English
EspañolWho teaches what marriage is? Children learn it in their parents´ daily life by seeing their testimony as united spouses. That experience of conjugal love at home is the best inheritance for their future marriages.
Text
“…Christian families, by the grace of the sacrament of matrimony, are the principal agents of the family apostolate, above all through “their joy-filled witness as domestic churches.” (The Joy of Love, n.200)
Commentary
Let me share some things I have experienced. Aurora and Antonio have been married for three years. They were married in the Parish of Saint Lucia. Their three children chose to get married in the same church where their parents´ wedding was celebrated. Upon receiving the invitation for the third son´s marriage, a family member made the following comment: “On, so you are getting married in the same church to follow the same pattern?” The boy replied: “No, we are getting married in this church because it reminds us of my parents´ marriage and how happy they are. We want to be as happy as they are. We want to have a marriage like the one they have.”
That is it! Children look for themselves in their parents as if looking at a mirror. This is done in order to learn how to live the values and real manifestations of authentic conjugal love. As spouses, we parents are a reference for our children, for better or worse. We do not become a model for them because we are perfect, spherical, utopian, and heavenly, but because of our honest, loyal, and faithful effort, our constant perseverance, our ability to acknowledge and correct defects and missteps, and helping as well as lifting each other. We become a model because of the hope, reciprocal mercy, tenderness, and the good humor with which we do all of the above. The parents’ married life is an example of the life that the children want to have when they are married. Like those of Aurora and Antonio, children have the hope that their marriage will be as real, and therefore deeply happy, as that of their parents.
How did Aurora and Antonio teach them what marriage is? Their children saw them in their daily life, in their self-giving and embracing, when they kept moving forward through difficult moments; that is when the child experimented their love turned into deeds, day after day. They witnessed their parents “sweat together” while fighting to preserve their union, they saw them making it grow and their resolution to restore it, as soon as possible, from any frictions, routines, and other fatigues.
