1 Do not yearn for
worthless children, or rejoice in wicked offspring. 2 Even if they be many, do not rejoice in
them if they do not have fear of the
LORD.
Life at times can be
hard. God does not promise us perfect happiness in this life; nor perfect
children; for we are made for heaven and eternal happiness with Him. We are to
do our best, but when our best is not sufficient; surrender it to Him. We must
be humble; trusting with great confidence in Him that we may do His will in
good seasons and bad. Pray that we may not forget this truth and complain as
the Israelites did in the desert to such an extent that Moses cried out to God, “Where can I get meat to give to all these people? For they
are crying to me, ‘Give us meat for our food.’ I cannot
carry this entire people by myself, for they are too heavy for me. If this is the way you will deal with me, then please do me the
favor of killing me at once, so that I need no longer face my distress.” (Nm
11:13-15)
Moses was despondent
here yet he did not give up; he gave it up. When things get tough; trust in Him.
Knowing that, “One does not live on bread alone, but by every word that comes
forth from the mouth of God.” (Mt. 4:4)
In retrospect when we are
despondent let us remember to go to the great Mother of God, Mary for truly on
the day of Christ’s death in some respects she died too-yet she did not fear
for “now she had another son” reflecting her spiritual adoption of all of mankind.
Catechism
of the Catholic Church
III. THE LOVE OF HUSBAND AND WIFE
The
fecundity of marriage
2366 Fecundity is a gift, an end of marriage, for conjugal love naturally
tends to be fruitful. A child does not come from outside as something added
on to the mutual love of the spouses, but springs from the very heart of that
mutual giving, as its fruit and fulfillment. So the Church, which is "on
the side of life," teaches that "it is necessary that each and every
marriage act remain ordered per se to the procreation of human life."
"This particular doctrine, expounded on numerous occasions by the
Magisterium, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which
man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and
the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act."
2367 Called to give life, spouses share in the creative power and fatherhood
of God. "Married couples should regard it as their proper mission to
transmit human life and to educate their children; they should realize that
they are thereby cooperating with the love of God the Creator and are, in a
certain sense, its interpreters. They will fulfill this duty with a sense of
human and Christian responsibility."
2368 A particular aspect of this responsibility concerns the regulation of
procreation. For just reasons, spouses may wish to space the births of
their children. It is their duty to make certain that their desire is not
motivated by selfishness but is in conformity with the generosity appropriate
to responsible parenthood. Moreover, they should conform their behavior to the
objective criteria of morality: When it is a question of harmonizing married
love with the responsible transmission of life, the morality of the behavior does
not depend on sincere intention and evaluation of motives alone; but it must be
determined by objective criteria, criteria drawn from the nature of the person
and his acts criteria that respect the total meaning of mutual self-giving and
human procreation in the context of true love; this is possible only if the
virtue of married chastity is practiced with sincerity of heart.
2369 "By safeguarding both these essential aspects, the unitive and the
procreative, the conjugal act preserves in its fullness the sense of true
mutual love and its orientation toward man's exalted vocation to
parenthood."
2370 Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on
self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective
criteria of morality. These methods respect the bodies of the spouses,
encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic
freedom. In contrast, "every action which, whether in anticipation of the
conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural
consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation
impossible" is intrinsically evil: Thus the innate language that expresses
the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through
contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not
giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal
to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal
love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality. . . . The
difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse
to the rhythm of the cycle . . . involves in the final analysis two
irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality.
2371 "Let all be convinced that human life and the duty of transmitting
it are not limited by the horizons of this life only: their true evaluation and
full significance can be understood only in reference to man's eternal destiny."
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