Read the Large Catechism with me.
Ten-minute studies on short readings from the Large Catechism.
Let's do this.
Click on the link below and read the short assigned reading. Then, if you have time, check out what I have to say about it. If not, no problem. Just soak up the goodness of the LC.
The Sixth Commandment Part 2: Click here and read 211 - the end of the Sixth Commandment.
The basics:
- Men and women were created for marriage and should not feel the need to vow against it for the sake of a monastic life. Luther says it is not possible to remain chaste without marriage due to our flesh and blood.
- Luther discusses the secret sins of people in the church who have sworn off marriage (monks, priests, nuns, etc.). Even when they abstain from the act, their hearts and minds are filled with suffering which is unnecessary and causes them to sin in thought. This can be avoided in marriage.
- The youth are to be raised to honor marriage and know that it is a blessed estate and pleasing to God. In this teaching to the youth, we might restore the honor in marriage and end the disorderly manner in which our world views it.
- This commandment not only demands us to live chastely in thought, word, and deed in his or her place in life, and especially in marriage, but also that everyone love and esteem the spouse given them by God.
My thoughts today:
It is pretty easy for me to think our world is in the sorriest state in all of history. I mean, really, we are goin' DOWN. Amiright?
It always gives me some sort of weird peace to know the world was really bad a long time ago, too.
Luther talks about how saddened he is to know about the adulterous sins of priests...
He talks about how little honor is given to married life in the youth...
He is disgusted by the debauchery which is happening through prostitution and distortion of marriage...
Did he write this yesterday? Because I am pretty sure he could have.
When I get a little too depressed about the state of our world, I try to remember that when there were only about four or five people living on the entire earth, one of them killed another one. That is a pretty bad statistical number there. Sin is sin. It has been here since there were only two of us. Our world is bad...REALLY BAD, and it has been since the fall when we made the decision to turn it from very good to very bad.
But you know what? The Church has survived. Through thousands of years, through murders, through adulterous relationships, through the denial of marriage, through every sin ever committed by a saint...she, the Church, still stands.
But not on her own, of course.
She stands because she is the Bride of Christ, and unlike us, He never breaks the Sixth Commandment.
