Demanding love to guard the common good of marriage and family. Reflections on the basis of the Letter to Families "Gratissimam sane" by John Paul II

Abstract

Marriage love and the common good of marriage and the family are among the leading themes taken up by Pope John Paul II in his letter Gratissimam sane, addressed to families around the world. The letter, written on the occasion of the International Year of the Family (1994), is still relevant despite the passage of forty years since it was written. Marital love, described by Pope John Paul II as a beautiful and demanding love, stands for the good of marriage and family. Love is beautiful precisely because it makes demands on the loving person that uphold the common good of marriage – the good of each of the persons who make up the marital and then family communion. This good, according to Pope John Paul II, is contained above all in what the content of the marriage vow carries, namely love, fidelity and marital honesty, and being with each other until death. The good of marriage is also the human being, each person who constitutes the marital and then family communion, and the essence of the marital communion itself. The good of marriage is also the faith of the spouses, which, like love, led the man and woman to enter into the sacrament of marriage, and the grace they invoke to fulfill the promises they make. An important element of the Letter to Families and the reflection undertaken in this article will be to show, following John Paul II, suggestions and guidelines that allow spouses in the daily life to give each other beautiful love and thus care for the common good, and these are, in particular, marital and family prayer, learning the truth about marriage and family, and using the grace of the sacrament of marriage to realize the truth learned for the good of marriage and family. The purpose of this article is to show how the requirements flowing from conjugal love guard and protect the common good of marriage and family, and how spouses can and should care for a life of love and what aids they have from the sacrament of marriage. We intend to achieve this goal by using the method of analyzing source texts, especially the Letter to Families Gratissimam sane and other texts of John Paul II and the literature on the subject. Achieving the goal will undoubtedly be an aid to understanding the requirements of conjugal love and the common good in the context of the challenges of modern times, and the timeliness of John Paul II’s teaching contained in this document, among others.