faithful and full of peace and love, but also fruitful. Lord God, I ask you to send your blessing upon all married couples in this moment, especially married couples that find themselves challenged by your Revelation. Find themselves challenged by your call to fidelity, your call to fecundity, your call in all of our lives to die to ourselves and so as to live for you. And also Lord God, we ask you to please be with all of those who, when talking about marriage, their hearts are hurt or wounded. Be with all of us, God, in this moment. Send your Spirit to us and into us in the ways that you alone know we need. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen”

• So there we have it!!

• THere is this high call when it comes to the issues of sexuality and life

• How often are human beings tempted towards selfishness?

• Let’s listen to Fr. Mike talk about a story…

• All sexual perversions are an attempt to experience the pleasure without the COST of love 🤯

• Marriage is for life

• Not just merely for life

• Paragraph 2364 says, “The married couple forms ‘the intimate partnership of life and love established by the Creator and governed by his laws; it is rooted in the conjugal covenant, that is, in their irrevocable personal consent.’ Both give themselves definitively and totally to one another. They are no longer two; from now on they form one flesh. The covenant they freely contracted imposes on the spouses the obligation to preserve it as unique and indissoluble. ‘What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.’”

• There are four marks of God’s love

• Free

• Total

• Faithful

• Fruitful

• Contraception is a lie because it says one spouse is giving themselves totally, but not really

• If you have the sense that before marriage, they are not giving themselves totally, not just sexually, but not fully committed to the relationship that is a bad sign

• Why?

• Because to the degree that the relationship is under development, to be all in is a big deal

• Of course, one cannot be all in until marriage

• Common sense says that you can recognize where someone is pulling back from the relationship

• It is not always a deal breaker 

• But it is something to pay attention to

• In marriage, if someone is not giving themselves definitively and totally to the other person, that is definitely something to attend to

• Remember the difference between a contract and a covenant

• A contract is an agreement for an exchange of goods or services based off of a condition

• A covenant is an exchange of persons

• I am yours and you are mine

• It is unconditional

• It is massively different

• Marriage tolerates no rivals

• Paragraph 2365 says, “Fidelity expresses constancy in keeping one’s given word. God is faithful. The Sacrament of Matrimony enables man and woman to enter into Christ’s fidelity for his Church. Through conjugal chastity, they bear witness to this mystery before the world. St. John Chrysostom suggests that young husbands should say to their wives: 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 assures 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 than you.”

• The day that a couple promises to love the other person is the day they least need to promise this

• Because on their wedding day, of course you are going to love the other person

• But that is not why the couple makes that vow on their wedding day

• They make that promise because they are saying, “I know the day is going to come when I won’t feel like loving you. I know the day is going to come when in those good times and bad, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, for better or worse, I know that day is going to come when I won’t feel like choosing you. But I am making you this promise right now that when that day does come, I will choose you. When that day does come, I will love you.”

• The depth to which marriage and faithfulness in marriage is a reflection on one’s character

• It is not about loving this person or loving someone else other than this person

• It’s not about am I tired of them or are they tired of me?

• It is about making a promise and keeping it

• This is not a condemnation on anyone who finds themselves in a position where their spouse left or a position where they left their spouse

• If they need to be reconciled to the Lord and maybe to their spouse, that is very possible and very real

• The ultimate goal is to love one another in such a way that your spouse and your children make it to Heaven

• Not all marriages are able to be naturally fruitful

• AND YET…

• All marriages between a husband and wife are ordered towards fruitfulness in the sense that the sexual act is ordered towards fruitfulness

• If a couple is unable to conceive for whatever reason, the sexual act between husband and wife has the potential for creating human life even if life doesn’t come out of this

• They can enter into the sexual act in good conscience

• This act is morally licit

• If the couple can’t have children, that does not make them any less married and that does not make the sexual act any less beautiful

• It just means that the sexual act does not have, on its own, a natural fruitfulness

• Paragraph 2366 says, “Fecundity is a gift, an end of marriage, for conjugal love naturally tends to be fruitful. A child does not come from outside as something added on to the mutual love of the spouses, but springs from the very heart of that mutual giving, as its fruit and fulfillment. So the Church, which is ‘on the side of life,’ teaches that ‘it is necessary that each and every marriage act remain ordered per se to the procreation of human life.’ ‘This particular doctrine, expounded on numerous occasions by the Magisterium, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act.’”

• Any time someone is working against the procreative aspect or the unity aspect of the sexual act, that is gravely sinful

• What does this mean?

• Let’s listen to Fr. Mike talk about a young couple he met at school…

• It is possible to work against the unitive aspect of marriage by being coerced into it or manipulated into it or forced into it

• It is also possible to work against the procreative aspect 

• This is why the Church teaches that each and every act of intentional contraception is intrinsically evil

• This upsets a lot of people

• This reveals something about our hearts

• This reveals that we are not necessarily selfish

• This reveals that we are afraid

• We are afraid of being alone

• We are afraid of having a family that we can’t support

• We are afraid of being out of control

• Contraception helps couples feel like they are in control

• BUT…

• The Church is calling us to be open to life and trust in the Lord and to refuse contraception

• The Church is not calling couples to have as many children as physically possible

• Paragraph 2368 says, “A particular aspect of this responsibility concerns the regulation of procreation. For just reasons, spouses may wish to space the births of their children. It is their duty to make certain that their desire is not motivated by selfishness but is in conformity with the generosity appropriate to responsible parenthood. Moreover, they should conform their behavior to the objective criteria of morality: When it is a question of harmonizing married love with the responsible transmission of life, the morality of the behavior does not depend on sincere intention and evaluation of motives alone; but it must be determined by objective criteria, criteria drawn from the nature of the person and his acts, criteria that respect the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love; this is possible only if the virtue of married chastity is practiced with sincerity of heart.”

• If a couple finds themselves stretched beyond their means, they may have to space the births of their children

• How?

• The culture says contraception

• The Church says NATURAL FAMILY PLANNING

• Some people confuse this with the rhythm method of contraception

• The rhythm method was an early form of natural family planning that virtually no one practices today

• There are other forms of natural family planning that are 98-99% effective

• Well, if you do NFP (Natural Family Planning), why not do contraception because it’s the same thing?

• Because the ends do not justify the means

• The means are actually very important

• Let’s listen to Fr. Mike talk about Christopher West and the dead grandma…

• In contraception, I am directly working against life

• In the other, I am using the natural rhythms of a woman’s fertility to either conceive or avoid conception

• It is not working against conception

• Let’s listen to Fr. Mike make an analogy with eating a power bar…

• A couple that is working with the natural rhythms of a woman’s body has a time of natural infertility

• They are not stopping anything from happening

• They are not working against life

• They are working with life

• The call is always to love

• Love is always free, total, faithful, and fruitful

• Paragraph 2370 says, “Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of mortality. These methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom. In contrast, ‘every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible’ is intrinsically evil: Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of the husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality…The difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle…involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality.”

• St. Pope John Paul II says that the body has a language

• As often as a husband and wife come together in the sexual embrace, they are saying something to the other person

• They are saying that I am yours freely, totally, faithfully, and fruitfully

• To introduce contraception into that says that I am freely yours, but not really

• I am totally yours, but not really

• I am faithfully yours, but not really

• I am fruitfully yours, but not really

• It does something to hearts

• The divorce rate in the USA is around 50%

• Couples that use NFP, pray, go to Mass, etc. that divorce rate is around 2-4%

• That should teach us something

• Maybe there is something when it comes to NFP over and above contraception

• This is challenging and difficult

• Love is challenging and difficult

• This is the Lord speaking through the Church to His beloved children

• Fr. Mike is praying FOR YOU!!

• Please pray for Fr. Mike and for each other!!

• I cannot WAIT…