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Traditions and responsibilities
True Parents instructed that blessed parents, spouses, and children need to unite to inherit True Parents' tradition and that before they think of and live for their family, they need to think of and live for their tribe, people, nation, and world.
True Parents pointed out in particular that the age of the settlement of blessed families is the age of mother-child responsibility. This means that for a blessed family to unite with True Parents' family, the mother, and children need to unite, and the Cain and Abel siblings need to unite.
1. The fact that you are blessed in the Unification Church means that your lineage was changed, and you were anointed. But this does not mean that you have fully accomplished the standard. You received this anointing conditionally. This means that you received the lineage, life, and love conditionally, and you must take them seriously.
As long as your conditional lineage continues to expand, Satan cannot take it away.
Upon your maturity, you will be connected with true love so that there will be no relationship with Satan, and Satan cannot take anything away. When your love, life, and lineage mature, Satan will no longer be able to take them away.
Please grasp the value of the Blessing. It should be so precious that you would not exchange it even if you were offered everything. If, on the other hand, you disregard this conditional anointing, anyone can take it away. That is why you must nurture it and help it to grow. How precious the Blessing is!
(216-217, 1991/04/01)
2. The family is the place where parents, spouses, and children are united. If any of these three are missing, the family cannot be realized. The family develops into a tribe, people, nation, world, cosmos, and the kingdom of heaven on earth.
Where there is unity between absolute parents, absolute spouses, and absolute siblings, God can dwell. The family base is the base of operations that can connect to a tribe, people, nation, world, cosmos, and the kingdom of heaven on earth and in heaven. This is where God's ideal will be realized.
Without True Parents, true children cannot exist, and if you do not become true children, you cannot create a true family. An ideal husband and wife, by creating sons and daughters, can realize the ideal family. The connection of three generations is the foundation for realizing an ideal family. Without it, an ideal family cannot appear. (339-212, 2000/12/16)
3. When God's sons and daughters are blessed and become perfect, God's love can also become perfect.
Therefore, God can exist eternally as the Parent on the foundation of perfected love. People cannot find love by themselves alone. The absolute embodiment of true love for a man is a woman. Without a woman, a man cannot find the love of God, who is the substance of absolute truth.
He cannot perfect true love without her. If you had not married, you would not have known the realms of love. You would not have known the value of parents, the value of sons and daughters, or the value of a spouse.
The husband is the only person who can bring his wife into oneness based on love, and the wife is the only person who can bring her husband into oneness based on love. (352-333, 2001/09/01)
4. The responsibility of a blessed couple begins on the day of their Blessing. Their responsibility is not just that a husband and wife live in unity as a family, but that on the foundation of their unity, they form a tribe and nation. The families of ten blessed people can form one tribe through this new worldview.
Before forming the new nation, we must first form new tribes. These tribes must not be created through conflict-based division, but through unity-based multiplication. Therefore, those ten people who received the Blessing must have the same purpose.
We are some families who have been restored from Satan's world, so we are in a position to be easily attacked by Satan. Therefore, we always have to be united and bound together to defeat the overwhelming forces seeking to invade. To defeat those forces, we have to achieve complete oneness among ourselves.
If we are united in this way, we will easily overcome Satan's invasion, no matter how strong it is. When we are united substantially, we will form a new tribe free from Satan's invasion.
Through a united tribe, a new people will arise, and through a united people, a new nation can arise. (030-175, 1970/03/22)
5. You did not receive the Blessing for your family's private gain. Your family can reach the place of Sabbath rest only when you first live for the sake of your tribe and only then live for the sake of your family.
In the same way, the tribe can reach the place of Sabbath rest when it lives for the sake of the nation, and the nation can reach the place of Sabbath rest when it lives for the sake of the world.
In this respect, the Blessing is not just for yourself. Each of you needs to have faith that the Blessing represents the whole. When a husband and wife unite and build their family based on this faith, their family can move toward the world level.
If there is only one blessed family that meets that standard, that family has to take absolute responsibility. The greater the number of families that can move forward, the faster the providence of restoration can progress.
Now, even though there may be many families who are going this way, do not depend on them. Make sure you fulfill your responsibility. The family desired by the nation and the world is the self-reliant family. The descendants of such an awakened family will live for the sake of the nation and the world.
The husband will become a historic husband, and the wife of this family will become a historic wife.
Moreover, their descendants will become the tribe that is needed for the restoration of the world in the course of God's providence. If you become the family who can build such a tribe, you will be crowned as the ancestors of the new age. (030-178, 1970/03/22)
6. Blessed couples cannot live merely at their discretion. They have to live for God's public purpose or the nation's public purpose. Whether your spouse is or is not attractive is not the issue.
The issue is the direction in which you are going. In other words, the issue is how to pave the way for righteousness that your descendants will follow. When I see you asking for love from your spouse, I feel it is wrong.
I cannot approve of so much love. Before you ask your spouse to love you, you need to ask him or her to love the nation and the world. After you do that, you can ask for love from your spouse. This is the way for blessed husbands and wives to live.
We have to encourage our spouse to love the nation, the world, and heaven, before loving us. (030-179, 1970/03/22)
7. Blessed members have to love their tribe and people, and their nation and world more than they love their family. Furthermore, they have to love their relatives and other blessed families more than their family.
The family in which each member is connected in this way will stand out from other families and be recognized. In that family in which man and woman are united and agree with each other, we will have a model for loving the nation, world, and heaven. Husband and wife need to be united in that way.
Blessed husbands and wives must avoid saying things like “You should love only me” or “You are mine,” which are habitually uttered by worldly husbands and wives. Instead, they should take time each day to offer conditions of devotion, imploring heaven to help their spouses have the kind of heart that can love others more than their family.
Couples have the responsibility to support and encourage one another not to give up, as well as to receive guidance from each other. (030-181, 1970/03/22)
8. Our Unificationist families must avoid becoming stuck in our current position.
We must develop and give birth to descendants who can embrace and ensure the fortune of the nation and world. We marry to find among our children exceptional people who can help form a new people and a new nation.
People in the world marry for their own sake, but in the Unification Church, we marry for the sake of the nation and the world. Our families are called by God to save many families in the course of providential history.
Our role is to restore all the world's people through paying indemnity and to model the love that opens the way for spirit people in the spirit world and our descendants in the future. We must have the mindset that our position is to live as saviors to the world. (030-185, 1970/03/22)
9. Now the age of the settlement of the children's families has to come. First, the age of the settlement of the children's families is the age of the mother's responsibility.
The mother has to take responsibility as the Messiah. Second, it is the age of the children's responsibility, the age when Cain and Abel have to unite. Cain and Abel as brothers have to unite completely.
There have been many sacrifices in history resulting from the separation of Cain and Abel, but from now on, children must not fight each other anymore. In any village to which we care to go, there are Cains and there are Abels.
The person who sacrifices him or herself, and makes compromises for the sake of the whole village, becomes the brother the the owner. Because we already know this, we cannot fight. The age of the children's responsibility is the age when Cain and Abel have to unite.
Third, the mother, Cain, and Abel have to unite. The age of the mother's and children's responsibility has to settle in the family and, after uniting with each other, the mother, and children have to restore the husband, the father.
Restoration of the father will be impossible if the mother and children are not united.
The mother is responsible for seeing that she and the children, both Cain and Abel, are united. This is still not the end because finally, we will enter the age to unite with the True Parents' family. At that point, we reach the age when the Blessing can expand to the entire world. (248-159, 1993/08/01)
Blessed family life
True Parents said that blessed families have to love humanity on behalf of God and True Parents.
They added that blessed families should be examples of how to think of and love one's spouse as the representative of God. They also emphasized that the kingdom of heaven will be realized when this lifestyle of heart becomes universal.
The marriage Blessing empowers us to inherit the dutiful way of divine sons and daughters, so True Parents have asked blessed families to follow this way.
10. The family God is looking for is one whose standard is not limited to living just for their family.
The family God can be proud of ought to live on the world level. Because the way to make a family that can represent the nation, the world, and heaven is the way of the Blessing, you must receive the Blessing through the family of the Heavenly Parent.
When families go the principled way of offering sincere devotion after receiving the Blessing, their sons, and daughters will be born with the heavenly fortune of the Unification Church. Even if the father and mother have no special abilities, the children will still be born with heavenly fortune.
How much heavenly fortune can we leave our descendants?
It will be decided by how much sincere devotion we as their parents have offered. How much were we loyal to our nation, the world, and heaven?
How seriously did we offer sincere devotion? That is what determines the fortune of our descendants.
When we take action with a selfish mind, heaven will never side with us. When we act to satisfy selfish desires, God will never side with us. When we stand for the sake of the world, nation, and people, then God will be with us. Therefore, blessed families have to practice higher and wider love. (030-186, 1970/03/22)
11. The wife needs to think of her husband as the representative of God. Furthermore, she has to become like a daughter to her husband. Due to the Fall, God lost the mother, the wife, and the daughter, all three.
Therefore, the man, as her husband, has to restore God's lost daughter. Thus, it will be a problem if the wife does not trust her husband more than she trusts her father. She has to meet the standard to discover more value in him than in everything she has known before.
Without restoring such a heart she cannot recover that which Satan destroyed, the original standard of the ideal spouse. At the same time, the husband has to have the heart that he is a son to his wife. He has to have the heartfelt feeling that she is both his mother and daughter.
Husband and wife need to say from the heart, “I cannot live a single day without you. I need you, day and night.” As husband and wife, you must achieve this depth of oneness. (022-205, 1969/02/04)
12. In the fallen world, people insist that they are right and that defending themselves is their highest priority. But now is the era of the teaching that tells us we exist to protect the other before ourselves. The direction is opposite to what it was before.
The husband says, “If you are not happy as my wife, it is my responsibility,” and the wife says, “If you are not happy as my husband, it is my responsibility.” The flowers of love bloom when we assume responsibility. The flowers of love do not bloom when each insists on their right.
When two people are living for the sake of each other to the degree of risking their lives, the flowers will bloom. When the flowers bloom, both the angelic world and God will seek the light and fragrance of that love. (304-075, 1999/09/10)
13. The husband has to be the person whom his wife thinks is greater than God. The wife needs to think,
“I could not see God Himself, but I see God through my husband. I did not know pure love, but I came to know what pure love is through my husband. I came to know what an elder brother's love is. I came to understand a brother he loves. My husband is the very man who taught me all the realms of love.”
The husband has to be the living embodiment of that quality of love that can induce in his wife the heart of an ideal mother, bride, and elder sister. He also has to receive the same kind of education, to the point that he feels as if he cannot breathe without this education.
These lessons have to become his way of life such that when he goes out anywhere in society he sees the elders in the society as his grandfather and grandmother, his father and mother, and his elder brother and sister.
When this kind of heart and this kind of family become universal, the world will be the kingdom of heaven. The person who lives in such a way can go everywhere without any opposition. Wherever he or she is, God will be there. He or she will never be alone and will never perish. (051-199, 1971/11/21)
14. Have you loved humanity as God has? When you see children, you have to think of them as your sons and daughters. When you see a child the same age as your younger brother or sister, you have to think, “This is my little brother” or “This is my little sister.”
When it comes to your husbands and wives, you should hug each other, care for each other, and be concerned for each other even more than anyone you have truly cared for until now.
The birth of sons and daughters enables a couple that has become one to stand in the place of God in profoundly experiencing the realm of the heart of re-creation.
While the parents hug each other, they gaze at their newborn son or daughter. This is a cosmic event and the object of cosmic love.
When a blessed husband and wife give birth to a child, they deeply experience, through their child, the very same heart that God experiences. They feel just the same way when they hold or nurse the baby. This is one way that you are the partners of God's true love.
You are told to go such and such a way, and if you take that way, becoming perfect parents, you too can be just like Mother and me. If children are brought up in this manner, when they get married, everything shall be brought to perfection.
(246-078, 1993/03/23)
15. After you enter the Unification Church, a record will be kept of what you do. How did you live as a blessed family? What percentage of True Father's words did you practice? For how many hours did you engage in activities?
These will be recorded. The card shows what and how long you invested, or with what kind of grace your couple lived in the Unification Church. In this way, it becomes a basis for evaluation.
Nothing that takes place lacks meaning, so it is inexcusable to take it easy. This is so not only in the physical world but also in the spiritual world.
There is a name list in the spiritual world of all blessed families of the Unification Church. If we input a name, that record comes up. If the record as it was written down on earth is different from what is recorded in the spirit world, it is a serious problem. Lying is inexcusable.
Life on earth is important. So I tell you, do not live a life of accruing debts; rather, live a life of clearing up debts. It is not good to incur debts. (233-255, 1992/08/01)
16. If you take a wrong step after your marriage, you will lose the path eternally. If you treat your blessed marriage as if it were a secular matter, you will create eternal pain.
There may be blessed families who are now captured in a place from which they cannot return, crying out for True Parents, shedding tears through the night, thinking of the golden days, the precious time of happiness. They may say that they would do anything to get back on the path.
Some women say, “Even if the whole world tramples on me on the way, I want to get back to that path,” and there are men who say, “I will do anything, even going to the most miserable place in the world, if it means I can get back to that path.”
However, they have already deviated.
True Parents consider such blessed families to be the most serious problem they have to confront. True Parents' heart is to find a way to forgive them, but there is no way. To achieve it, I would have to remake the Principle of Restoration. But doing that would bring a new condition of bitter sorrow that would be very difficult to restore. (157-310, 1967/10/16)
17. Where do blessed families have to go? Those who focus on their family will fade away. The purpose of my marriage is not to save my family. Blessed families have to go the way that fulfills the mission to restore the nation and the cosmos. As soon as we wake up, we have to vow to fulfill that work.
Whenever we shed tears, we do so to take responsibility for the work. Our accomplishments in this work are gifts that, as parents, we must leave for future history. This is our life philosophy related to the family.
There has to be such a tradition. If blessed families cannot go this way, it is a matter of eternal regret.
They feel ashamed when they see heaven and earth. They feel ashamed when they see me. They have to be ashamed of themselves and shed tears of repentance without limit. Other than to beg God for pity, they cannot come before God.
(157-308, 1967/10/16)
18. You, blessed families, have to go the way of divine sons and daughters focusing on heaven and earth.
In the secular world, people assert the dutiful way of saints, but we have to stand in a position even higher than that. It is through the Blessing that one can inherit the dutiful way of divine sons and daughters.
Horizontally we have to be filial sons and daughters, patriots and saints, and then become divine sons and daughters. This is the ideal of creation that Adam could have achieved. We have to become filial sons and daughters, patriots and saints, and fulfill the dutiful way of divine sons and daughters.
Because, until now, in front of heaven there were no filial sons and daughters, no patriots, no saints, and no divine sons and daughters, all we had was the belief that if we just went the right way that would give us the ideal basis to establish a nation.
Once we become filial sons and daughters in front of heaven, we can bring the nation in front of heaven. When we are patriots in front of heaven, we can bring the world in front of heaven.
When we are saints in front of heaven, we can bring heaven and earth in front of heaven. Your families have a value greater than that of heaven and earth.
(266-105, 1994/12/18)
Sun Myung Moon