The source of Christian love is not in the human heart. It’s in God. To husbands and wives who want to love, who want to learn to love more and more, there is only one good piece of advice: seek God, love God, be united to God, give Him all the space.

The more they open themselves to the God of love, the richer the exchange of love between them. Before them lie infinite prospects: their love will never cease to grow, as they open themselves ever wider to God’s gift. If they want their love to be a living flame, ever higher, let them love God more and more every day.

The decline of so many loves can be explained by forgetting this fundamental principle: to turn away from God and sin against him is to sin against love by cutting oneself off from the source of love. To refuse God is to refuse your spouse his daily bread: love. He who claims to esteem love when he despises Love is lying.

Those who separate themselves from God do not lose the capacity to love, but they do abandon the best of their love. On the other hand, the capacity to love grows, as love for God grows. The conjugal union is worth, in human quality and in the quality of eternity, what the union of the spouses with God is worth. The more they open themselves to the God of love, the richer the exchange of love between them. Before them lie infinite prospects: their love will never cease to grow, as they open themselves ever wider to God’s gift. If they want their love to be a living flame, ever higher, let them love God more and more every day.

It is through prayer and the sacraments that spouses draw on the sources of divine grace. Penance maintains the transparency of the spouses’ hearts, and this seed of fire, which the Eucharist deposits in each of them, illuminates and warms married life. Confession before marriage, and communion during the Mass that follows it, take on a magnificent meaning when seen in this light.

The decline of so many loves can be explained by forgetting this fundamental principle: to turn away from God and sin against him is to sin against love by cutting oneself off from the source of love. To refuse God is to refuse your spouse his daily bread: love. He who claims to value love is lying when he cuts himself off from love

God is at the origin of love, but he is also at its end. Love comes from God, it goes to God; God is the alpha and omega of love. The mistake is to make love an absolute, the last end, a god. No doubt men would not commit this error if love did not speak so well of another love, that Love for which the human heart thirsts.

If simple natural love didn’t have a foretaste of this other Love, men wouldn’t pin such high hopes on it, and wouldn’t reproach it so bitterly for disappointing them. We’d be at peace with love if it weren’t for the fire of God’s love, which he invites us to seek, passing through him but not stopping with him. For if he makes a prestigious promise to humanity, it is on behalf of another, and only this Other can fulfill it. Love is but a messenger; God is its master.

Human love is not, however, “the great deception”. It’s not love that deceives, it’s men who misunderstand it. If we must speak of deception, it is not love that is guilty of it, but those who turn it into an all-powerful god, capable of satiating the human heart. This is the great lie. Deceived, the human heart demands everything from love, and love disappoints. How could it be otherwise? The creature cannot fill a heart large enough to receive the Creator. This disappointment often causes us to lose faith in love, and this unbelief is as serious as the idolatry of which it is the rotten fruit. Having expected everything from love, the human heart no longer expects what it was designed to provide: a path to God. That’s what we should have asked him for from the start. He is a means to an end, not an end in itself; but the means is powerful. For the human heart, love is indeed the great opportunity. It tears it away from itself and from the unjust grip of creatures. It makes it vacant, free, offered. The visitation of love is an hour of grace. “This force that calls us out of ourselves, why not trust it and follow it? “ Follow it beyond love, to the author of love.

In happy love, spouses soon find the One who dwells at the center of their union. As one of them wrote: “I understand more and more that the true marriage is that of the soul with its God. In painful love, suffering hollows out the place in the heart where God will come to dwell, if the unhappy heart does not give in to the temptation of despair, nor to the even more serious temptation of denying this hunger for love and the infinite in the depths of its being. In these suffering homes, then, it is also true to say that love leads to God.

Throughout the life of the home, a living love never ceases to be a road to God, for it is the great school of giving and detachment.

Love is a means, and more than that. A means is abandoned when the goal is reached, and the now useless boat is forgotten on the shore. Spouses must lead to God the love that has brought them to him. Love collaborates in their salvation: every day, they must work for his. But a change gradually takes place. While at first they took the path of love to get to God, the day comes when it seems truer to say that they pass through God to get to love. Or rather, their love is in God, and there’s no need to leave one to go to the other.

God is already present at the heart of simple, natural love, we might say, and those who seek him there find him there. But in Christian homes founded on the sacrament of marriage, his presence is infinitely more real and effective.

It is not love per se that becomes a sacrament, but the contract and the union that follows; but love, the inspiration of this contract and the living soul of this union, participates in the sacrament; it can be said to be not only sanctified, but also sanctifying.

For centuries, people have been asking love for the sweetness and joy of life: they’ve been asking it for everything, and yet they haven’t expected enough. Christ has come, and now love is capable of transmitting divine life to mankind. Love, the cause of joy, has become a source of grace. Men asked him for everything; he gives them more than everything, since he gives the cause of everything: God.

And while it’s true that married Christians must have frequent recourse to the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, the greatest of all, it’s no less regrettable that they are so often unaware that they can also find grace in their love, at home, where the unquenchable flame of the sacrament burns brightly. At home, in the depths of their union, Jesus Christ is waiting to give himself to them. To help us understand this mystery, Pope Pius XI invites us to compare the sacrament of marriage with the sacrament of the Eucharist. To this end, he recalls the words of Cardinal Bellarmine: “The sacrament of matrimony can be regarded in two ways: first, in the making, and then in its permanent state. For it is a sacrament like to that of the Eucharist, which not only when it is being conferred, but also whilst it remains, is a sacrament; for as long as the married parties are alive, so long is their union a sacrament of Christ and the Church.” (Encyclical Casti connubii).

Praise be to God, love must also be a message from God.

The work testifies to the artist’s talent: a chorale, for example, gives us access to the profound life of J.S. Bach. Likewise, creatures speak to us of the Creator, revealing his thoughts and perfections. The starry heavens tell us of his science, the ocean shows us his power, the clear eyes of a child give us a glimpse of his purity, but love tells us a much deeper confidence, infinitely more enriching for the human heart: it teaches us the love that lies in the Heart of God.

A great human love proves that love exists on earth - and this is already singularly important news for so many of our contemporaries who have lost faith in love - but above all, it offers us an authentic image of the divine home, of that love of the Father and the Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit: it proclaims that “God is love”. Human love is the reference that helps us understand divine love. Through its power to make two beings one, while preserving the personality of each, love enables us to gain insight into the mysterious union of Christ with humanity, and the spiritual marriage of the soul with its God.

This, then, is the message from God that married love is charged with bringing to mankind. And its importance is a measure of the esteem and trust God places in it.

For Father Henri Caffarel, there is a fundamental difference between the love of Christian couples, especially those united by the sacrament of marriage, and that of non-believers. It’s a question of correctly locating the source of this love, which some people think depends exclusively on us. On the other hand, having the certainty that it is in God can give us added depth and quality. Having a clear vision of the origin of this source opens us up to a world of possibilities and growth in this love. On the other hand, the decline of so many loves could be explained by a distance from God, and the sin of separation from the source of love. To bring us closer to God, we have prayer and the sacraments, which take on a new dimension by becoming the source and nourishment of our love. What’s more, this grace, where we find the origin of love, is also the final destination. God is the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega. Love comes from God and goes to God. But human love tends to disappoint in the face of the immense thirst we all have for absolute love. And only God can give this absolute love. To make an absolute of human love is a very common mistake, because feelings can be changeable, and we are often unable to satisfy the demands of a love that only God can satisfy.

Throughout the life of a marriage, a living love never ceases to be a path towards God, a tool which, in the path of holiness we follow together, will help us to reach God. For God is already present in human love, but in Christian couples founded on the sacrament of marriage, his presence is more real, more sanctifying, because it is a source of grace since this Love is capable of satisfying our deepest desires. The powerful image of a couple who love each other deeply is a true image of God and a powerful testimony. This human love helps others to better understand divine love, because God is love.

Today, we expect too much of married love: that it fulfills, that it understands, that it comes forward, that it expresses itself, that it listens, that it responds, that it holds, that it protects… We expect too much of the other, who is an imperfect and limited person like ourselves. We believe that any solitude will be filled, that any uncertainty will disappear, that any dialogue will reach the depths of the soul, that any mistake will be excused. And if we fail, it’s disappointment, it’s the end. We expected a love without cracks, without excuses, without reproaches; a love that was perfect, unconditional and total.

God has placed such a thirst for love in the heart of man that he seeks it tirelessly throughout his life, and believes he can find it in a privileged way in married love, but it is God alone who is the answer. This thirst cannot be totally satisfied by another human being. We forget the source and look for where it is reflected, but this reflection, even if it is already a promise, cannot replace the true fountain.

1: To what extent have we already experienced the disappointments mentioned above? Let’s give each other some concrete examples. What explanations can we give for these situations?

2: “The source of Christian love is not in the human heart. It is in God.” What do we think of this powerful statement by Father Henri Caffarel? In what way, in our marriage, has a certain distance from God, or even in some cases a forgetfulness of God, been detrimental to the quality of our married love? Conversely, what have been the consequences for our married love when one or both of us has been closer to the Lord? In concrete terms, how have we been able to experience this greater closeness to the Lord, and how can we make it more present every day?

3: “While at first they took the way of love to go to God, a day comes when it seems truer to say that they pass through God to go to love. Or rather, their love is in God and there’s no need to leave one to go to the other.” Depending on how long we’ve been a couple, this step may not have happened yet. What do we think of this statement? Are we living it in our relationship? What obstacles do we encounter along the way, and how can we overcome them?

4: “God is already present at the heart of simple natural love,” we said, “and those who seek him there find him there. But in Christian homes founded on the sacrament of marriage, his presence is infinitely more real and more effective.” Our sacrament of marriage: how would we define it? How do we live it? What are its tangible effects on our conjugal relationship?

5: Father Henri Caffarel insists on the graces procured by conjugal love and the graces procured by the sacrament of marriage? Can we name and explain the graces procured by married love and the graces procured by the sacrament of marriage?

What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him? Who will bring a charge against God’s chosen ones? It is God who acquits us. Who will condemn? It is Christ [Jesus] who died, rather, was raised, who also is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? As it is written: “For your sake we are being slain all the day; we are looked upon as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

1: Following our Sit Down (question 4), let’s talk about what each of us understands about our sacrament of marriage.

2: “If we must speak of deception, it is not love that is guilty of it, but those who turn it into an all-powerful god, capable of satiating the human heart. That is the great lie.” I’m sure we’ve made this observation for ourselves or for loved ones. How does this encourage us to be witnesses to the good news of Christian marriage? Particularly to our children, grandchildren, godchildren… How can we avoid the risk of one day thinking that our human love is enough to satisfy us?

3: We often talk about the graces of the sacrament of marriage. Following the reading of these texts by Father Henri Caffarel, and our Sit Down, can we name them, distinguishing between graces that are experienced and those that are more difficult for us to perceive? To what extent does this confirm the necessity of God’s presence in married love? In what way is our sacrament of marriage a treasure? Does it lead us to holiness? How does it oblige us to bear witness?

4: How can we rely more on our sacrament of marriage to overcome certain marital difficulties or to make our love even more selfless?

5: “It is through prayer and the sacraments that spouses draw on the sources of divine grace. Penance maintains the transparency of the spouses’ hearts (see chapter 5), and this seed of fire, which the Eucharist deposits in each of us, illuminates and warms married life.” How does our personal and conjugal prayer enable us to “draw from the wellsprings of divine grace”? How have we experienced the “seed of fire” that is the Eucharist, which “illuminates and warms married life”? Do we take care to determine together, before each Eucharist, the common offering we are going to bring to it, so that our married life is concretely transformed by it?