Couples who are seeking to marry, even those who have lived together, should value their engagement period as a time to grow in mature love and in profound knowledge of each other, said Pope Francis. The pope urged couples not to rush into marriage. Maturation in love before marriage is a slow process, in which none of the steps should be skipped, Pope Francis told people at his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square. "The covenant of love between a man and a woman, a covenant for life, cannot be improvised; it cannot be done from one day to the next," he said. There is no such thing as "an express marriage," he added. While it is "beautiful" that people today can choose whom to marry, the "freedom of this bond" cannot be based simply on physical attraction or feelings, he said. Engagement allows a couple to do the profound and "beautiful work of love" -- work that involves a profound "learning" of the other. "Love requires" this work, he said. "The love between a man and a woman is learned and is refined," he said, adding that married love must be understood more as something couples need to work on. Turning two lives into one is also almost a miracle, a miracle of the freedom of the heart, given in faith," he said.
The spiritual climax of the Gospel of John, as Father John Waiss points out, occurs at the foot of the Cross, where Jesus utters his parting words: “Woman, behold, your son!” and “Behold your mother!” (John 19:26-27). While these words were addressed to the Apostle John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, the Church has long understood this moment as a universal adoption. To truly image Christ, we must share in His parentage; if we embrace God as our spiritual Father but reject Mary as our mother, we treat Christ as a half-brother rather than our "firstborn among many brethren" (Rom. 8:29). As Origen noted as early as the third century, the profound depths of the Gospel are only accessible to those who, like John, rest their heads on Jesus’ breast and receive Mary into their own homes. This maternal role is deeply rooted in biblical typology, positioning Mary as the fulfillment of the great mothers of the Old Covenant. She is the New Eve , the mother of all the living according ...