# Preparation for Blessing (II)

By Fami1yfed June 16, 2018 June 16, 2018 Speeches of Rev Sun Myung Moon 1978

## REVEREND SUN MYUNG MOON

### May 20, 1978
Lancaster Gate Church,
London, England

> This is a very short sermon, given just before the Holy Wine Ceremony for the 118 Couple Blessing. Rev. Moon explains again the spiritual status of men and women after marriage, and checks that all present understand what it is they must do.

> The Blessing was held the following day, and in the evening after the ceremony, a grand wedding reception was held in the Chelsea Town Hall.

You will say ‘Thy will be done! Please, God, Your will be done!’ For this you must thank True Parents. True Parents have given you everything free, you know that. Be happy and be good. Today is a joyful day, and tomorrow will be an especially joyful day for all of you. Create a joyful atmosphere, and live in joy in your entire life. Think about the joy of Jesus Christ, if after 2,000 long years of waiting, he was able to be at a wedding ceremony. How great that is!

The Holy Wedding ceremony took place in 1960 when Father and Mother were installed as the True Parents. What a joyful and wonderful day that day must have been! Tomorrow you must be just as joyful as Father was in 1960. Why? Because you are fulfilling God’s will.

You met your wife today. You did not know her before, and she did not know you either! But that is splendid, perfectly splendid! Come together and be joyful. If you have that kind of frame of mind you can go on like a dream for thirty years. In the name of God and for the sake of God shall we shall pursue happiness? Amen!

Tonight we will have the engagement and Holy Wine ceremony, and that will conclude today’s activities. There is only one hour and forty five minutes left today. So have a quick wash standing up in water. Tonight improvise somehow, just clean your body and come to the engagement ceremony.

But before the wedding tomorrow, you must somehow submerge yourself into water. Your satanic stain must be all gone; you must wash your whole body seven times. If you can’t wash your whole body seven times, you must wash at least three times but your lower area, the sexual area, seven times. You must clean up all past sin. Think, ‘I have sinned, I was fallen,’ while you are washing your body. Get all of the past memory out. Liquidate, conquer and get rid of your sinful memories. Do you follow me?

### The Purification Period

Do not ever think that just as soon as you get married you will begin married life immediately. No, Jesus took 4,000 years to arrive on earth; even after his crucifixion it took 40 days for the resurrected Jesus to come back and work on earth. For you too, the time after blessing is vital.

This purification period is very important. You should be united in spirit first before you unite in body, and so a minimum 40 day condition of separation before consummation is absolute. However, in our tradition, most of the blessed couples have abstained for at least 3 years. That has been the tradition.

During this time you must be absolutely united in spirit. Then you can become physically united. As soon as you meet as men and women, there is the attraction of your physical bodies and sexual desire. That’s the kind of thing you must overcome, even if at times you have to think in such a spiritual way that you imagine that you cannot be united in eternity! Though you certainly are respected as husband and wife, and you are indeed legal husband and wife, your unity will come gradually. You must know each other and respect each other. You can hold hands but beyond that you should have a certain restraint.

The husband like an elder brother, father and husband for his wife. The wife is like a sister, mother and wife for her husband. You will look at her or him first as a sister or brother, then as a mother or father and finally as husband and wife. Then you are authorized and you qualify to move into husband and wife position. Do you follow? It is not feasible as soon as you marry. Do not think, ‘We are husband and wife, so we can just go and have a good time and have children immediately. That is not the way we do it. There is the rule or the principle for you to observe. Three years purification is our way of life.

However some of you are getting old, and in many cases, Father has made the following adjustment: if either wife or husband is beyond the age of 30, then your purification period shall be one year and a half. Then you shall commence your married life and have children. But anybody not yet 30 years old shall maintain the three years.

In the case of those brides or bridegrooms age 33 or more, whose mate is over 30 years, these couples shall observe a purification period of 120 days-roughly four months. Raise hands please, those in that category. There is one special case of a couple who have been advised by a doctor not to have children after 30 years. You too may engage in married life after 120 days. Now is everybody clear? There are no questions, no mistakes in understanding?

### The role of husband and wife prior to consummation

The three days ceremony, according to the Principle, signifies that a woman gives new birth to a man, recreating him physically. This is a mother’s role, and so in the three year period of separation and purification, or one and a half years, or 120 days, these periods are the time where the women serve in the role of mother. The man should be like a child really serving his mother. You men here should also serve your wives. The man should be subordinate in this period, and the woman should be in the subjective role.

Women can even say, ‘Do my errands! Do my hair! Wash my feet!’ and the men have to say ‘Yes Mother!’ By doing so a man can become like a really loving baby, like a child. You women will feel you cannot live without him, like a mother who cannot leave her baby alone. That kind of feeling must be created. Until the three days ceremony this custom or tradition must continue.

America is a women’s world, right? This way of life will last for 70 years, but then it will decline and go away. The idea of ‘ladies first’ will go away, and men will go first! If American women think they can have a field day and try to continue to enslave men, what will happen? Men will leave women and women will live all by themselves. That’s why American men do not want to marry American white women, thinking, ‘They are stubborn and arrogant; they are bossy and talk too much!’ American men will say, ‘I just want to marry an Oriental woman!’

### The three-day ceremony

When you finally meet as husband and wife physically, there will be a three-day ceremony. For three nights you will have to go through certain procedures, All the blessed members will have a special lecture and receive special instruction on how to go through the three-day ceremony. This three-day ceremony signifies that the women physically give up their position and physically give birth to their husbands. After the three-day ceremony, then restoration has taken place.

Your position of meeting as husband and wife, on the first and second nights, will be with the wife in the upper position and her husband in the lower position. This represents formation and growth. The fallen action came at the top of growth stage position. However, on the third night, which represents perfection, there should be restoration of dominion. Adam should restore dominion, so the husband is in the upper and the woman in the lower position.

All this will be explained in detail at the time of the ceremony. But in Principle, on the first night you will really purify yourselves and carry out everything as instructed. The husband should make three bows to his wife. The wife receives those three bows, and they will then engage in sexual action, with the woman in the upper position. The second night repeats the first night. However, the third night is different. Until the third night, women are subject and men are in the object role. On the third night there is total restoration of dominion of husband. You men will restore your rightful authority as a husband on the third night. You will receive the three bows, and you are in the upper position. After that, from the third night on, the woman should serve the husband more than the husband serves her.

Once you know how difficult it is to reach to perfection then you should not even conceivably think of the fallen action again. Let’s say there is a temptation, a typical temptation. A beautiful woman comes to entice you, or a handsome man comes to woo you. Look at that person as a serpent! Besides your husband or wife, nobody else should be in a position to woo you or entice you. Anyone else is the serpent, the archangel.

Once you know the entire spiritual implications of your blessing, you cannot help being joyful over how precious you are, living in this era, meeting Father and gathered in this particular room.

### Final details

Let’s go down to work then. Have supper quickly. Bathe yourself and gather together as quickly as possible. Dennis Orme will let me know as soon as everybody is ready. This is the draw. All women come and pick a number; you will line up according to this number, so keep it and don’t lose it!

The holy salt tradition began with the Holy Wedding in 1960. We should actually burn all old things and wear new things but since we can’t do that in real life, Father created holy salt. That has spread all over the world and becomes your holy salt now. That has the same power to make all things new. Through the power of the holy salt, with the spirit of the holy salt you are making the material God’s material.

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