Your son or daughter is getting married. Everyone is caught up in the excitement of planning and preparing for that dream wedding. Mom and Dad are of the mind that this should be a Catholic wedding because, “We are, after all, Catholic.” Son or daughter and the fiancé may be fine with this because, “After all, Mom and Dad are Catholic and this seems to be important to them.” It is about here that things seem to get out of sync. Something is out of order, isn’t it?
Marriage, in the Catholic faith, is deeply sacramental and an integral element of the Church. The Catholic wedding consists of a liturgical rite and we believe that graces are bestowed upon the couple who knowingly, lovingly and willingly minister to one another and enter into the vows of marriage. We know that the Church is here to be a witness to this sacrament and to provide the pastoral care and community that is the environment of a joyful and fulfilling marriage. We also believe that the sacrament does not end when the rite is concluded but rather continues throughout the married life of this couple with every loving act that they commit to one another and to their children. Each of these loving acts provides fertile ground for the graces initially received to generate the fruit of the Holy Spirit that nourishes the entire community. It is this “domestic church” that is at the root of what the Church is.
As Catholic parents, we often fall woefully short in cultivating in our children this facet of our faith. We may well have lived the sacramental marriage and understood the gifts we received through the course of our married life from our Lord and the Church. But in what ways did we convey that to our children? Did we ever tell them how blessed our marriage and by extension, our family, is because of the Holy Spirit working through the Sacrament? In what ways did we emphasize the critical function that the Church and the Holy Spirit has had in our married life? Or, by our silence have we tacitly taken full credit for the joyful successes we’ve realized in our marriage? Have we set our children up to believe that Mom and Dad or others who have experienced long and happy marriages have everything within themselves for a happy marriage, and that therefore they should expect the same?
This inculcation of the Catholic faith within the family obviously must begin long before the wedding engagement ever occurs. The desire to be married within the Church and to live the sacramental married life within the Church should be coming from the cultivated faith of the couple to be wed. Their notion of a “dream wedding” should be the icon of their shared belief in their life together in a sacramental marriage. Let us begin this teaching early with our children and revisit it often with each blessing our family receives.
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