From a report on Zenit:
After one couple addressed some words to him, the Holy Father responded with an encouraging address on the beauty of human love and awareness of the challenges it faces.
He promised that both God and the Church are close to couples as they prepare for marriage, and acknowledged that problems with finding a stable job make it difficult to take on the commitment of marriage.
"Do not lose courage in face of the needs that seem to extinguish joy at the table of life," he said. "At the Wedding of Cana, when wine was lacking, Mary invited the servants to go to Jesus and she gave them a precise indication: 'Do whatever he tells you.' Treasure these words, the last of Mary's taken up in the Gospels -- virtually a spiritual testament -- and you will always have the joy of the celebration: Jesus is the wine of the celebration!"
The Holy Father exhorted the young couples: "Do not give up on pursuing the lofty ideal of love, which is a reflection and testimony of the love of God!"
The pope also told couples not to withdraw into their relationship but to "become leaven" in their communities.
More from the story:
"Beginning from the initial attraction and 'feeling well' with the other, educate yourselves to 'love well,' to 'want the good' of the other," he said. "Love lives from gratuitousness, self-sacrifice, forgiveness and respect for the other."
The Bishop of Rome told the couples to "educate yourselves henceforth in the liberty of fidelity, which leads to protecting one another, to the point of the one living for the other."
He invited them to prepare themselves to choose "forever" with conviction.
"Indissolubility, more than a condition, is a gift that must be desired, requested and lived, beyond any changing human situation," the Pope reflected.
He also offered an evaluation on popular culture's recommendation to live together before marriage.
"Do not think," he said, that "living together is a guarantee for the future. If you skip the steps of intimacy, which require respect for time and a gradual progression of expressions, you will ‘get burned’ in love; love needs room for Christ, who is capable of making a human love faithful, happy and indissoluble."
Read the full story HERE.
