This year is the 20th Anniversary of Pope John Paul II's letter on The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World. We will be sharing excerpts from this letter with you this year with the hope of "supporting, illuminating and assisting families" and the staff of the parish regarding the beautiful teachings of the Catholic Church on Marriage and Family Life.

The Sacrament of Matrimony

"Like each of the seven sacraments, so also marriage is a real symbol of the event of salvation, but in its own way. 'The spouses participate in it as spouses, together, as a couple, so that the first and immediate effect of marriage (res et sacramentum) is not supernatural grace itself, but the Christian conjugal bond, a typically Christian communion of two persons because it represents the mystery of Christ's incarnation and the mystery of His covenant. The content of participation in Christ's life is also specific: conjugal love involves a totality, in which all the elements of the person enter--appeal of the body and instinct, power of feeling and affectivity, aspiration of the spirit and of will. It aims at a deeply personal unity. The unity that beyond union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul; it demands indissolubility and faithfulness in definitive mutual giving; and it is open to fertility (cf Humana vitae). In a word it is a question of the normal characteristics of all natural conjugal love, but with a new significance which not only purifies and strengthens them, but raises them to the extent of making them the expression of specifically Christian values.'"

-- §1 Pope John Paul II, On the family in the Modern World, (Familiaris consortio), 1981.