The Real Academia Española de la Lengua (Royal Spanish Academy of Language) describes, in its third meaning, the term punk as a "musical movement that emerges as a youth protest and whose followers adopt unconventional attire and behavior".. According to this description, to speak of a so-called marriage, marriageis perhaps one of the most important attitudes punkWe Catholics are called to defend, promote and incarnate.
To show, not only that a solid marriage between a man and a woman can be lived in spite of all the trials and tribulations - rivers, muds and mire - but also that this unique, imperfectly perfect relationship is not only plausible, but also the healthiest thing for a society (cf. Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, 52)
In that marvel of a text, the Letter to Diognetus, referring to the first Christians, we read that "just like everyone else, they marry and beget children, but they do not get rid of the children they conceive. They have the table in common, but not the bed.". Eighteen centuries later, if we want to "to be in the world what the soul is in the body", we are called to see ourselves reflected in this definition. Today more than ever, the revolution that the world and society need has, at its epicenter, marriage.
Along with this conviction, we cannot ignore the fact that our society is intimately wounded in this primordial nucleus that is marriage, especially in what we call the West: gender ideology, the ease of divorce, the numerous broken families, fierce individualism..., make it urgent that the Church, each one of us Catholics, from our own vocation, respond to this call for healing. Recovering marriage is, perhaps, the "sign of the times" of our passage through the world.
With this recovery we speak of family accompaniment, preparation for marriage, formation of affectivity and, above all, of welcoming all those who come to this "field hospital" or those who must be sought out on the outskirts of our society.
As a priest who organized a macro-wedding for a score of couples who had not received the sacrament of matrimony noted: "We'll have to stain ourselves! We'll have to do something to make those who 'won't marry' at least consider getting married!"
"The good of the family is decisive for the future of the world and the Church."the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia. For this reason, marriage, the first constituted family, continues to be a pastoral challenge for the laity, priests and consecrated persons in which we must invest creativity, effort and time. Yes, we will have to get dirty!
