Marriage is good. So good, in fact, that its goodness is supposed to overflow into the lives of the children it produces and the community in which it finds itself. And a Catholic marriage, ideally, is supposed to foster not just natural life, but also the supernatural life of faith. We don't hear too many people talking about marriage this way, so we thought we'd put it out there...

We talk about marriage as a school for the apostolate, and for reference, check out paragraph 30 of Apostolicam Actuositatem ("In the family parents have the task of training their children from childhood on to recognize God's love for all men. By example especially they should teach them little by little to be solicitous for the material and spiritual needs of their neighbor. The whole family in its common life, then, should be a sort of apprenticeship for the apostolate.")

Then we talk about families and marriages as culture-creators, and how Christ comes to sanctify the culture, and for reference, check out Apostolicam Actuositatem paragraph 5 ("Christ's redemptive work, while essentially concerned with the salvation of men, includes also the renewal of the whole temporal order. Hence the mission of the Church is not only to bring the message and grace of Christ to men but also to penetrate and perfect the temporal order with the spirit of the Gospel."). The fact that families both can and ideally do create culture may sound foreign, but we've been conditioned by generations of consumable culture rather than family-created culture.

Then we talk about the family as a place and even a source of order. We really recommend Patrick Lencioni's book, The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family for that (and we even led a workshop on it, which can be found in this facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/gruberworkshop/ )

And finally we talk about husbands and wives being of mutual help to each other. We quote Arcanum Divinae, an encyclical by Pope Leo XIII, paragraph 26: "If, then, we consider the end of the divine institution of marriage, we shall see very clearly that God intended it to be a most fruitful source of individual benefit and of public welfare, Not only, in strict truth, was marriage instituted for the propagation of the human race, but also that the lives of husbands and wives might be made better and happier. This comes about in many ways: by their lightening each other's burdens through mutual help;by constant and faithful love; by having all their possessions in common; and by the heavenly grace which flows from the sacrament." Basically, we marry both our permanent mission field and our permanent missionary teammate when we marry in the Catholic Church.

Crystal was referencing Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraph 1642 at some point in the podcast: "In the joys of their love and family life he [Jesus] gives them here on earth a foretaste of the wedding feast of the Lamb."

Again, we hope to do at least two more episodes as  a sort of mini-series on marriage-- the next one will hit common obstacles and their impact on apostolic activity, and the third will hit things we can do to build up our own marriage and help others as well.

Feel free to subscribe to this podcast as well as share it with others. Our goal is to produce faithful, formative, and conversation-starting content for Catholic disciples of Jesus who are wrestling to be missionary-minded in their normal, everyday lives-- so if that applies to you or a friend of yours, we're hoping to serve you as best as we're able!

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