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Married on a Crucifix
Fr Michael Mullan, LCImagine a world without divorce. Imagine families without separation. Imagine no children or hearts torn apart.
People of one place in this world do not have to imagine.
In the town of Siroki-Brijeg in Herzegovina not one of the 13,000 inhabitants can recall a single divorce or broken family.
What is their secret? One look at their marriage rite says it all.
When the bride and bridegroom go to the church to be married they carry a crucifix with them. The priest blesses the crucifix and exclaims, “You have found your cross! It is a cross to love, to carry with you, a cross that is not thrown off but rather treasured.”
When they interchange the marital vows, the bride puts her right hand on this crucifix and the groom puts his right hand over hers. Both are united to the cross. The priest covers their hands with his stole while they pronounce their promises to love each other in good times and in bad.
Then they both first kiss the cross, not each other. If one abandons the other, they abandon Christ on the cross.
Afterwards, the newly-weds cross the threshold of their home to enthrone that same crucifix in a place of honour. It becomes the reference point of their lives and the place of family prayer.
In times of difficulty and misunderstandings, as all human relationships experience, they do not turn immediately to the lawyer or psychologist, they turn to the cross. They kneel, cry and open up their hearts begging for the strength to pardon and implore the Lord’s help.
The children are taught to reverently kiss the crucifix daily and to thank God for the day before going to bed. These children dream of enthroning one day a crucifix of their own.
The family is indissolubly united to the cross of Christ. Is this simply a morbid outlook on marital and family life? Or is it a piece of wisdom that few in our modern world can understand. Until our world does, it will continue to imagine and long for the unbroken hearth.
-=:†:=-
“The Sacrament of marriage comes as do all the sacraments from the wounded side of Christ as He lay ‘asleep’ in death, when Christ was pierced by a sword and blood and water and the Holy Spirit flowed out. At that moment the Church and all the sacraments came from the side of Christ as Eve was taken from the side of Adam. The Church is the Bride of Christ and the Catholic marriage is to be a living example of Christ and His Bride the Church. If the Catholic couple lives in a state of grace and has the sacrament of marriage they receive constant grace from God to love one another with the very LOVE of God. It is the vocation of the spouses to sanctify one another and be open to new life. According to Archbishop Sheen it takes 3 to get married: husband, wife and Christ. Marriage works in Christ.”
—my friend Kathleen Ann
Thank you
A CRUCIFIXION TYPE LOVE
If there were more men in society like this… Oh what a place the world could be.
I’d rather have a Proverbs 31 woman than a Victoria’s Secret Model
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Seven Days of Service: Question & Answer
So as it would be God continues to reveal his power and beauty to me day, after day. Last night my Chinese roommate randomly came to my room and politely asked me if he could talk to me about God and more specifically the Catholic faith. He went on to ask the common apologetic questions like why saints? Faith vs Works? and the history of the Church. The grace-filled question and answers session was just what I was looking for; I could spend hours helping people to better understand the complexity of the Church’s history and Traditions. He went on to ask me ‘Why did Jesus came to earth to white/Jewish people and not to people in China’.. where he pointed out that Christianity is still very much unspoken and underground. He told me that he now sees that white people are God’s people and that he feels judged and unworthy as a Chinese Christian. He told me that white people have better opportunities in life and that he could see from living in American, that God truly favors the white race over the Chinese. The look in his eyes was so sincere and I could truly feel how broken his heart was and the tears in his eyes as he asked me why.
-My answer was simple, Our Lady of Guadalupe. The power that is bestowed in the image of Our Lady is so mysterious and powerful, that its ways are beyond the understanding of humans and science. Since the beginning of the image, connected to Juan Diego, 90% of the Mexican nation has converted from a strict Aztec beliefs to Christianity (specifically Catholicism) -something missionaries had struggled to do for over twenty years. God came to the poor of spirit, and he will come to all in due time. Faith
Christianity takes desires… far more seriously than the Stoic or the mere hedonist. Christianity refuses to budge from the fac that man was made from pleasure, that his beginning and his end is a paradise…; we are made for bliss, and we must have it, one way or another
John Elredge, Journey of Desire, pp.46
To kill our sexual desires is “suicide of the soul.” This tragedy is increased tenfold when this suicide… is committed under the conviction that this is precisely what Christianity recommends. We have never been more mistaken
John Eldredge, Journey of Desire, p.2
