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 sheer 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 225. We're reading paragraphs 1646 to 1651. 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 C-I-Y. I don't know if you know about this, but Ascension is the world's leader in Catholic faith formation. That's just one of the taglines that came to me right now. And also, lastly, you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications. If anyone else is out of breath right now, that's two of us because I don't know why. I just got excited by day 225. Not that it's a, well, gosh, okay, it's exciting because it's beautiful. We get to talk in paragraph 1646 through 1651 about the fidelity of conjugal love. Remember, we started talking about what are the effects of the sacrament of matrimony,

and then what are the goods and requirements of conjugal love?

So yesterday we talked about those four marks of God's love.

God's love is always free, it's always total, it's always faithful, it's always fruitful.

This section today, we're talking about the fidelity of conjugal love.

Like that sense that when you enter into marriage,

when one enters into a covenant of any kind, covenant is a call to faithfulness. It is called to

permanence. And in fact, 1646 says, by its very nature, conjugal love requires the inviolable

fidelity of the spouses, that faithfulness. And so we're going to talk about this because we're talking about faithfulness, we have both, right, the two edges of this sword, the goodness of how good this is, that so many people are called of marriage, are called to that faithfulness, but also at the same time, how challenging faithfulness is, how challenging it is to be faithful on one's own part when their spouse has not been faithful. I mean, all those issues, right, we're going to talk about those a little bit today. But this is part of our faith. This is part of what Jesus has given to us. And it's, and it's, and keeping this in mind, sometimes, once again, when we're going through the catechism, it's like, well, this is what the church teaches, as opposed to this is what God teaches. They're one and the same. We have to keep that in mind, that the teaching

of the church is the teaching of the Lord. That we know this, that if Jesus established his church,

which we know he did, if Jesus gave the Holy Spirit to guide the apostles into all truth, which we

know he did, if Jesus continues to guide the apostles into all truth, which we know he did,

if Jesus continues to be the source of, and gives us the Holy Spirit as that guide,

which we know he did, then the teaching of the church is the teaching of the teaching of the Lord. And so knowing that, knowing that this is both an incredible gift, faithfulness,

but also an incredible challenge, also an credible pain point for so many people's, people in

their lives and their marriages. We just ask the Lord to be with us today. So let's pray.

Father in heaven, we thank you, give you praise, we give you glory. We honor you this day.

We ask that you please console us as we continue to learn more about

what it is to have what are the goods of married love what are the requirements of married love

...