Last week, the Illinois House and Senate approved legislation that redefined, humanly speaking, the union of marriage given to us by God.

The Catholic Church, joined by other Christian denominations and people of faith and good will, strenuously opposed this action of the legislature in order to support what reason and faith know that nature’s God has inscribed into the world and into our humanity, reflected in our faith.

That is, that marriage can only be the life-long union between one man and one woman.

Obviously, for political and other reasons, the defense of the nature of marriage did not prevail before the legislators of Illinois. So, it is more important than ever to recall what is at the heart of this issue, why it is so important, and to keep these truths in mind going forward.

Our Catholic faith embraces joyfully the gift of union between the sexes, bodily, spiritually and emotionally, that is the context for new human life.

We celebrate marriage and we gladly take on all of the challenges and stresses that go into making it work in our broken but redeemed world.

From the very beginning of the human race, men and women have left their original families and joined to each other in the formation of new families with their own children. Tribes and societies recognized, before ever there was a government and before Jesus walked the earth, the need to foster this union and to give it stability.

Undermining this unique union was recognized as harming all of the community: the parents, children and all the members of its present and future generations. As a result, throughout history, marriage between a man and a woman has been given special reverence and protection by societies of diverse times and cultures. It has always been distinguished from other forms of friendship or union.

So it must be said that the nature of marriage is not an inherently religious matter but one that flows from our own human nature.

Our Catholic support of God’s plan is not an effort to impose a particular religious practice upon society. It is not the same as, for example, arguing for legislation to compel others to share our Catholic penitential practice of abstaining from meat on Fridays of Lent.

Neither is the human race’s historical support for God’s plan for marriage a form of unfair discrimination that we have only now discovered.

As Catholics, we recognize that a part of faith is to accept and work in harmony with nature as God has provided it and with the teaching of Jesus, God’s only-begotten son. Despite the damage of sin in the world, we recognize its beauty and order coming from God.

There are elements of that beauty and order, like marriage, that are so foundational that we have no right — no ability, in fact, because they are God’s — to reorder them. And we can anticipate the tragic consequences for ourselves and for future generations when we live as if we have changed this good for the better, when in fact we have abandoned the most basic truths.

Finally, we need to keep in mind our role as followers of Jesus in a broken world.

Our politicians can and do make grave mistakes as they have in this matter. Our judges do not always decide rightly on important matters that go beyond their rightful competence.

Still, we are the leaven for the world. We are the hands and voice of Jesus in our time reminding others of what is right and good.

This is our task going forward. We must be prepared to be courageous in not cooperating with what contradicts God’s plan and Jesus’ teaching about marriage.

But we must also live marriage rightly and fully. We must teach it even more strongly to our children whom the culture will try to lead astray.

Above all we must remain joyful. We have been entrusted with the Good News of eternal life, even in the sad moments when the world rejects God’s plan.