Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a year podcast,

where we encounter God's plan of sure goodness for us, revealed in scripture and passed down

through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a year is brought to you by

Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church,

discovering our identity and God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 221. We are reading paragraphs 1618 to 1624. As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the Foundations of Faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own catechism in a year reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com

slash CIY. And lastly, you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and

daily notifications because today is 221B Baker Street. It is Day 221, reading paragraph 1618 to 1624.

Yesterday we talked about the pedagogy of God's teaching us about what marriage is

and how Jesus has established in an unequivocal way, right?

The indissolubility of marriage, the original meaning of marriage.

Jesus recovers and gives back to us.

And this is just the high call, the high call of marriage. Today, we're going to take a couple of next steps. First next step is virginity for the sake of the kingdom. It might seem strange to talk about virginity for the sake of the kingdom when you're talking about holy matrimony. But I don't think it's strange at all because here's the thing. Sometimes people will say, and I'll say this again probably,

sometimes people will say, oh, so you Catholics, you have people who give up or celibate for the sake of the kingdom, right? Virginity for the sake of the kingdom. Well, isn't that prohibited in the New Testament? Doesn't it say that, you know, the days will come when people will prohibit marriage? And that's what you're doing right now. No, no, no, no, no. That is not the case. Let me correct you.

Virginity for the sake of the kingdom is not Catholics saying marriage is bad. I'm not going to do it. That's what was warned against in the New Testament. Virginity for the sake of the kingdom is, okay, marriage is so good. Marriage is such a great good. I'm going to give up this great good for the sake of an even greater good, the kingdom of heaven. And so it's not giving up a bad for the good

because marriage is not bad. Marriage is a great good. I'm going to give up this great good

for an even greater good for the sake of the kingdom of God. Now, the next thing we're talking

about is we're going to launch into kind of some nuts and boltish kind of things on the celebration of marriage. And so we're going to have about, I don't know, three or four paragraphs to just talk about the celebration of marriage. And then tomorrow we'll talk about that matrimonial consent and all those, all kind of deets. We're going to go talk about some details. But today we're going to kick it off by

just kind of giving the intro to the celebration of marriage. And here's how marriages go. I know a lot of people that don't, haven't ever been to a Catholic wedding. And so we're going to talk about some of those aspects today as well. So virginity for the sake of the kingdom and celebration of marriage. before that, let's pray.

Father and Evan,

God, you're so good.

You're so good that you

you give us these gifts and we don't do anything to deserve them. You give us life and we did

...