Good morning. You have brought Me a very important question this morning about the Blessing and the path that has been initiated through the Unification movement, and I want to elucidate about that.

It’s a very complex question to ask whether the Unification movement is the only way to Me at this time. I have told you quite a few times that anyone who will turn his or her head sincerely to Me has already initiated a way in their own life to begin to come back to Me. However, there are people in history who have found very central points in the relationship with Me. And if you look at the event of the Blessing, the idea of God-centered marriage and the change of the blood lineage, you’ll find that this is indeed a very central point and so important for the initiation of My Kingdom. In itself, however, the recognition of being Blessed, of having a God-centered marriage, and of going through that ceremonial process, is not enough to build the Kingdom of God. The key point is what you will do with what you have been given.

In the process of any marriage, the way a husband and wife relate to one another, to their children, and to the community around them determines the ultimate success or failure of the ceremony that was initiated at a church where they joined their hands as husband and wife. In the same sense, for example, when someone has accepted Jesus Christ’s forgiveness and comes into the Christian providence, they have a choice to make afterward: whether to simply emphasize that they were forgiven or to take up a responsibility afterward to live a life that is the path toward Me and that is truly God-centered. Of course, that’s not immediately possible for anyone.

It’s a process to educate your heart, to open up your heart to the point where you can become fully mature as a son or daughter of God. When we speak of the Blessing of marriage as you understand it in the Unification faith, it, too, is a point of blessing. There is behind it the whole teaching of the Divine Principle; and, especially if you will look in the "Principle of Creation," which is, in essence, the Divine Principle, you will find that marriage is central. And this is true. And so, from that point of view, I am happy to see those who have such a serious commitment through their marriage ceremony.

But I want to see that commitment as their lives continue, and that commitment must grow. As you know, there have been thousands and thousands of Blessings in the past thirty-five years, but they have gone in many, many different directions in terms of the quality of the relationships involved. There are those who had an innocent, childlike belief that the event of the Blessing itself was enough to guarantee their success as a couple and that their children would be born and grow as little saints. And yet, oftentimes those people who had that very childlike faith were shocked as the years came and went, because in their relationship together and in the birth and growth of their children they suddenly found they had to deal with certain realities for which they were not prepared.

The Blessing ceremony itself, much like the point of baptism in the Christian church, is a point of faith, a point of belief in a purification. But then, once you have dried off from the baptism and put on your suit and gone on into the world, there is no guarantee as to what lasting impact that immersion in the water will have on your life. The immersion itself means very little if you are not conscious of or place no importance upon what is to follow in terms of your daily life and your path toward Me. Yet, that path holds the key to building the Kingdom.

And you ask, "What about marriages that are not Blessed marriages, that have been consummated in a regular church by a regular minister who didn’t know Divine Principle?" This is a good question, and I don’t want to be in the position here to compare. You have to have your own faith as to which is the more meaningful marriage. The point I want to make is what happens after the marriage ceremony. Here is a couple who has been married by, let us say, a Protestant minister. They go out and live a life completely dedicated to the extent that they understand Me and My will and the heart of Jesus; they completely dedicate themselves in marriage to one another and build a good and solid family that really understands the value of a relationship with Me.

They reach out toward the world and they really live a life that, in all ways by all people, can be testified to as Godly. Do you think I’m going to look at them and say that it was all a waste because they didn’t go through the Blessing? Am I so foolish and narrow? Or, if it’s a Buddhist or a Hindu ceremony, and yet, with the purest of hearts this couple goes forward, giving heart and soul for the world around them, and their marriage is a shining example of goodness, am I going to say that because they weren’t Blessed they have no meaning? Conversely, if we look at the couple who was Blessed and they’re just simply proud of that, they’re happy just to have a big picture of their Blessing ceremony on the mantel of their home and never do anything but simply be proud that they are Blessed and that their children will be born with a special birthright -- how do I feel? You see, the direction of the human is everything. That’s the most important point.

There is no Kingdom without that opening of the door between you and Me. How many times have I said this? The Blessing is a symbolic point of commitment, commitment to an eternal ideal, a God-centered ideal, but it is not an end in itself. If you give birth to a child, the birth event itself is profound and beautiful, but then there is a whole process of growing and maturing in that child’s life. And so, the beauty of the moment of birth can turn into great ugliness if the parents have no concept of how to raise the child and how to help that child bring out the Godly potential. Time and again in history I have witnessed wonderful beginning points, Godly beginning points that have then gone in the wrong direction because of people’s attachment to the beginning point. For example, again in Christianity, there is a great attachment to the beginning point, which is Jesus. But the question is not whether Jesus was the Messiah or not. The question is, what is your life? Can you follow that example of heartistic relationship and build that with Me? This is the key point that I want to bring up time and again through our talks together. This embodies a mature, spiritual understanding in the life of the individual.

There has been an incomplete understanding of My will in regard to what you have called the change of blood lineage down through the years. There is a strong faith in the idea of the blood lineage changing through the Blessing ceremony, and it’s important. As you yourselves have studied in the Divine Principle, the idea of the providence of the start is important. A strong start. But I want to speak here again of the daily, ongoing life of the couple who has been through that wedding ceremony. That change of blood lineage that you speak of is not a guarantee of success as a couple or as a family. You see, the essential way I look at the change of blood lineage is the change of the human heart, the direction, you might say, of the heart.

Now, the heart is the central organ of the physical body; it pumps the blood, and without the heart’s function you can’t stay alive for more than a few moments. And also in the spiritual life, the heart of the spirit is, in essence, each individual’s relationship with Me. And it’s the direction, you could say the pumping of that heart day by day toward others -- how you look at yourself, how you look at others and how you respond -- that determines the path you are on.

This is an important point that people unfortunately don’t think about day by day. Conceptually they may know this and have a certain faith, but to actually be conscious on that level in daily life, to be living out of that spiritual heart is not an easy or automatic thing. There is no automatic pilot. Why do we have to speak of the free will of the individual or the so-called five percent if everything is on automatic pilot? You have the freedom at any time in your life, whatever process you’ve been through, to totally ignore that heart, to live a life that is essentially selfish, Godless, self-absorbed. Many times, in the name of religion, people live that kind of life on a group level and this becomes a tragedy.

As you go deeper into that spiritual heart, as you more deeply penetrate your own heart to where we join hands and really come to know each other, you will find how far beyond any particular faith or group or identity I am. Your life will then come to be defined by that frame of reference and not by the temporal reference of any particular organization. A man or woman of that kind of goodness is remembered historically, is automatically honored, because he has penetrated deeply into that more universal heart. It’s not concept. It’s very real. And so, again I ask you to look at the life of any couple Blessed or married in the traditional way in any church. Look at their life over the next twenty to forty years after the event of the marriage; that is where you’ll see the value of what has been given to them and what they have done with it.

I know that when I speak in this way, some part of you wants clear answers, but I am not just an answer machine or a fortune teller. I am your Parent who wants you to look deeply within your own heart and reflect more deeply day by day so that what comes out of your heart and out of your life is a result of your own earnest effort, your own sincere desire to understand in the deepest and most conscious sense.

Do not be caught by just the beginning point of your faith. The beginning is the beginning and it is important, but after the beginning, whether you speak of your life or a football game or a symphony, the next question is, how will it proceed? Unlike a symphony or a football game, your life is eternal, it’s endless; so how it proceeds has an eternal importance. There’s no use wasting time going in the wrong direction. Instead, make an effort to honestly and courageously penetrate your own heart day by day, as a person and as a couple.

I’m going to leave you with this, this morning and let this stand. There are many things to share, of course, about the path of a couple and of a family. It can’t all be done in one sitting by any means. In fact, that path is a journey to be taken and not simply spoken of. There are many things you will discover for yourselves as we work together. I, as any parent, don’t like to give all the answers to My children, because there is a joy in seeing your children discover for themselves something of profound value. If anything, as a parent, and you’ve heard it said before, silence is golden because it creates a framework in which a child can seek. In today’s world, it seems the answers are too readily given from too many sources, and people don’t have the chance to earnestly seek on their own. At the same time, many of today’s most popularized answers are wrong, and that’s a double problem. An earnest and seeking person is a rare thing, unfortunately, in the religious world as well as the nonreligious world. But I ask you to have the courage to take the path day by day and ask those questions within your own hearts that are most central.

I’m going to ask W [wife] to pray.