The Portal - Australia edition February 2014 | Page 6

THE P RTAL

February 2014

Page 6

The A - Z of the Catholic Faith
by Fr Stephen Wang

M is for…
Marriage
Through marriage a man and

woman give themselves to each other without
reservation, in a publically recognised commitment,
promising to love each other faithfully for the rest of
their lives, sharing their joys and sufferings in whatever
circumstances life brings them.
They express their love through their sexual union,
which brings them together in the closest intimacy
and opens them to the gift of new life. They build not
just a relationship but a home and a family and a place
of welcome for others too.
You do not need to be a Christian, of course, to
get married. But for Christians the natural union
of marriage is transformed into a sacrament. For a
Christian couple the call to love each other in this
way becomes at the same time an invitation to follow
Christ and to give their lives wholeheartedly to him in
love and service.
The love shown between a Christian husband and
wife becomes a sign of the radical love shown by
Christ in his life, death and resurrection.
Christian marriage is not just an expression of
human affection, it is a sacrament of the love of Christ,
a way for husband and wife to minister to each other
and to their children.
And in this way the Christian family becomes a
place where others can see the beauty and power of
Christ’s redeeming love, a love that is often obscured
in our fallen world. This is why marriage is a Christian
vocation.

Martyrdom
The word ‘martyr’ comes from a Greek word that
means ‘a witness’. A Christian martyr is, supremely,
someone who is willing to suffer persecution and
death for the sake of their faith – to give their life as
the greatest possible witness.
But in a wider sense we are all called to be martyrs:
to witness to our faith through our life, our prayer, our
love and our suffering.
One way of expressing this is to say that the
fundamental Christian vocation is the call to be a
martyr. The martyrs are not just heroic people who
live in history books.

They are ordinary Christians who have tried to live
their faith without holding anything back – to love
God with their whole hearts, to love those around
them without counting the cost, to work at what is
worthwhile with dedication and purpose, to be people
of joy and kindness and prayerfulness, to witness to
the joy of the Gospel in all that they do – whatever
the cost.
All of us are called to be martyrs – however weak
or sinful we feel. This is not so much an obligation as
a promise that God makes to us: he promises us, by
giving us his Holy Spirit, that he will help us to find
our true happiness in following him and witnessing to
him, and that he will give us whatever we need for the
journey.

Morality
It matters how we live our lives. A living faith involves
a commitment to follow Christ and to do the Father’s
will. We are called to be holy.
Christ gives us his own moral teaching in the New
Testament, which fulfils the teaching of the Old
Testament. He continues to guide us by means of
the moral teaching of the Catholic Church in every
generation.
By living a faithful Christian life we help to build
God’s Kingdom of peace and justice in this world, and
we witness to the power of Christ’s love in our lives.
The heart of Christian morality is the twin
commandment to love God and to love our neighbour.
It is to love as Christ himself loved; to imitate him in
his living and dying, as he lays down his life for us in
love and service.
We may struggle in our moral lives, but we can
all make a fundamental decision to turn away from
evil and to try to live a good life. This decision, this
conversion, is what matters most, because then God
can help us – in his own time – to overcome our
weaknesses and grow in holiness.
We can renounce sin, and promise to do everything
in our power to keep his commandments. If we
fail through weakness or sin, we can turn to the
inexhaustible mercy of God.