The huge debate concerning the divorce legislation on our islands has created an ample room for reviewing the marital commitment.

One essential aspect which is always neglected when talking about the sacrament of marriage is that the latter is another way of consecrating oneself to God. What do I mean? In the 1983 document entitled Essential Elements in the Church’s Teaching on Religious Life as applied to Institutes dedicated to works of the postolate issued by the Sacred Congregation for Religious and For Secular Institutes, gives a splendid description of what does it mean to be consecrated to God. “When God consecrates a person, he gives a special gift to achieve his own kind purposes: the reconciliation and salvation of the human race. He not only chooses, sets apart, and dedicates the person to himself, but he engages him or her in his own divine work. Consecration inevitably implies mission. These are two facets of one reality. The choice of a person by God is for the sake of others: the consecrated person is one who is sent to do the work of God in the power of God. Jesus himself was clearly aware of this. Consecrated and sent to bring the salvation of God, he was wholly dedicated to the Father in adoration, love, and surrender, and totally given to the work of the Father, which is the salvation of the world” (§ 23). This magnificent vision of consecration can be likewise applied to married life. It is God who consecrates the spouses for himself by uniting them, as one flesh in the marital bond, to himself.

Through their mutual and faithful love they are a concrete manifestation of God’s unending, reconciling and salvific love for humanity. Such love reaches its zenith when the couple not merely “give[] themselves to

one another … but also the reality of children, who are a living reflection of their love, a permanent sign of conjugal unity and a living and inseparable synthesis of their being a father and a mother” (Familiaris Consortio §14). Thus, the spouses become co-creators with God in giving life to a new person. Moreover, the Christian family entirely partakes in Jesus’ consecration to the Father when it becomes an active collaborator in the urgent work of evangelization. This has also been the vision which was outlined within the preparatory document for the Fourth World Meeting of the Families entitled The Christian Family: Good News for the Third Millenium, published by the Pontifical Council for the Family. “To the extent in which the Christian family accepts the Gospel and matures in faith, it becomes an evangelizing community. The family, like the Church, ought to be a place where the Gospel is transmitted and from which the Gospel radiates. In a family which is conscious of this mission, all the members evangelize and are evangelized. The parents not only communicate the Gospel to their children, but from their children they can themselves receive the same Gospel as deeply lived by them. And such a family becomes the evangelizer of many other families, and of the neighborhood of which it forms part”. Thanks to this ever relevant magisterial teaching we are encouraged to envisage the sacrament of matrimony as an excellent means of consecration to God for the salvation of the world! Hence, a fruitful way of holiness!

■ Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap

San Gwann