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A Father's Promises to His Children Yet to be Born
The Daily Knight
Tomorrow I am to be married. Holy Matrimony is the Sacrament by which God raises up children to His greater glory on earth and in Heaven. Husband and wife are joined in this grace-filled bond in order to be fruitful and multiply, to people the earth, and to offer to God Saints who will reign in His eternal Kingdom. Holy Mother Church mediates this blessing from God, provides instruction and support to the families thus established, and gives thanks and praise to God for the bounty of His love shared at the Altar, in the home, from conception to natural death. With all of this in mind, I promise my future children:
-- To love God with my whole heart, my whole soul, my whole mind, and my whole strength, for He has deigned to love me first.
-- To love my neighbor as myself, your mother being the first neighbor by whom I fulfill this commandment; and through the love of God she and I share, we will love all of you children for the glory of God, loving you enough before you are born to be eager to conceive you, loving you enough before you are born to never think of preventing you from being conceived, loving you enough before you are born to desire to give you as many brothers and sisters as the good God wills.
-- To begin charity in our home by founding our home in the true faith of the Catholic Church, for without faith it is impossible to please God who is Charity itself; the first act of charity is to believe all that God has revealed for His glory and our salvation in His one, true Church.
-- To be the primary example in our family of the life of self-sacrifice proper to the Christian, for it is only by the Cross that the Father is rendered all by the Son in the Love of the Holy Ghost.
-- To lead our family in the daily praying of the Rosary, to regularly read to the family from the Scriptures presented by the liturgy of the Church for her daily and Sunday worship, and to bring the whole family to the Sunday and Holy Day celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and to the seasonal devotions by which the Church sanctifies time on the way to eternity.
-- To rule in our home in keeping with the example of the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, commanding nothing of others that I have not done myself, expecting nothing of others but the perfect obedience to the Father modeled by Jesus and Mary, and accepting nothing of others than a daily striving to embrace the Cross on earth as the sole means to the glory Jesus promises the faithful in Heaven.
-- To provide material wellbeing for our family according to the spirit of holy poverty, utterly shunning the desires of the world, the flesh, and the devil.
-- To insist on an atmosphere of joy in our home consonant with the fact that we worship a merciful Father whose Only-Begotten Son has died so as to bestow on us the Spirit of Life in whom we live and move and have our being.
-- To discipline our family in such a way as to minimize the necessity of punishment, but never to shirk the responsibility of imposing just punishments when it is necessary for the good of our family and the glory of God
-- To pray for you until we all see God together in Heaven.
(Ladies: Do not marry a man who is unwilling to make promises like these. Gentleman: Do not marry a woman who does not want a man who is willing to make promises like these. Marriages entered without promises like these will invariably flounder; the only cure for floundering marriages is to make and keep promises like these.)
Written by Traditional Catholic Priest, Father Smith.
12 August 2011
Saint Clare, Virgin
All Saints House, Silver Cliff, Wisconsin
In Christ Crucified and the Most Victorious Heart of Jesus.
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