Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Young love in Chelsea...

Crowded room, filled with young engaged couples. They all look rather sweet, though when one gets talking to them of course they all turn out to be terrifyingly high-powered people in money and fashion journalism and things like that. And they've come for a Marriage Preparation Course and are all consciously being Deeply Serious about it. But once the talks start, the slightly artificial feel gives way to something more genuine - the discovery that this isn't a lot of woffle about relationships and caringandsharing but the real thing, which can be slightly startling: God and the reality of marriage as a sacrament, and what this means, and the practicalities of a lifelong commitment in a society that isn't going to do much to sustain you in that.

We were at St Mary's, Cadogan Street, Chelsea, where this Marriage Course has now been running for several years. If you are reading this as a much older person, and concerned for today's young people, and the general mess that Britain seems to be in at the moment in its family life, why not pray for the young couples I met tonight?

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