Felician Sister Celeste Goulet, right, gives a marriage preparation course to an engaged couple in Tulita, Northwest Territories in Canada, in this 2011 photo. In “Amoris Laetitia” (“The Joy of Love”), Pope Francis says a couple should prepare for their wedding by meditating on Scripture together. (CNS photo/Michael Swan, The Catholic Register)
As engaged couples prepare themselves for marriage, they look for advice for a rich and loving union. The best advice for engaged couples comes from Pope Francis himself in his apostolic exhortation “Amoris Laetitia” (“The Joy of Love”).
He says a couple should prepare for their wedding by meditating on Scripture together, saying it would not be good “for them to arrive at the wedding without ever having prayed together.” Couples should ask the Lord “what he wants of them.”
For engaged couples unsure where to begin, start with the Scripture readings for your wedding Mass. One of the most popular readings comes from St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians 5:25-33.
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St. Paul writes that Christ’s union with us, the church, is a great mystery and that marriage is a human reflection of this intimate loving relationship. When a couple is married, that too is a mystical union.
Think how in marriage, the couple complements each other, bringing a strength to balance the other’s weakness. And how through encouragement from each other, a spouse grows into fullness as the person God created them to be. In marriage, the couple is stronger than any one of them alone.
St. Paul urges husbands to “love their wives as their own bodies,” for this is what happens when the two are joined in marriage, they “become one flesh.” “No one hates his own flesh,” he says, reminding us to “nourish and cherish” each other.
We are to look to Christ as our model in marriage. St. Paul tells husbands to “love your wives, even as Christ loved the church.” The sacrament of marriage, as a reflection of Christ’s mystical union with the church, should never be broken, for Christ’s love for the church will never fail.
The gift of the mystery of marriage was given to us so that we might more fully understand Christ’s love and union with us. This is what is astounding about marriage; it has been given so we can glimpse into Christ’s perfect love for us.
As we enter the mystery of Christ’s love, surrendering ourselves to it, we draw closer to him. His love shows us how to be loving partners in marriage.
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Gonzalez is a freelance writer. Her website is www.shemaiahgonzalez.com.
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