Cardinal Donald Wuerl - The Marriage God Wants for You: Why the Sacrament Makes All the DIfference

A great resource on Christian marriage, at a time when we need to rejoice in the enduring grace of this wonderful sacrament. Cardinal Wuerl writes clearly and refreshingly on the call and vocation of married life. Bravo!

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York

With his customary lucidity and depth, Cardinal Wuerl brings out the essential features of marriage as the Catholic Church understands it: fidelity, permanence, openness to life, and sacramentality. The book also includes some wonderful, funny, and gritty reflections from married couples themselves. I would warmly recommend it to anyone curious to know why the Catholic Church takes marriage with such seriousness and treats it with such reverence.

Fr. Robert Barron, Rector, Mundelein Seminary, and founder, Word on Fire Catholic Ministries

We live in a society that has emptied marriage of its gloryand stolen happiness away from families. Cardinal Wuerl restores that glory for young couples today. This book is an investment that will pay off in a happier future. Highly recommended!

Scott Hahn, bestselling author and professor of theology, Franciscan University of Steubenville

Give your marriage this book as a gift! It is at once deeply profound and richly practical.

Matthew Kelly, founder of DynamicCatholic.com and author of Rediscover Catholicism

The Marriage God Wants for You is a mosaic of teaching, witnessing, recounting experiences, and sharinga very fine workbook for appreciating the structure, meaning, and beauty of marriage.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, Archbishop of Galveston-Houston

Cardinal Wuerls refreshing re-presentation of marriage as high vocation, as sacrament, and as a vital social institution could not come at a better time. The Marriage God Wants for You will provide hope and encouragement to all who have embraced, or who are contemplating, a way of life that has become increasingly countercultural.

Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law, Harvard University

This is a book for people at every stage of the great adventure called marriage. Engaged couples, newlyweds, and those married for many years will all find enlightenment and encouragement in this clear and often eloquent exposition of the Christian meaning of matrimony. An added bonus are the moving testimonies of people who have lived it themselves.

Russell Shaw, journalist and author

The Marriage God Wants for You is a book for husbands and wivesand for husbands and wives-to-beabout how to ensure that your marriage will be the kind of union that a truly loving God, who supremely wills our fulfillment and happiness, wants us to have.

Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University

What is the marriage God wants for you? One that reveals divine life to the world. Cardinal Wuerl clears up the confusion surrounding marriage today by using his well-known gifts of teaching and pastoring to describe the meaning and beauty of this sacrament.

Raymond Arroyo, EWTN host and author of The Prayers and Personal Devotions of Mother Angelica

Today marriage and family life is in a crisis. Within this darkness, Cardinal Wuerls book on marriage brings the light of Gods truth and the radiance of the Churchs wisdom. May many young people and young married couples experience and know the joy, peace, and love that he offers them in this marvelous little treatise on Christian marriage.

Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM Cap, lecturer, Dominican House of Studies and Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome

Cardinal Wuerl has penned a most optimistic book on the positive beauty of the Christian understanding of marriage, and the divine love it both symbolizes and strengthens sacramentally. It is about what is right, not only about what is wrong. A beautiful contribution!

John Michael Talbot, musician and founder, Brothers and Sisters of Charity

The Marriage God Wants for You is a beautiful and practical meditation on the Sacrament of Marriage at a time of wholesale confusion and doubt. Cardinal Wuerl has given a great gift to the Church at a critical moment for our culture.

Matthew E. Bunson, PhD, author and editor of The Catholic Answer and The Catholic Almanac

WHY THE SACRAMENT MAKES
ALL THE DIFFERENCE

Cardinal Donald Wuerl

Archbishop of Washington

Copyright 2015 Cardinal Donald Wuerl

All rights reserved

Published by The Word Among Us Press

7115 Guilford Drive

Frederick, Maryland 21704

19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5

ISBN: 978-1-59325-280-9

eISBN: 978-1-59325-473-5

Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American

Bible, revised edition 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of

Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of

the copyright owner. All rights reserved. No part of the New American

Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission

in writing from the copyright owner.

Cover design by Andrea Alvarez

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic,

mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief

quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the

author and publisher.

Made and printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015940593

By Mike Aquilina

I had been watching my confessors hairline inch farther and farther up his scalpand suspected that I was the cause of it.

At the time, I was new to fatherhoodand still relatively new to marriageand wondering why God hadnt included user manuals with all these strange and wondrous creatures he had sent to my home. Some days I felt as if I couldnt please any of them. And on some days they werent pleasing me. Worse yet, I feared that none of this was pleasing to God.

Which was the reason I kept visiting my confessor again and againuntil finally one day it dawned on me. That user manual I wantedhe was it! Whenever I went to see him, it seemed that I always came home with good adviceand a mission. And things at home always improved, even if only a little.

It was my confessor who helped me find more time to pray each daywithout my losing a single minute from all my other tasks. It was the same confessor who eased me, without my noticing it, into the habit of asking whether I might be the source of this or that particular problem and not everyone else.

I liked the effect this was having on my inner life. But more than that, I liked the effect it was having on my home life, my marriage, and my parenting.

That confessor with the receding hairline was just the first of many confessors in my life. When he was moved to his next assignment, I just made myself part of his successors scheduleand then the next guys, and the guy after him. And I have never been disappointed.

Just how are these celibate men able to give such helpful advice about matters of marriage, from sharing chores to the mysteries of sex? I had to conclude that it was what they understood about the Sacrament of Matrimony.