Cham Bumo Gyeong: Episode 80
Cham Bumo Gyeong
Book 4: Salvation through the Holy Marriage Blessing
Chapter 2: The History of the Marriage Blessing Ceremony
Section 2: The 72 Couples, 124 Couples and 430 Couples, 43 Couples from 10 nations
Section 2: The 72 Couples, 124 Couples and 430 Couples, Paragraph 20
The 43 Couples from 10 nations
During their Second World Tour in 1969, True Parents officiated at the marriage Blessing ceremony of 43 Couples from 10 nations. They said that this Blessing was linked to the 430 Couples in Korea and signified connecting the Blessing to the entire world. True Parents blessed 13 couples (seven newly engaged and six already married) at the Washington, D.C. church on February 28; eight couples (seven newly engaged and one already married) in Essen, Germany, on March 28; and 22 couples (12 newly engaged and 10 already married) at the Tokyo church on May 1.
13 The world now revolves around the second seven-year course, which started in 1968. Just as Cain and Abel fought, the left wing and right wing are fighting worldwide. We need to resolve this conflict and develop a new family, a new society, a new nation and a new world. This is the view of the Principle and is the mission of the Unification Church. This is why, on January 1, 1968, I established God’s Day. It was the day of victory on this earth for the Unification Church. Shortly thereafter, I conducted the 430 Couples Blessing. I had to connect this victorious day horizontally to the world, so I blessed the 43 Couples while on my 1969 world tour. This was an extension of the 430 Couples Blessing in Korea. By conducting the 43 Couples Blessing, I connected 10 nations on the horizontal level. We need to globalize everything that we have accomplished in Korea.
14 The 43 Couples Blessing was largely intercultural. Everyone was matched internationally, such as American with German, Dutch with English, and so on. In most cases I did not match the Blessing candidates with someone from their own country. In order to restore the world, we need to transcend our attachment to our own people and instead love the world. This is why I conducted a marriage Blessing ceremony with people from different countries. All of them were thrilled to participate and it brought me great joy to look upon them.
After I bestowed the Blessing, I asked what they would like to do for Korea. They said they would do anything I asked of them. Never before in history has an Asian man single-handedly inspired people so profoundly in Europe. In light of this, I once again came to realize how formidable the Unification Principle truly is.
15 Through the Blessing of 430 Couples, Korea came to stand in the position of connecting to the Unification Principle. What this means is that, even though most Korean people may not believe in the Unification Church, they can reap the benefit of being the Third Israel because we have established an indemnity condition for them to do so through the 430 Couples. Thus, the nation of Korea has become the realm of the chosen people.
After blessing the 430 Couples, I needed to carry out the work of expanding this realm of the Republic of Korea and its citizens worldwide. I first needed to choose the holy grounds and then I had to engraft them to the 430 Couples. This is why I chose holy grounds in 40 nations during my First World Tour and blessed 43 Couples during my Second World Tour. I determined to connect Japan, America and Germany through the 43 Couples, who were the counterparts of the 430 Couples. This was a global, historic task. As a result, it has become possible even for the world’s innumerable nonbelievers to enjoy the benefits of the realm of Israel in this age of horizontal restoration, the same benefits as those enjoyed by those who inherited the traditions of the Jewish or Christian faith, whether over the past 4,000 years or today. Such a foundation has been established.
Blessings of married couples
The first marriage Blessing ceremony for already married couples was held for 26 couples at the original Cheongpa-dong headquarters church in Seoul, on February 8, 1963. And on April 7 a second Blessing ceremony was held for 27 couples. These were couples who had married and formed families before joining the Unification Church. Most of them were church elders who had contributed greatly to the church in its early years. True Parents emphasized that these already married couples needed to provide an example and be a protective fence for the younger blessed couples. A number of such Blessings have since taken place.
On April 10, 1992, the marriage Blessing ceremony of 1,267 already married couples from all over the world was held immediately before the founding rally of the Women’s Federation for World Peace. This ceremony brought together couples from 33 nations, including Korea and Japan. Notably, True Parents announced that, through the participation of 45 couples from nine Middle Eastern countries, the Blessing was opened to the public at large, transcending religion and nationality.
16 The already married couples are those who married and formed families on their own before joining the Unification Church. For them to be recognized as families of God’s ideal, the husband has to become a historic, representative central figure in God’s work, restoring his family based on the Principle. Also, he has to become a man who can inherit the historical tradition. A man with a family is a representative person who can inherit completely the original tradition of upholding the work of God, as practiced by our ancestors from Abel to Noah, Abraham and Moses. Then what ideology, worldview and life course must such a man, who is the head of his family, adopt? The answer is, in such a newly blessed, already married couple the husband needs to love his wife more than ever before. When he does this, this husband and wife will transcend and put aside their earlier conjugal love relationship and, as a blessed couple, dwell in a new bond of love higher than the world has ever known.
17 The already married blessed couples need to stand as a protective fence around the blessed couples who were newly married. To put it another way, they need to become the couples who can indemnify the mistakes of Abel in past history and whom Abel can trust in the family-level providence of God. In the past, the differences between the two types of couples caused conflict between them. Now however, the already married couples need to be mentors to whom the others can come with any problems they may have. Moreover, the already married couples have to sincerely care for and protect the others.
The already married couples are like elder brother couples. Cain is the elder brother. Abel is the younger brother. You are all brothers. The already married couples are the elder brother, and they have that position regardless of whether they want it or not. Therefore, when it comes to prayer, who needs to pray more? In the past, those in the Abel position prayed more. In order to save Cain, Abel offered extensive devotions to God. However, in this age the Cain-type couples need to offer more devotions for the Abel-type couples.
18 Since the already married couples lived together as husband and wife before the church, their present is little different from their past. Since both the man and the woman are in the same position as before, even though they must never do so, they can easily fall back into old habits. The question is, what has changed for them after receiving the Blessing? They have renewed their family through the Blessing, so it must become a historic family. In their previous married life they may have lived for the sake of each other, but now the husband has to live for his wife and the wife for her husband in a new and different way. That is, now they must not simply live for each other’s sake but go beyond that and live for the sake of God.
Since Adam and Eve failed to live for the sake of God, they fell and instituted a family of sorrow. When the already married couples can comfort God’s innermost heart and liberate Him from His grief, they will create a foundation on which God can hope for sons and daughters who will seek Him.
19 The children born to already married couples after the Blessing are different from the children who were born before their parents received the Blessing. The blessed children are also remarkably different from their parents. The responsibility to determine that remarkable difference lies first with the husband and then with the wife, but the couple has to fulfill this responsibility together. Then what must this couple do? The wife must not attend a fallen husband and the husband must not attend a fallen wife. When all is said and done, they will be able to boast that they have established the standard of the unfallen Adam and Eve and have attended each other virtuously.
Therefore, you need to know that as already married couples your position is now at a very different level from what it was in the past. As couples who have received the Blessing, and furthermore as already married couples who have been tied together again, you have to become one with God’s Will. If you fail to become one, you will indeed lose honor in front of heaven. In the past, we continued to weave a history of sorrow because we stood in the position of not knowing God’s Will. Now that you have been newly connected based on the Will, if you repeat your past lifestyle, traditions and habits, you will evoke a second sorrow in heaven. Such a thing must never happen. Therefore, you need to become dramatically different from the way you were before. You already married couples have the responsibility to initiate a new flow of history and to establish a new tradition.
20 The already married blessed couples need to know that the previously unwed blessed couples are closely watching them. Since the previously unwed couples have just started their families, they do not know much about spousal relations. When it comes to raising children, they can easily watch how the already married couples are doing it and follow their example. In light of this, the already married couples are in a most important position. They need to set an example that is dramatically different from their past. If they do not do this, they will not be able to stand as families of heaven’s ideal.
The already married couples are in the position of Cain. As Cain-type families, they need to set an example in front of the previously unwed couples and assist them to the greatest extent possible. Unless the Unification Church’s already married couples establish such a tradition, there will be no way to redeem the innumerable couples around the world who married on their own.
FFWPU, USA