A. True Father’s Words: The Value of the Blessing

“In the entire life of True Father, do you know what the most valuable thing I can imagine is? It is the Blessing. For all of you, the ultimate gift in human history is the Blessing. The value of the Blessing cannot be exchanged even for the world. The Blessing is one man and one woman, centering on God’s will, becoming true father and true mother, producing true love.”

“Your ideal partner is the person who will be your companion on the road to the ideal world.”

“The perfection of a man and woman’s love is the perfection of the universe. The day this love was broken, the universal order was destroyed and the vertical world was broken. Therefore, you must know how important marriage is from the providential viewpoint. Through true love, man and woman gradually get closer to the center of the eternal world. Man and woman centering on God will unite into one in the center. Man and woman centering on God, giving and receiving love, will become one and will give birth to sons and daughters. Sons and daughters who are born as the fruit of love, through give and take action centering on parents who are one with God, will produce the four position foundation.”

Parents’ Role in Matching their children

“I want you to understand that you are the pioneers of the tradition of the future. You are making the mold for others to fit into. I want you to prepare your home and clan for every eventuality. Those of you living close with me feel more to the bone this tradition. You must be ready to learn and take over the tradition.”

“You may be thinking, ‘It is only Father who can do the Matching, not us,’ however that is not so. You are all able to do the Matching, because God, who is supporting me, is also supporting you, just the same.”

“The promise between the Blessed Family and me is fulfilled when the Second Generation born to that family receives the Blessing.”

During a speech at the most recent Day of All Things, True Father confronted a church leader who was taking an active role in recommending a spouse to a member of the Second Generation. True Father admonished him saying, “How can you leaders take responsibility of the eternal lives of the Second generation?” True Father gave authority over and responsibility for matching Second generation to the parents of Second generation, not to the leaders, not to the church, and not to Second generation.

“In the dispensational view, the vertical connection is eternal and therefore more important than the horizontal, which is temporal. That is why parents must be a part of the choosing of the mate. This doesn’t mean that parents should arbitrarily choose partners for their children, but rather the parents should intervene, representing heaven, in order to ensure the harmony of the vertical and horizontal relationship. This is the meaning of the Blessing.”

True Father said on True Children’s Day, “From now on, if you have a child and you try to match him with a good person, you will become a bad person. If you liked one particular person (as a spouse for your child), conversed in secret and arranged the matching this way, then your ancestors from heaven will come down to oppose such a match without a doubt. They will say, ”You stupid son, you terrible daughter! Why try to marry him with a person you think is good for him? You must match him with a person Heaven thinks is good for him.”

Words on Matching

“The ideal partner (ideal mate) in Father’s mind is completely different from the ideal partner we imagine. The ideal partner that True Father thinks of is a match of completely opposite types, such as spring and fall types, summer and winter types, etc. True Father says, “When a North-pole type person is matched with a South‐pole type person, then out of such a couple a child will be born who has a huge capacity to embrace the entire globe.

“In order for a spring‐like woman to pass through summer and winter, she has to meet an autumnal man. A woman who corresponds to spring has to pass through summer in order to meet an autumnal man, and the autumnal man has to pass through winter in order to meet the spring‐like woman. Therefore both ultimately pass through all four seasons.

“When I am matching people one after another, I try not to look clearly at the contours of a person’s face, if possible. I rather look at two persons for a while, and check what kind of feeling comes. It is as if there is a measuring device for minds, and I compare the two without delay. If when I look at the two, instantly and without self-awareness, I feel as if they are becoming one, then it is precisely a match made in heaven, a perfect match.

“More than anything, one’s love partner should establish an ideal harmony and balance. You should think that the person who appears as your beloved spouse is a son or daughter of God, whom He truly loves, and that therefore He may come disguised as the ugliest person. If you love your husband or wife with those eyes, it has the same significance as loving God’s son and daughter.”

Candidate’s Attitude and Heart

“The term “ideal spouse” is very good, is it not? Until now, you have thought that an ideal spouse is like this or like that. No matter how good your partner is, you will not find his or her value unless you have within you the quality to do so. Do you understand what I am saying? Where is your capacity to discover whether or not your spouse is excellent? Without you yourself being the best, you cannot find the very essence of your spouse’s excellence.

“It is through the merit of investing myself that my partner is moved and comes to appear as an object with value. God created heaven and earth not just to see them as they are. He created in order to love, with heart as the basis. In the same way the only thing that matters in re‐creation is acting with the heart as the guide. Even though Adam and Eve are small, in the world they are not seen as small but big.

“Men naturally pursue women, but for what purpose – to receive love or to give love? That is the most important question. It is a serious problem that American people have not understood how universal law works. You should never think, ‘I’m so glad I’m getting married because now my life will be easier. I will have someone to serve me.’ But all of a sudden, that is not what happens and you start to complain, ‘Hey, what’s happening here?’ Your first concept was wrong; you are not supposed to get married in order to make your life easier. You should think that your life will get tougher, but you should be willing to do it in order to give love.

“Why do you marry? It is to inherit the foundation of thousands of years and of ten thousand generations of chosen people; it is for the future generations. If you marry for the sake of yourselves, you will destroy everything. That kind of decadent trend is sweeping over the world, and all of it has to be cut off. If you have that selfish thought, you are my enemies.

“Let’s say there is a good looking person among the blessing candidates. He or she might look splendid on the outside. But what is important is whether or not that person has the value to exist in the future in front of the will of God. That is the primary question for the partner whom that person meets.

“Therefore, our marriages are for the sake of our descendants. Thus, even though candidates might appear unsuitable in some way, the problem is how to match people so that their children inherit only their parent’s good points.”

The Origin of the Universe

“If all men and women admit that their sexual organ belongs to their spouse, we would all bow our heads and become humble when we receive our spouse’s love.

Our sexual organs are palaces of true love, true life, and true lineage. They are the most precious place. If these organs were to disappear, heaven and earth would disappear. Without these organs, God’s ideal, His family, and His will could not be fulfilled. These organs are an origin from which everything can be perfected.” In search of the Origin of the Universe. 1997 (216-218, 1991.4.1) CSG Page 2,257

B. Words from Hyung Jin Nim:

“The marriage tradition in our church is where we get to actualize all the things we heard when we were young and all the things we listened to in workshops. It’s the real place for us to actualize and refine those very important skills, such as understanding the power of the relationship, living for the sake of the other person, understanding the other person and practicing true love in the same way we always explain it. When we have differences of opinion, we recognize them; we come to deep understandings through them by natural subjugation, not by force.

“I think one of the great things about being Blessed is that we are constantly reminded that our most precious relationship is dynamic, not static. In order for it to be truly alive, it does require investment. It does require us to put in effort and to work at it. I feel some things have helped me personally—such as trying to understand my wife more. Sometimes, early on, I just didn’t get it. [Laughter] That’s okay; if you work through that, you learn. It is a process of learning, a process of growth, a process of continual improvement. I feel that the Blessing is not only a milestone; it is one of our most central practices. You may have a family soon—children—in a couple of years. Then you can also start this practice with your kids, raising them. It’s very exciting, very dynamic.

“One of the things I think is essential for Blessed Couples, Blessed Families, is to understand the concept that in giving the Blessing, True Parents have extended the Blessed life to us. That is something we can be proud of, and the Blessed life is something at which we can excel. And it does not have to stop with us. The Blessed life really is having the success and the victory God wants you to have in your lives, in relationships and so on. Then you take the next step and be that blessing to those around you, be that blessing to that person who needs a little help, your guidance, your mentoring. When we do that, we can start coming full cycle with living the Blessed life. Our view is that it can continually get better, which is very hopeful. I don’t think it has a limit in the sense that you reach some stage and just stay there. True Parents continually try to improve and grow—with the grandchildren, together, and so on.”

Explanation of 3-Day Ceremony

“Through the 3-day Ceremony, the wife is reborn in Christ as the restored Bride of Christ and is bestowed as a princess in the Kingdom of God. The husband is reborn in Christ as a son of God. After the completion of these Holy Consecrations, the husband and wife will stand as a prince and princess of God’s Kingdom to glorify and honor Him forever.” April 21, 2015

C. Bible: Wives and Husbands

Ephesian 5:21-33 NIV

Submit yourselves to one another because of your reverence for Christ.

Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband has authority over his wife just as Christ has authority over the church; and Christ is himself the Savior of the church, his body. And so wives must submit themselves completely to their husbands just as the church submits itself to Christ.

Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave his life for it. He did this to dedicate the church to God by his word, after making it clean by washing it in water, in order to present the church to himself in all its beauty—pure and faultless, without spot or wrinkle or any other imperfection. Men ought to love their wives just as they love their own bodies. A man who loves his wife loves himself. (None of us ever hate our own bodies. Instead, we feed them, and take care of them, just as Christ does the church; for we are members of his body.) As the scripture says, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and unite with his wife, and the two will become one.” There is a deep secret truth revealed in this scripture, which I understand as applying to Christ and the church. But it also applies to you: every husband must love his wife as himself, and every wife must respect her husband.

III. PREPARATION FOR THE MATCHING PROCESS