Sunday, December 12, 2004
Holy Orders and Matrimony
RCIA tomorrow night is Chapter 16: Sacraments at the Service of Communion: Holy Orders and Matrimony. Our book is doing a decent job of walking us through the Sacraments of the Catholic Church. We learn here how Bishops and Priests and Deacons are made. And we learn:
God uses marriage to help men and women "to overcome self-absorbtion, egoism, pursuit of one's own pleasure, and to open oneself to the other, to mutual aid and to self-giving."
Our text quotes the Jimmy Carter passage of Matthew, "looking at a woman lustfully is the equivalent of comitting adultery." (Matthew 5:27-28). And also quotes St. Francis Assisi's "Prayer for Peace:"
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not seek so much
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand,
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
