Marriage and Family

Last weekend my family celebrated my parents’ golden wedding anniversary. Fifty years since the day they said Yes before God forever… in sickness and in health… for richer and for poorer… It was a wonderful occasion to reflect on the meaning of marriage and the family as the foundation of our society.

Some people think it is impossible, or very hard, to reach 50 years of marriage. The fact is that we know quite a few couples who have had that joy, and others who would have reached it but couldn’t because one of the spouses died first.

At the Mass offered to thank God for this golden anniversary, the priest mentioned that the weekend before he had celebrated another golden anniversary and another couple’s 55th. Last week there was also news of an American couple who had been married 70 years and then died within a few hours of each other.

The priest said: “I don’t know why the media don’t spread more of this good news. You watch the soap operas and it’s all fighting, whining, divorces, people running off with others and so on. Why don’t they show that there are marriages that last a lifetime, despite the difficulties they may face?”

As my father said at the celebration his children and grandchildren held for them: “Love is built day by day. It’s a lie that there are couples with exactly the same tastes and compatibilities. What you have to do is be patient and live each day loving the person you chose as your wife.”

Marriage is so simple! But it is simple when we don’t complicate our lives: when we don’t think about ourselves, but live thinking about the other, about our spouse, our children, the sick or elderly person at home.

Last Monday in Ecuador, Pope Francis gave a beautiful homily on the family. Among other things, he said the family is the nearest hospital, where we are cared for when we are sick; the first school for children; the indispensable point of reference for young people; and the best home for the elderly. The family, he said, is the great “social wealth” that no other institution can replace, and it must be helped and strengthened.

As the Pope says, service is the sign of true love: whoever loves, serves, and places himself at the service of others, and this is learned especially in the family, where out of love we become servants of one another.

Speaking of married love, he said that the wedding at Cana is repeated in every generation, in every family, in each of us and in our efforts to let our hearts settle in lasting, fruitful and joyful love.

He then spoke of the Virgin’s presence in our marriages. Mary, he said, is attentive at the wedding feast and cares about the couple’s needs. Wine is a sign of joy, love and abundance, and he asked how many of our teenagers and young people sense that in their homes there has been no such wine for a long time; how many lonely, saddened women wonder when love left, when it slipped out of their lives; how many elderly people feel left out of their families’ celebrations, pushed into a corner, no longer drinking of the daily love of their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Mary, the Pope said, teaches us to leave our families in God’s hands; she teaches us to pray, kindling the hope that tells us our worries are also God’s worries. Prayer always takes us beyond the boundaries of our own concerns, beyond what hurts us, troubles us or is lacking in our own lives, and helps us put ourselves in other people’s shoes. The family, he said, is a school where prayer also reminds us that there is an “us,” a neighbor close at hand, living under the same roof, sharing life and in need.

How great marriage and the family are! God grant that all marriages last a lifetime and give an example of values, self-giving and service to others.

The Pope is very optimistic. At the end of the homily he says that the time is coming when we will taste everyday love, when our children will rediscover the space we share, and the elderly will be present in the joy of each day. The best wine, he said, is yet to come for everyone who dares to love, and in the family we must dare to love, even if all the variables and statistics say otherwise; the best wine is yet to come for those who today see everything collapsing. He urged everyone to murmur it until they believe it, to whisper it to the despairing and the loveless: be patient, have hope, do as Mary did, pray, act, open your hearts, because the best wine is coming. Let us do “whatever the Lord tells us,” he said, and be grateful that in our time the new wine, the best wine, will help us recover the joy of being a family and of living as a family.

Thank you, my God, for so many married couples and families who love each other forever and are an example of self-giving and service to others. The phrase we were taught at school as little children is absolutely true: “The family is the foundation of society.” And with united families, who complement one another, love one another forever, love others without measure and keep God and the Virgin very close, we have more than enough hope.

May God bless all married couples and their families!