Pope Francis: The Holy Spirit is "essential" for Unity in Marriage

Francis said like the Trinity, “married couples, too, should form a first-person plural, a ‘we.’ Stand before each other as an ‘I’ and a ‘you,’ and stand before the rest of the world, including the children, as a ‘we.’”

“How much children need this unity — mother and father together — unity of parents, and how much they suffer when it is lacking,” he emphasized. “How much the children of separated parents suffer, how much they suffer.”

Drawing on the story of the wedding at Cana, Francis noted that for “so many couples, one must repeat what Mary said to Jesus, at Cana in Galilee: ‘They have no wine.’ The Holy Spirit is he who continues to perform, on a spiritual level, the miracle that Jesus worked on that occasion; namely, to change the water of habit into a new joy of being together.”

“It is not a pious illusion: It is what the Holy Spirit has done in so many marriages, when the spouses decided to invoke him."

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“No one,” the pope continued, “says that such unity is an easy task, least of all in today’s world; but this is the truth of things as the Creator designed them, and it is therefore in their nature. Certainly, it may seem easier and quicker to build on sand than on rock; but Jesus tells us what the result is…”

Pope Francis noted that marriage needs the support of the Holy Spirit, “the Gift,” and recommended that marriage preparation include a deeper spiritual preparation in addition to just psychological, legal, and moral information.

“Where the Holy Spirit enters, the capacity for self-giving is reborn,” he said.