An exhausted young couple wheeling a double stroller through the park, two babies inside noisily squalling.
A young mother, breast covered with a blanket, nursing her infant while her husband strokes her hair.
Parents taking a four year old to his first baseball game, wearing his tiny team hat or jacket, standing him up on their laps so he can see.
A husband or wife accepting a spouse back after she or he has committed adultery; both are crying yet their eyes are lit with the promise of a new, better tomorrow.
A husband quietly assuming new household chores when his wife goes back to work.
Parents running to a hospital after work so they can sit in a hospital room visiting their sick daughter.
A father and mother, heads close to their child's, teaching him and helping him with his homework.
Parents helping their children collect food for the Food Bank or clothing for the Salvation Army.
A husband touching his wife's surgery scar, kissing it, telling her he'll always love her no matter what her body looks like.
A wife making dinner for the family after a grueling day at work, while her husband picks up the children from an after-school program.
Proud parents walking their daughter down the Church aisle, all of them covered with happy tears.
A middle-aged couple negotiating a toy-strewn living room as they babysit their toddler grand-son.
An aged man sitting next to his vacant-eyed wife in a nursing home, simply holding her hand, for she can no longer speak.
The vows of marriage constitute the most powerful commitment that a man and a woman can make to each other, a commitment that profoundly orders and alters the cycle of their lives. And the family they create together is the building block of all of society. Where there is love in a family, where children are taught good values and the value of sacrificial love, where they are taught to serve each other and the community, God is present, whether they recognize God's love supporting them or not.
A Christian couple has the additional spiritual grace of recognizing God present with them, and of knowing and trusting that Christ is with them in a special way, - Christ who is their example and the One whom they encounter in all their most joyful moments, in all their crises, in all their tragedies. Meditating on the faithfully loving person Christ was and is teaches a couple how to have lasting relationships with each other and their children.
The Christ who blessed the marriage feast at Cana blesses their marriage bed where they truly make an abundance of love.
The Christ who was once an infant himself at Mary's breast kisses the forehead of their nursing child.
The Christ who once played with wood chips in Joseph's carpentry shop fills them with patience with their over-energetic toddler.
The Christ who, worn out himself, still spoke to and healed the crowds, lifts their drooping heads as they help children with homework.
The Christ who healed so many strengthens a couple's hearts as they stay up bathing the forehead of a feverish child.
The Christ who prayed for all his disciples at the Last Supper - including us - that we would all be one, promises to be a couple's Way to Peace when they are separated by an argument, and he places the grace of mutual forgiveness in their hearts.
The Christ who loved nature, who spoke of his Father being as attentive to our needs as He is attentive to a sparrow's needs, who spoke of flowers being arrayed in more glory than King Solomon, will call families out of their homes to be healed and awed by nature, God's first Bible.
The Christ who prayed to his heavenly Father before every important decision and moment of his life continually calls a couple to prayer for each other, for their family, their community, their nation, their world. For a couple's first responsibility is to help each other find God!
The Christ who promised to send us the Holy Spirit sends the fire of his Spirit into a couples' hearts, the Spirit of Unity, of Giftedness, of Enthusiasm, of Joy, of Faith, of Hope, of Love.
The Christ who stumbled carrying his cross and later hung bloody and crucified, lifts each spouse to his or her feet when they've been savagely impatient with each other, when they've wept and felt they couldn't go on, when they or their spouse has a serious illness, when death rips their family apart.
Pope Francis tells us
" The sacrament (of Matrimony) is not a 'thing' or a 'power,' for in it Christ himself 'now encounters Christian spouses....He dwells with them, gives them the strength to take up their crosses and so follow him, to rise again after they have fallen, to forgive one another, to bear one another's burdens....only in contemplating Christ does a person come to know the deepest truth about human relationships." (Pope Francis).
None of us is a perfect lover, far from it. None of us know how to make a relationship work all the time. We all bear the invisible scars of hundreds of difficult times, of harsh words, of failed attempts. But Christ is with us, leading us, guiding us, promising to be faithful to us. He is faithful so we can be faithful to the people and relationships that he has given to us as gifts. May he make us and our relationships everlasting gifts to his Father.