Today’s Sunday Pope Quote fits nicely with Respect Life month. It comes from a section of Bl. John Paul II’s encyclical Familiaris Consortio entitled “Children, the Precious Gift of Marriage.”
Bl. John Paul II: According to the plan of God, marriage is the foundation of the wider community of the family, since the very institution of marriage and conjugal love are ordained to the procreation and education of children, in whom they find their crowning (see GS, 50).
In its most profound reality, love is essentially a gift; and conjugal love, while leading the spouses to the reciprocal “knowledge” which makes them “one flesh,”(Gen 2:24) does not end with the couple, because it makes them capable of the greatest possible gift, the gift by which they become cooperators with God for giving life to a new human person. Thus the couple, while giving themselves to one another, give not just themselves 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, no. 14 (emphasis added)
Further reading:
- FAQs on marriage and children
- Bl. Pope John Paul II’s writings on marriage on the Church Teaching page
About this series:
Every Sunday, the Marriage: Unique for a Reason blog will feature a short quote from our current Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, our late Holy Father, Bl. John Paul II, or another pope. These men have given the world an immense treasury of wisdom about marriage, love, and the meaning of the human person, all of which are topics integral to the Church’s witness today. Their words are well worth reflecting on, as we have much to learn from these wise successors of St. Peter.
Leave a Reply