Pope Leo extols marriage as ‘measure of true love between a man and a woman’

Pope Leo XIV this weekend praised recently canonized married couples such as Saints Louis and Zélie Martin, saying the Church’s recognition of them underscores that today’s world needs the witness of the marriage covenant to encounter God’s love and combat forces “that break down relationships and societies.”

“In the family, faith is handed on together with life, generation after generation. It is shared like food at the family table and like the love in our hearts. In this way, families become privileged places in which to encounter Jesus, who loves us and desires our good, always,” Pope Leo said in the June 1 homily during Mass at the Vatican for the Jubilee of Families, Children, Grandparents and the Elderly.

He reflected on Christ’s prayer in the Gospel reading from John 17 that “they may become completely one” and spoke on how people are interdependent. 

“Dear friends, we received life before we ever desired it,” Pope Leo said, noting that, as the late Pope Francis said in January, no one chooses to be born. 

“Not only that. As soon as we were born, we needed others in order to live; left to ourselves, we would not have survived,” Pope Leo continued. “Someone else saved us by caring for us in body and spirit. All of us are alive today thanks to a relationship, a free and freeing relationship of human kindness and mutual care.”

But sometimes such kindness is betrayed, which causes deep wounds and even death. Pope Leo gave the example of “whenever freedom is invoked not to give life, but to take it away, not to help, but to hurt.”

However, amid such evil and disunity, Christ can bring healing, as He continues to pray to God the Father, the Pope said. 

“His prayer acts as a balm for our wounds; it speaks to us of forgiveness and reconciliation,” Pope Leo said. “That prayer makes fully meaningful our experience of love for one another as parents, grandparents, sons and daughters. That is what we want to proclaim to the world: we are here in order to be ‘one’ as the Lord wants us to be ‘one,’ in our families and in those places where we live, work and study. Different, yet one; many, yet one; always, in every situation and at every stage of life.”

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