by Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann

The archdiocese misplaced an amazing advocate for the significance of marriage with the dying of Deacon Tony Zimmerman on Feb. 18.

Deacon Tony was ordained to the everlasting diaconate for the Diocese of Kansas Metropolis-St. Joseph in 2006, serving for greater than 16 years the parish household of St. Therese in Kansas Metropolis, Missouri.

Tony and his spouse Barbara met whereas attending St. Pius X Excessive Faculty. They started relationship of their junior yr. Tony and Barbara have been married for greater than 50 years and have become energetic in Worldwide Marriage Encounter greater than 40 years in the past.

Tony earned a bachelor’s diploma in political science, in addition to a grasp’s diploma in enterprise administration from Rockhurst College. Tony loved a profitable profession as a salesman. His real concern for his clients, his pure folks and communication expertise, his private integrity and his dedication to buyer satisfaction made him very efficient.

Tony cared concerning the success of his clients. He was not nearly making an preliminary sale. He constructed lifetime relationships with these he served and, in so doing, gained their future loyalty.

Serving the church for greater than 16 years as a everlasting deacon allowed Tony to make use of those self same presents to promote the Gospel of Jesus. To be an amazing salesman, it’s a must to consider in your product. Nothing was extra essential to Deacon Tony than his friendship with Jesus and his love for Our Lord’s bride — the church.

In 2011, Deacon Tony made a profession change by accepting the accountability to guide our archdiocesan marriage and household life ministry. In some ways, I consider this was Tony’s dream job.

From his a few years of involvement with Worldwide Marriage Encounter, the principle precedence of Tony’s life —after his Catholic religion — was his marriage and his household. Tony and Barbara had already mentored many engaged and married {couples}. Deacon Tony was a pure to guide our archdiocesan efforts to strengthen marriages and household life.

In his function as lead marketing consultant of our marriage and household life workplace, Tony was in a position to comply with his ardour for serving to married {couples} develop deeper of their love for one another. Underneath his management, our marriage and household life workplace launched the Joyful Marriage Mission, inviting {couples} to construct their dream residence. These dream properties weren’t product of brick and mortar, however moderately they’re properties product of loving households, constructed on the inspiration of married {couples} who every day are striving to hunt one another’s good and happiness, earlier than fulfilling their very own needs and wishes.

Deacon Tony introduced the Evermore in Love retreat (previously Dwelling in Love retreat) to the Archdiocese of Kansas Metropolis in Kansas. A whole lot of {couples} within the archdiocese have made this transformative retreat that has helped them take their love for one another to new heights. Many {couples} have written notes of gratitude to me for making accessible this chance to expertise God’s love and to appreciate the enjoyment God wishes for his or her marriages and households.

Secular society promotes a distorted view of affection. We’re continuously bombarded with messages by way of media and leisure that love is about others making me glad. Our tradition confuses sexual pleasure as love. In impact, it encourages us to make use of others to fulfill our needs and wishes.

Christian marriage is a name to make the love of Jesus actual and tangible for one’s partner. Jesus revealed for us genuine love on Calvary, when he gave his life for you and me. The love of God revealed in Jesus is devoted, everlasting and unconditional. The love of Christian married {couples} is supposed to be an icon of God’s love for the world. The vocation of Christian marriage is a name to heroic love.

Jesus tells his disciples, in the event that they wish to be his followers they should be prepared to lose their lives. It’s a futile effort to attempt to make ourselves glad by way of the possession of issues or experiences of enjoyment. As an alternative, if we attempt to hunt the great of others, we’ll expertise what Jesus phrases as “ample life.”

Our sexuality is a good and exquisite reward from God. Sexual intimacy can solely be genuine throughout the covenant of marriage, the place a person and a lady have dedicated themselves to one another in an unbreakable bond.

St. John Paul II, in his theology of the physique, reminded us of the language of sexual intimacy, the place a person and lady give themselves bodily, completely to one another. This stunning bodily expression of affection can solely be true when the couple has pledged to hunt their partner’s good in each different side of their lives.

God didn’t make some big mistake when he designed the bodily expression of full and whole like to be the instrument the place human beings can grow to be co-creators with Our Lord of a brand new human life. It’s within the context of the wedding covenant that new life may be welcomed into the optimum atmosphere for a kid to flourish.

It is a very completely different understanding of sexual intimacy than the one that’s provided to us by our tradition. The hookup tradition trivializes the which means of sexual intimacy. Once we use God’s presents in ways in which they weren’t meant, we shouldn’t be stunned that intercourse merely for pleasure leads to not happiness however to loneliness, nervousness and melancholy.

Sadly, many younger adults right this moment don’t aspire to marriage as a result of they haven’t seen glad marriages and skilled joyful households. A part of the explanation that Christianity unfold so quickly 2,000 years in the past in a pagan tradition that misunderstood intercourse and love in related methods to our secular society was the witness of joyful Christian married {couples}.

I wish to thank all of the married {couples} within the archdiocese who’re striving every day to stay their vows to like one another faithfully, fruitfully and without end. There are not any good marriages, no good households. There are, nevertheless, many very stunning marriages and glad households.

One strategy to honor the life and ministry of Deacon Tony Zimmerman can be for {couples} to decide on to put money into their marriages by making an Evermore in Love retreat. Our marriage and household life workplace presents many different assets and experiences to assist {couples} develop the abilities to develop deeper of their love for one another. If nothing else, make plans for a date evening.

Our church and our society want your instance of devoted, fruitful and without end love. We want your marriage to be an icon of God’s love for us. We would like you to construct your dream residence as a way to be a beacon of God’s love on the planet.

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