Pope Francis at the Audience on the beauty of Christian marriage: "Love as Christ loves the Church"
"Flowers, clothes and pictures" are not enough, but it takes much more for a wedding, according to Pope Francis, who at today‘s Audience in St. Peter‘s Square spoke about the beauty of Christian marriage. The love of the spouses, he said quoting Saint Paul, "is the image of the love between Christ and the Church." "This is an unimaginable dignity," said the Pope, adding that the analogy, although "imperfect," has an "elevated and revolutionary spiritual meaning;" yet, at the same time, "it is accessible to every man and woman who rely on God‘s grace." Speaking directly to the husbands present in the square, Francis recalled that, as the Letter to the Ephesians says, a husband must love his wife "as his own body," and that the sacrament of marriage is "a great act of faith and love." The Church, he added, "is fully involved in the life of every Christian marriage: She is edified by its triumphs and suffers from its failures." Therefore, "the decision to get married in the Lord—he continued—also has a missionary dimension." "In fact, Christian couples share, as spouses, the Church‘s mission." "This takes courage, eh! So when I greet newlyweds, I say: ‘Here are the brave!‘ because it takes courage to love one another as Christ loves the Church. The celebration of the sacrament—he said—cannot omit this co-responsibility of family life in the Church‘s great mission of love. And so, the life of the Church is enriched each time by the beauty of this spousal covenant, just as it is impoverished whenever it is disfigured."