This is how we must Love one Another

This is how we must love one another. With a vowed love that is not dependent on happiness or any other external hallmarks of success. Where does such love begin if it does not begin with the one closest to us? The life's partner whom we ourselves have chosen out of all the other people of the world as the apple of our eye. If we cannot love our own favorite person through all of their ups and downs and trials and changes then how will we ever love the poor and the unlovely and the forgotten of the world? God has a way of giving us one love, that is greater than all the others you know or have ever known, one love that is entirely easy - at least in the beginning - to fulfill. A natural and spontaneous love such as the one that Jesus himself had. If we stop to think about it, it is a far stranger thing for people to love, than not to. And a stronger thing still for one person to be faithful in love to one other for a lifetime. It is plain proof that love can actually exist in this loveless world, and not only exist but persist and grow through all the vicissitudes of life.

Recitation from a November 16, 1991 Wedding.
authored by Mike Mason, Mystery of Marriage

The Mystery of Marriage 20th Anniversary Edition: Meditations on the Miracle