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And the two of them become one body

 (Gen 2:24)

            I was on my fifth and final year as a chemical engineering student at the University of the Philippines. Jean just entered the College of Engineering as a pre-junior (third year) student in chemical engineering. She applied for membership in the Kem Engineers, an organization of chemical engineering students, where I was vice-president and chairman of the membership committee. One of the requirements for admission was to get the signatures of all the members. As chairman of the membership committee I had to test the resolve and determination of the applicants to become members. Therefore, I had to make myself scarce, unavailable and difficult to find. No one could be a member of the Kem Engineers without my complete signature. During the month-long application period, applicants therefore always looked for me and tried to catch me. Sometimes they would find and catch me. But then I would sign only my first name, or worse, only part of my first name. Then they had to catch me again, some at least two or three more times, to get the rest of my signature. This was how Jean and I met. It was June 1964.

            My brothers and sisters, as Jean and I celebrate thirty years of marriage, I should like to share with you part of our story. I was inspired by Dietrich von Hildebrand, the great philosopher and spiritual writer whom Pope Pius XII called “the twentieth-century Doctor of the Church.” Hildebrand called marriage the mystery of faithful love. In 1929 he wrote a book with the same title. This book has been reprinted many times, translated into numerous languages, and remained unsurpassed in spiritual depth and insight into the meaning of marriage. He opened it with these words: The greatness and sublimity of marriage, the closest and most ultimate of unions, raised by Christ to the dignity of a Sacrament, is revealed at one stroke in the exhortation of St. Paul wherein he compares married love to the love of Christ, the Word made Flesh, for His Holy Church. No natural human good has been exalted so high in the New Testament. No other good has been chosen to become one of the Seven Sacraments. No other has been endowed with the honor of participating directly in the establishment of the Kingdom of God.

By the time I graduated in April 1965, Jean and I were already going steady. She attended my graduation and met my parents and sisters for the first time. I was nineteen and she was eighteen.

            I accepted a teaching position at the University of the Philippines in Los Baños. For a year, I divided my time between Los Baños and Diliman (about a four-hour bus ride) – in Los Baños to teach, and in Diliman to be with Jean and to attend graduate courses in the evening. After a year, I was offered a teaching post in Diliman. Jean was then a fifth year student in chemical engineering. To avoid the awkward situation of becoming one of my students, Jean took the courses that I was not teaching.

            Jean graduated with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in April 1967, the same year I earned my master of engineering degree. She was twenty. I was twenty-one. Jean started working for a textile firm as a young chemical engineer. I continued teaching. In August 1967, I was sent by the university on fellowship to pursue doctoral studies in the United States. We then started planning how she could join me in the United States.

            A year had passed and Jean was still unable to get a visa to the United States. Not wanting to be separated any longer, we made a decision to get married. During the summer of 1968, I came back to the Philippines. First, I had to go to the province to tell my parents. They were surprised that I was back. They were also not happy. They were hoping that I would first finish my doctorate before getting married. They did not attend my wedding in Manila. Only my sisters were present and a family friend stood in the place of my parents. I stayed with a friend’s house in Manila while preparing for the wedding.

On 8 September 1968 we were married at the chapel of Pius XII Catholic Center in Manila by Fr. Godofredo Roozen, SDB. Jean was twenty-two. I was twenty-three. We had the wedding reception at Max’s Restaurant in Roxas Boulevard and our honeymoon in Tagaytay. Then we left for the United States, passing by Tokyo for an extended honeymoon. Thus we sometimes say with a little bit of humor that our first child, Joyce, was made in the Philippines, assembled in Japan, and delivered in the United States. In December 1970, I completed my doctorate and we returned to the Philippines with Joyce who was then a year and a half old.

            We have lived this “mystery” for the past thirty years. This “closest and most intimate of all earthly unions in which, more than any other, one person gives himself to another without reserve, where the other in his complete personality is the object of love, and where mutual love is in a specific way the core of the relationship;” this “wonderful union of two persons in love and by love;” this “reality in the objective order which is constituted only by a solemn act and presupposes a formal act of the will: the two partners give themselves expressly to each other, fully sanctioning this surrender for their entire lifetime;” this “mystery of faithful love” has given us one daughter and four sons. Joyce, 29, is married with two children and working in advertising. Joubert, 27, is working in computers and information technology. Joel, 21, is a special child (see Chapter 17). Jenner, 19, is in college taking up communication arts. Johann, 12, is in Grade 7 at the Jakarta International School.

            We consider our children as God’s great gifts to us. They are the concrete manifestation of a great privilege given to us by God – that of participating in his creative power. Hildebrand puts it eloquently. That a new human being should issue from it is certainly part of the solemn grandeur of this supremely intimate union. This wonderful, divinely-inspired relationship between the mysterious procreation of a new human being and this most intimate communion of love (which by itself alone already has its full importance), illuminates the grandeur and solemnity of this union. It is difficult to imagine a greater lack of reverence toward God than interfering with this mystery with desecrating hands in order to frustrate this mystery. How terrible to think of man wanting to destroy this unity which God has established so mysteriously, deeming those united in the highest earthly union of love worthy to take part in His creative power. To go against God’s purposes through a desecrating interference, perhaps even thus to throw back into the void a being that God had intended to exist – what sacrilegious presumption!

God called us into the community of Couples for Christ in May 1992 (see Chapter 29). And in this community we have encountered Jesus.  The Lord has become a part of our life, a part of our family.  The Lord has transformed us. He has changed our outlook in life, our dreams and aspirations, and our purpose for living. His words, “Behold, I make all things new.” (Rev 21:5), has become a living reality in us. In Couples for Christ, our marriage has become, in the words of Hildebrand, “the most intimate communion of love in Jesus and for Jesus, a community which belongs to Jesus and brings about the sanctification of both spouses.” Through Couples for Christ, we have come to understand the meaning of the Biblical verse: That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body (Gen 2:24).

My brothers and sisters, as we renew our vows after thirty years of marriage, we ask you to join us in thanking the Lord, first, for bringing Jean and I together into this “mysterious communion of love and life in and for Christ,” and second, for bringing us and our family into this community of Couples for Christ. We have found Jesus in this community. Jesus has revealed himself to us in this community. We experience his love. We witness his miracles.  We feel his presence. We hear his gentle voice. This is sufficient for us. Jesus is all that we will ever need.

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