Based on extracts from his speeches throughout his life
Earlier installments are available for reading.
Part 67
The Blessing of the True Bride and Groom
When I married Mother, I did not do so saying, “God, I will get married because the time has come for me to get married.” I got married because God said, “Get married because the time for you to marry has come.” That is in accord with the Principle. Mother, also, was not thinking about marrying me. She was a young lady attending high school.
When she was told “Rev. Moon is calling you,” she said “Why? He does not know me; why is he calling me?” When she was told “They say that you are going to get married tomorrow,” she responded by saying “Is that so?” She was like that. She did not oppose anything.
I tested her. When I told her to draw a picture, she did it very well. She drew a picture immediately and showed it to me very elegantly. Her frame of mind was even more beautiful than her drawing. She was a very lovely and elegant girl. She was wonderful.
True Parents’ Engagement and True Parents’ Day
True Parents first had to inherit the qualifications of spiritual parents. In order for True Parents to appear on earth, they necessarily had to fight in substantial struggles. They had to win the victory in order to qualify as the True Parents. Parents’ Day was possible only on the foundation of their having been successful in paying indemnity, both spiritually and physically.[1]
Parents’ Day is the day when a man and a woman became husband and wife centering on original love—that day was established for the first time in history in the Unification Church. When this came about, a man’s mind and body and a woman’s mind and body became perfectly united horizontally, and the ideal realm of perfection desired by God came into being.
Parents’ Day means our parents came into existence—parents representing God’s glory and acknowledging this victory of humankind, parents who have the authority to make judgments against evil based on the laws of justice. This fact is the most essential gospel on earth. That those things were proclaimed (on the first day of the third month of the lunar calendar) is the reason True Parents’ Day is significant.
We have established True Parents’ Day, but it must not be a day for the Unification Church alone. True Parents’ Day must be for everyone, a day that all people around the world can celebrate, not only a small group of Unification Church members. It can be celebrated for a long time into the future.
The Holy Wedding took place fourteen years after our national liberation.[2] Since Adam and Eve married at the perfection level of the growth stage, we had to be in the position of having gone beyond the seven-years of the formation stage and the seven-years of the growth stage and of having connected with the formation degree of the perfection stage. In other words, we had to transcend the national level.
In 1960, I gathered the Unification Church members and established at least a hundred and twenty basic churches representing a hundred and twenty nations. We established this foundation to protect our church from any national-level trial.
Severe opposition
I could not have my own wedding simply by bringing to the ceremony a woman I personally liked. I had to solve problems in providential history. I established conditions of indemnity to resolve the historic problems in Adam’s time, Noah’s time and Abraham’s time, and thereafter. In order for the Holy Wedding to be held in 1960, all the problems from the four thousand years between Adam and Jesus and the two thousand years between Jesus and today’s people needed to be indemnified.
Indemnity conditions had to be established from 1953 to 1960. Consequently, this period had to be one characterized by persecution. The people of Israel, the religious leadership and Judas Iscariot together contributed to the death of Jesus. We were placed in a similar situation in April 1960. At that time, opposition was at its peak. We were at a progress-or-not, live-or-die, restart-or-fail crossroads. Twelve people put their signatures to a complaint against me and I had to undergo interrogation in court. In those days a number of famous Kunkuk University scholars had become our family members, but they left when they heard the bad news and rumors. Kim Jung-shil, who was a church district director, packed all his belongings and ran away, didn’t he?
At the Ministry of Home Affairs, papers were drawn up and I had to fight it out with them on the day before our wedding. Since Jesus died as the result of a court case, I had to come to a court to restore that. This was indemnity. I was attacked in the court until 11 o’clock in the evening on that day, and began my wedding day at 3 o’clock in the morning the following day. I fought to that extent in order to prepare the foundation of peace and happiness for all people. No one knew that. President Eu[3] helped significantly at this time. Under such circumstances we had our Holy Wedding on April 11, 1960. Thus, we crossed over one peak and moved upward. This was the beginning of the defeat of Satan.
Reaching the age of forty
We had to hurry. You do not know how serious I was at that time. Through the study of Divine Principle, you all know how important it is to reach the number forty in the process of restoration. I had to not die before I was forty.
Every time I faced the zenith of opposition from the enemy, I repeatedly said to myself, I must not collapse. I must not die. If I die, who can do God’s will? No matter how much suffering I may have to undergo, even if I become a cripple or am bedridden, I must not die.” You don’t know how determined I was. Longing for the day when I would become forty, I hoped, without saying a word, that time would pass quickly. During those days, I would say to myself, Youth go quickly away; pass quickly, time! Even if all my treasures are taken away, I will be a winner, not a loser, when I become forty years old.
Three generations of inner anguish
What kind of family is the family of the coming Lord? Measured in terms of human misery, his family is more miserable than any other family. In other words, all miserable things done by men and women throughout history are repeated, even to a small degree, in his family. Otherwise, indemnity is not paid.
You must know that I had to bear an even heavier cross in my heart than Jesus did. Losing the nation and losing the church were sorrowful experiences.[4] Even more painful for me was the loss of my own family, which I had established to resolve six thousand years of bitterness and to resolve Jesus’ anguished heart over his not being able to have his own family. I reestablished the family foundation, and the outcome is that I have my present family.
A realm of sanctification
Where did Holy Salt originate? It originated from the parents, from the occasion of True Parents’ Holy Wedding. Contamination of everything started from fallen parents’ love, didn’t it? That’s why Holy Salt originated from the Holy Wedding, based on True Parents’ love.
God cannot use what has been stained by Satan’s blood in Satan’s world. Therefore, by getting married, I became the subject person representing True Parents’ original love, life and lineage. As such, I must burn what Satan has stained. However, people must eat and wear clothes. Therefore, instead of burning, I established conditions of sanctification and created a realm on earth that has nothing do to with Satan, where people can live, eat food and wear clothes. You must know these things. You must search for your True Parents, unite with them and work with them to restore the nation to the point that using Holy Salt is unnecessary.
The marriage supper of the Lamb
What was the meaning of the day, April 11, 1960, when we married? It is set apart from other days because the Holy Wedding happened then. Though in all appearance it may have seemed a very simple occasion, the history of that day will be studied when it is understood as a core event embracing everyone. It is remarkable that this Adam, for whom God had waited six thousand years, came to earth and indemnified everything, and thus held the Holy Wedding in 1960. You do not know! From God’s viewpoint, it had been a time of suffocating tension, like treading on thin ice on the verge of life and death.
The Holy Wedding was not just for an individual; it was a global event. If the beginning of one family that is more loving than any other is declared in front of the global providence of God at the place integrating the origin of heart, then the heavenly laws and heavenly fortune cannot but be moved centering on the beginning of that family.
Because we laid the family foundation in 1960, we cannot perish. If we did not have that family foundation, we would have met with destruction. That illustrates what a historical event the Holy Wedding was. On the foundation of the endeavors made in the six-thousand-year history of the providence to restore Adam, Adam himself has set the standard on earth by which he can receive Eve as the perfected Eve. This means that the spiritual and physical worlds, which have been separated, have finally been reconnected on earth. Man represents heaven and woman represents earth, and so through them the separated spiritual world and physical world are reconnected. In short, the wall dividing Adam and Eve as enemies has been broken down, the wall that prevented Adam and Eve from meeting God has crumbled. Satan has no choice but to leave.
Continued next week….
[1] True Parents’ engagement ceremony took place at the old headquarters in church in Cheongpa-dong on the first day of the third (lunar calendar) month in 1960. Since 1961, the day has been designated Parents’ Day. “True” was added to the names of the four major holy days on the thirty-fifth Parents’ Day in 1994.
[2] The end of World War II, when Japan was forced to cede possession of Korea
[3] Eu Hyo-won, Korean church president at the time
[4] Father is likely referring to his incarceration at Hungnam and the outbreak of the Korean War, through which the church foundation he had in Pyongyang was lost, his nation was engulfed in violence, and he was separated from his young family. Father here indicates he felt his first family had some role in the restoration process.