True Love and True Marriage
by Rev. Sun Myung Moon
August 21, 2004 Seoul (Korea)
Edited by esgd
12 minutes
Now is the time for you, as you enter the time after the coming of Heaven, to practice Heaven’s truth in your family and nation in order to prepare for your eternal life. It is time to leave behind the struggle, conflict and confrontation of the age before the coming of Heaven. We can stand on the foundation of the True Parents, who are the Parents of Heaven and Earth, and establish the substantial Kingdom of Heaven. This realm of complementary partnership, harmony and unity, is what we call Cheon Il Guk.
From this perspective, I would like to take this opportunity to speak on the topic, “True Love and True Marriage.” I will share one aspect of the principle of true love that I have been teaching throughout my life and that you now are to put into practice.
What is true love? It does not refer to the selfish love that is strewn about in the secular world. It is not the counterfeit love given one moment and abandoned the next. It is not self-indulgent, profligate love driven by fleshly desire. Such false love assails and violates the conscience driving nails into the original mind.
True love on the other hand is the source of peace and spiritual order. Its nature is to honor and preserve the public tranquility. It is humanity’s shared inheritance that serves the common benefit of all people. It symbolizes God’s intention and power, for it is rooted in God.
True love is mysterious. The more it is given, the more plentiful it is and the greater joy it brings. True love possesses power great enough to transform the motivation, process and outcome of human life. We were created to be born in true love, raised in true love, and pass to the next world in true love. That is the reason true love has the greatest and highest value.
Through true love we can be together eternally, see each other eternally, converse with and feel each other eternally and have nothing but affection for each other. It is one love and yet all people can enjoy it together. If we consider its detail, it is extremely small; if we consider its grandeur, it is extremely huge. Immersed in true love, the mere wink of an eye can be sufficient to bring forth a joy so great as to shake heaven and earth; a single smile can make one feel superhuman power. That power is strong enough to change one’s life. If you think you can see it, you cannot; if you think you cannot see it, you can. It is full of mystery.
What color is true love? Do you suppose that at night it is black, and in daylight it is white? The central colors of true love are harmony and unity; surrounding them are peace and happiness. An atomic weapon has no power other than to destroy life. It is not a symbol of creation, but of judgment and ruin. True love, by contrast, has the power of resurrection that can bring one who has died back to life. So the power to bind the world together and bring unity does not reside in the military mindset that lies behind nuclear weapons, but in true love. Each nation has its cultural background and political boundary, and true love is the only power capable of transcending these. The difficult problems humanity faces can be solved only through the perfection of true love. Ladies and gentlemen, you must seek after true love. You must make true love your own. You must witness the perfection of true love within your own life. Where can you go to find true love?
If we first examine the manner in which true love exists, we see that it has a multidirectional character moving simultaneously north, south, east and west, and that it exists and functions in a way that transcends race, culture, religion and national boundaries. True love acts prior to life, for it is the origin of life. True love is complete in its original form and needs no development or revolution. True love is the most natural thing, possessing the highest sincerity. True love functions at a speed greater than anything in the world.
We can receive the seeds of true love only by receiving the true Holy Blessing from the horizontal True Parents. They come as substantiations of God, the vertical True Parent, and thereby engraft us into God’s lineage. There is no way to find true love in the Fallen world of falsehood. It is absolutely impossible. We cannot find the lineage of goodness in the human-centered world that resulted from the Fall. Only by being engrafted onto the lineage of goodness through the True Parents can you find a way to overcome the struggle between your mind and body. Taking this further, it is the only way to resolve the problems of human conflict, of religious, racial and national boundaries, and of democracy versus communism. It also opens the way to peace in the Middle East and unification on the Korean Peninsula, the two most dangerous areas of conflict in today’s world. This is the reason that the change of blood lineage is an important and serious matter.
The Blessing of Marriage is a once-in-a lifetime event on which the life of humanity depends. This is the precise reason that the Blessing for Registration in Cheon Il Guk for “The Revolution of True Heart, True Liberation and Complete Freedom,” which all of us dedicated to Heaven in the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea on August 20, was the greatest and most precious grace and blessing in your entire life. You have now received the Holy Blessing from the True Parents, who have been crowned as World King of Peace. You have inherited the true lineage and you have received the seed of true love. Please never forget that you are to spend the remainder of your life on earth nurturing this seed so that it will blossom and bear fruit.
Ladies and gentlemen, why do we marry? In a word, it is so that we may resemble God’s image. As One Entity who exists with dual characteristics, God is a unified being in which opposites dwell in union. Because men and women are projections of God’s divine characteristics, their destiny is to form a union as one body, become as one seed, and return to oneness with God’s original character.
Let us give highest praise to the sanctity of marriage. Married life is the way for a man and a woman to love. Whom do we resemble when we become one through married life? Our goal is to resemble God. It is only when a man and a woman become one that they truly resemble God, who created them in His image. It is then, and only then, that God resides in them. A man symbolizes heaven and a woman symbolizes earth. So it is necessary for a man and woman to come together in harmony to bring about peace. The phrase, “the union of virtue in heaven and earth,” refers to a state in which a husband and wife have accomplished perfect unity centering on Heaven’s true love.
When a husband and wife embrace each other in true love, it is the equivalent of the universe becoming one body. This is the original image of creation brought into substantial reality in the context of God’s ideal.
Another reason we marry is so that we can be trained to love the world and all its people. The marriage ceremony vows speak of the substantiation of love and, at the same time, the endowment of the authority to create and the authority to exercise dominion. So the purpose of marriage is to bring into oneness the realm of heart of one man, representing the world, and one woman, representing the world, so that they may perfect the love between a man and a woman.
When a couple has accomplished the perfection of love and the perfection of their hearts, it can be said that they have accomplished the family ideal. If you die on this foundation, you are certain to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Why is marriage important? It is because it is the path by which we seek true love. It is because it is the path for creating life. It is because it is the path on which the lineage of a man and woman are co-mingled. Through marriage, history is made, and on that foundation, nations are born and the ideal world can begin.
When we marry, we must do so with the conviction that we do this not for ourselves but for our partner. It is wrong for a person to try to gain a spouse on the basis of their high social standing, wealth or beauty. Once we realize that human beings are born to live for the sake of others, we understand that marriage, too, is for the sake of our spouse. Our view of marriage must be that if our spouse has deficiencies, we will give him or her even more love than we would if he or she were the most beautiful person in the world.
Having been born as human beings, we must be determined to love our partner as we love God, love our partner in the same way that we would love humankind, and love our partner more than we love any other person in the world. Otherwise, we cannot be restored to the Kingdom of Heaven as a husband and wife. If a man cannot love a woman truly, how can he expect to be able to love God or humankind?
Marriage is a ceremony by which we open the gates and enter the palace of happiness. This is why marriage is a major occasion of moral significance. Because love exists and functions transcendent of time and space, it is the most important dimension of human life, and marriage is the ceremony in which this love is brought forth and confirmed.
Respected guests, this evening I have conveyed to you one aspect of Heaven’s teaching regarding true love and true marriage. Whether you participated as a newlywed couple or as an existing couple, you have now been granted Heaven’s command to walk the path of a true husband and wife with Heaven’s seal. By your bond with the True Parents, you have received the seed of true love, so I ask that you become true husbands and wives who produce true fruit through a true married life. Become true parents. Build true families. Establish true nations. Heavenly fortune will help you.
In closing, I sincerely ask that you lead lives in which, by practicing true love, you do everything you can to prepare for your eternal life.
Thank you.
