Reflecting Christ's Love to the World
August 23, 2013
Filed In:
Church and CultureWhen you get married, you take on two responsibilities. First, you take responsibility for the care of your wife and any children you may be given. Second, you take on the responsibility for reflecting Christ’s love for the Church.
The first one is challenging enough, but the second? Whoa, that’s a task! After all, Christ laid down His life for the Church.
As husbands, we are called to lay down our lives for our wives, but that doesn’t necessarily mean physical death. We must daily live a death to self.
What is more important is how we model marital love to those around us.
We should first be concerned with how we model to our family.
The odds are high that there are a few broken marriages in your family. We aren’t called to be critical of another, but we do know that if children do not have a good example of marriage, they may end up divorced later in life as well. We must take great care to reflect our inner affinity for our spouses externally in appropriate ways.
Next, we must model marital love to those we are friends with.
You probably have a broad cross-section of friends in terms of state of life. You have some single friends, some married friends, some friends with children, etc. Again, it is your responsibility to show them the Divine Plan through your own healthy and stable marriage.
Lastly, we must model marital love to the world.
We interact with a huge number of individuals on a daily basis that we have no relationship with. To these people, we must show the true love we have for our wives.
This is a giant task, but it is an essential one. We are called to influence the culture. The more positive examples of marriage that a person has, the more credibility it is lent. When enough people hold marriage in the right esteem, the culture is changed.
Now, it’s time to get to work.Tags: Reflections Sacraments
