Sun Myung Moon
August 21, 2004
Hotel Lotte World, Seoul, Korea
Blessing for Registration in Cheon Il Guk for the Revolution of True Heart and for True Liberation and Complete Freedom
Photo date and location unknown
Respected world leaders, distinguished guests from Korea and abroad: First, let us offer our sincere gratitude to God, the True Parent, True Teacher, True King and True Owner of all creation, for making this day possible.
True love and the conversion of lineage
From the standpoint of God’s providence and history, how shall we describe yesterday’s event? We participated with complete unity of heart and accomplished it successfully. That event, the “Blessing for Registration in Cheon Il Guk for the Revolution of True Heart and for True Liberation and Complete Freedom,” was a victory for humanity and a joyful event for God. It surpassed any event in history and will never be equaled in the future.
On what basis can I make such a bold declaration? I do so in the context of the Fall of the first human ancestors, by which humankind inherited false love, false life and false lineage and lost its relationship with God’s Will. Because people were estranged from God after the Fall, He could do nothing to resolve our situation without our cooperation and so suffered for thousands and tens of thousands of years. Yesterday’s ceremony established the day of the True Parents’ victory, true liberation and complete freedom, and it resolved God’s grief. It was a holy Blessing that brought heaven and earth together. We opened the gate through which the billions of people who have languished under Satan’s yoke can enter the new heaven and new earth. Humankind can now receive and attend the True Parent in heaven and the True Parents on earth. It is time for us all to enter the Era after the Coming of Heaven, when we sing praises of the holy age of settlement and peace.
Now is the time for you, as you enter the Era after the Coming of Heaven, to practice Heaven’s truth in your family and nation in preparation for your eternal life. It is time to leave behind the struggles, conflicts and confrontations of the Era before the Coming of Heaven. We can stand on the foundation of the True Parents, who are the Parents of heaven and earth, and establish the substantial kingdom of heaven. This realm of complementary partnership, harmony and unity is what we call Cheon Il Guk.
From this perspective, I would like to take this opportunity to speak on the topic, “True Love and True Marriage.” I will share one aspect of the principle of true love that I have been teaching throughout my life and that you now need to put into practice.
What is true love? It does not refer to the selfish love that slithers around the secular world. It is not the counterfeit love that gives one moment and abandons the next. It is not self-indulgent, profligate love driven by fleshly desires. Such false love assails and violates the conscience, driving nails into the original mind.
Having nothing to do with that, true love is the source of peace and spiritual order. Its nature is to honor and preserve the tranquility of all people. It is humanity’s shared inheritance that serves the common good. It symbolizes God’s intention and power, for it is rooted in God.
True love is mysterious. The more it is given, the more plentiful it becomes and the more abundant joy it brings. True love possesses power great enough to transform the motivation, process and outcome of human life. We were created to be born in true love, raised in true love, and pass to the next world in true love. That is the reason true love has the greatest and highest value.
Through true love we can be together eternally, see each other eternally, converse with and feel each other eternally, and have nothing except affection for each other. It is one love and yet all people can enjoy it together. If we consider its details, it is extremely small; if we consider its grandeur, it is extremely large. Immersed in true love, the mere wink of an eye can be sufficient to bring forth a joy so great as to shake heaven and earth; a single smile can make one feel superhuman power. That power is strong enough to change one’s life. If you think you can see it, you cannot; if you think you cannot see it, you can. It is full of mystery.
What are the colors of true love? Do you suppose that it is black at night and white in the daytime? The central colors of true love are harmony and unity, and surrounding them are peace and happiness. An atomic weapon has power only to destroy life and property. It is not a symbol of creation. It is a symbol of rejection and ruin. True love, by contrast, has the power of resurrection that can bring a dead person back to life. Thus the power to bind the world together and bring unity does not reside in the military mindset underlying nuclear weapons. It will require true love. Each nation has its own cultural traditions and political boundary lines, and true love is the only power capable of transcending them. The difficult problems that humanity faces can be resolved only through the perfection of true love.
True Parents and the change of lineage
Ladies and gentlemen, you must seek after true love. You have to make true love your own. You have to witness the perfection of true love within your own life. Where can you go to find true love?
If we examine the manner in which true love exists, we see that it has a multidirectional character, moving simultaneously north, south, east and west. Moreover, it exists and functions in a way that transcends race, culture, religion and national boundaries. True love acts prior to life, for it is the origin of life. True love is perfect in its original form and needs no development or revolution. True love is the most natural thing, possessing the highest authenticity. True love operates at a speed greater than anything else in the world.
We can receive the seeds of true love only by receiving the true holy Blessing from the horizontal True Parents. They come as substantiations of God, the vertical True Parent, and thereby engraft us into God’s lineage. It is absolutely impossible to find true love in the fallen world, which is characterized by falsehood. We cannot find the lineage of goodness in the human-centered world that resulted from the Fall. Only by being engrafted into the lineage of goodness through the True Parents can you find a way to overcome the struggle between your mind and body. Only by establishing God’s lineage of goodness on earth can we resolve the problems of human conflict, transcend the boundaries between religions, races and nations, and bridge the differences between democracy and communism. This will also open the way to peace in the Middle East and unification on the Korean peninsula, the two most dangerous areas of conflict in today’s world. This is the reason the change of blood lineage is an essential and serious matter.
The holy marriage Blessing is a once-in-a-lifetime event upon which the life of humanity depends. This is the precise reason why the Registration in Cheon Il Guk Blessing for the Revolution of True Heart and for True Liberation and Complete Freedom, which all of us dedicated to Heaven in the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea on August 20, was the greatest and most precious grace and blessing in your entire life. You have now received the holy Blessing from the True Parents, who have been crowned as the world’s King and Queen of Peace. You have inherited the true lineage, and you have received the seed of true love. Please never forget that you are to spend the remainder of your life on earth nurturing this seed so that it will blossom and bear fruit.
Marriage is training in love
Ladies and gentlemen, why do we marry? In a word, it is so that we may resemble God. God is a united being who has dual characteristics that dwell in union. Men and women are projections of God’s divine characteristics. Therefore the destiny of every couple, as husband and wife, is to form a union as one body, become as one seed, and return to oneness with God’s original nature.
Let us offer our highest praise for the sanctity of marriage. Married life is the way for a man and a woman to love each other. Whom do we resemble when we become one through married life? Our goal is to resemble God. It is only when a man and a woman become one through true love that they truly resemble God, who created them in His image. It is then, and only then, that God resides in them. A man symbolizes heaven and a woman symbolizes earth. So a man and woman need to come together in harmony to achieve peace.
The phrase, “the union of virtue between heaven and earth,” refers to a state in which a husband and wife have accomplished perfect unity, with Heaven’s true love at the center. When a husband and wife embrace each other in true love, it is the equivalent of the cosmos becoming one body. This is the original image of creation brought into substantial reality in the context of God’s ideal.
Another reason we marry is so that we can be trained to love the world and its people. The wedding ceremony vows speak of the substantiation of love and bestow the authority to procreate as well as the authority to exercise dominion. So the purpose of marriage is to bring into oneness the realm of heart of one man, representing the men of the world, and one woman, representing the women of the world, so that they may perfect the love between man and woman.
When a couple has accomplished the perfection of love and the perfection of their hearty, we can say that they have accomplished the family ideal. If you die on this foundation, you will certainly enter the kingdom of heaven.
Why is marriage important? It is important because it is the path by which we seek true love, the path for creating life, and the path on which the lineages of a man and a woman are commingled. Through marriage, history is made, and on that foundation, nations are born and the ideal world can begin.
When we marry, it should be with the conviction that we do so not for ourselves, but for our partners. It is wrong for a person to try to gain a spouse on the basis of social status, wealth or beauty. Once we realize that we are born to live for the sake of others, we understand that marriage, too, is for the sake of our spouse. In our view of marriage, the ideal partner is not one who looks like a model; it is someone we can love with our whole heart, far more than if he or she were on the cover of a fashion magazine.
As human beings, we have to determine to love our spouse as we would love God, and as we would love humankind. We have to love our spouse more than anyone else in the world. Otherwise we cannot be restored to the kingdom of heaven as a husband and wife. If a man cannot truly love a woman, how can he expect to be able to love God or humankind?
A wedding is a ceremony by which we open the gates and enter the palace of happiness. This is why marriage is a major occasion of moral significance. Because love exists and functions transcendent of time and space, it is the most important dimension of human life, and a wedding is the ceremony by which this love is brought forth and confirmed.
Respected guests, this evening I have conveyed to you one portion of Heaven’s teaching regarding true love and true marriage. Whether you participated in yesterday’s event as newlyweds or as a previously married couple, you have now been granted Heaven’s command to walk the path of a true husband and wife with Heaven’s seal. By your bond with the True
Parents, you have received the seed of true love, so I ask that you become true husbands and wives who produce true fruit through a true married life. Become true parents, build true families and establish true nations. Heavenly fortune will assist you.
In closing, I sincerely ask that you lead lives in which, by practicing true love, you do everything you can to prepare for your eternal life.
Thank you.