The Face of Mercy / Daniel Conway

The Holy Spirit guides married couples to Jesus Christ

(En Espanol)

During his general audience on Wednesday, Oct. 23, Pope Francis offered reflections on the relationship between the Holy Spirit, who the Holy Father calls “the gift of God,” and the various ways that the Holy Spirit guides the people of God toward Jesus, our hope.

“Today, in particular” the pope said, “we would like to gather a few crumbs of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit developed in the Latin tradition, to see how it enlightens all of Christian life and the sacrament of marriage in particular.”

Pope Francis begins by referring to the teaching of St. Augustine, who developed the Church’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit. According to the Holy Father:

[Augustine] sets out from the revelation that “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8). Now love presupposes one who loves, one who is beloved and love itself that unites them. The Father is, in the Trinity, he who loves, the source and origin of everything; the Son is he who is beloved, and the Holy Spirit is the love that unites them. The God of Christians is therefore a “sole” God, but not solitary; His is a unity of communion and love.

The great mystery that we call the Holy Trinity, three persons in one God, is a threefold expression of love, loving and being loved. It is, therefore, a unity of communion and love.

The Holy Spirit is the bond of unity between the Father who loves and the Son who is loved.

“He is the We,” the pope says, “the divine We of the Father and the Son, the bond of unity between different persons.”

This “unity of communion and love” is the model for sacramental marriage.

According to Pope Francis, the woman and man who unite in holy matrimony become “the first and most elementary realization of the communion of love that is the Trinity.” They stand before each other as an “I” and a “you,” and, the pope says, they stand before the rest of the world, including their children, as a “we.”

How beautiful it is to hear a mother say to her children: “Your father and I …”, as Mary said to Jesus when they found him at the age of twelve in the temple, teaching the Doctors (Lk 2:48), and to hear a father say: “Your mother and I,” as if they were one. How much children need this unity—mother and father together—unity of parents, and how much they suffer when it is lacking! How much the children of separated parents suffer, how much they suffer.

To successfully reflect the unity of communion and love, marriage needs the support of the Holy Spirit who is God’s gift to them.

According to Pope Francis, “Where the Holy Spirit enters, the capacity for self-giving is reborn.” The pope affirms that, as the reciprocal gift of the Father and the Son in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is also “the reason for the joy that reigns between them.” He notes that when speaking about the three persons in the Holy Trinity, the Fathers of the Church were not afraid to use “the image of gestures proper to married life, such as the kiss and the embrace.”

So, the Holy Spirit brings both hope and joy to the couple who are united in marriage. The Spirit is the bond of love that keeps them together as “one flesh, made in the image and likeness of God” (Gn 1:27). According to the Holy Father, “No one says that such unity is an easy task, least of all in today’s world; but this is the truth of things as the Creator designed them, and it is therefore in their nature.”

The Holy Spirit’s role as the bond of the unity of communion and love between married couples is not something that is often discussed. Therefore, the spiritual formation of married couples becomes a responsibility of the whole Church. As the pope observes:

It would not be a bad thing, therefore, if alongside the information of a legal, psychological and moral nature that is given in the preparation of engaged couples for marriage, we were to deepen this “spiritual” preparation, the Holy Spirit who makes unity. An Italian proverb says, “Never place a finger, never intervene, between husband and wife.” There is in fact a “finger” to be placed between husband and wife, the “finger of God,” that is, the Holy Spirit!
 

(Daniel Conway is a member of The Criterion’s editorial committee.) †