Currently, our Cardinals and Bishops are gathered in Rome to discuss family life and Catholic teaching and practices within and around families.
What would St. Francis de Sales’ stance be?
We can surmise some perspectives from the exhortations he evidenced in his Introduction to the Devout Life, part 3, Chapter 38, “Instructions for Married Persons”.
He said, in part, ” Marriage is a great Sacrament both in Jesus Christ and His Church, and one to be honored to all, by all and in all. To all, for even those who do not enter upon it should honor it in all humility. By all, for it is holy alike to poor as to rich. In all, for its origin, its end, its form and matter are holy. It is the nursery of Christianity, whence the earth is peopled with faithful, till the number of the elect in Heaven be perfected; so that respect for the marriage tie is exceedingly important to the commonwealth, of which it is the source and supply.
Would to God that His Dear Son were bidden to all weddings as to that of Cana! Truly then the wine of consolation and blessing would never be lacking; for if these are often so wanting, it is because too frequently now men summon Adonis instead of our Lord, and Venus rather than Our Lady. He who desires that the young of his flock should be like Jacob’s, fair and ring-straked, must set fair objects before their eyes; and he who would find a blessing in his marriage, must ponder the holiness and dignity of this Sacrament, instead of which too often weddings become a season of mere feasting and disorder.
Above all, I would exhort all married people to seek that mutual love so commended to them by the Holy Spirit in the Bible. It is little to bid you love one another with a mutual love,—turtle-doves do that; or with human love,–the heathen cherished such love as that. But I say to you in the Apostle’s words: “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church. Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands as unto the Lord.” It was God Who brought Eve to our first father Adam, and gave her to him to wife; and even so, my friends, it is God’s Invisible Hand Which binds you in the sacred bonds of marriage; it is He Who gives you one to the other, therefore cherish one another with a holy, sacred, heavenly love.
Saint Gregory Nazianzen says that in his time married people were wont to celebrate the anniversary of their wedding, and it is a custom I should greatly approve, provided it were not a merely secular celebration; but if husbands and wives would go on that day to Confession and Communion, and commend their married life specially to God, renewing their resolution to promote mutual good by increased love and faithfulness, and thus take breath, so to say, and gather new vigor from the Lord to go on steadfastly in their vocation.