In this intervention we wish share a few thoughts on the relationship of Trinitarian love and the family. The starting point of these thoughts is the meaning of love as revealed in the inner life of the Trinity. Love in the Trinity can be described as two movements: the first movement, which has its origin in the Father, the source of Trinitarian life and love, is the "begetting" movement by which the person of the Son eternally exists; the second is the unifying movement of the love (between the Father and the Son) by which the person of the Holy Spirit eternally exists. These two movements of love and life are inseparable, as the Three Persons are distinct but inseparable in the unity of God. This pattern of Trinitarian love is the basis of all reality, including the reality of the family. Hence, every true expression of human love has these two movements: on the one hand, real love desires to bring another into existence (a child) or into fuller existence (a friend, even an enemy) someone who is really distinct from me; on the other hand, love wants real union with this distinct other. In the family these two inseparable movements are especially clear: first, the family is the "place" in which God has chosen both to create a new human person and "the place" where, through affective love experienced in the family, the child begins to understand and desire an eternal union of love with God; and second, the conjugal act, or marriage act, is the particular act through which, with God, the parents both procreate their child and are joined in a deeper union of love. For human love to reach its goal in the family, however, a further characteristic of Trinitarian love needs to emphasized: divine love is pure. That is, each person of the Trinity loves the other according to the truth of the other, the self and the relationship between the self and the other: the Son, for example, loves the Father according to the truth of who the Father is, who the Son is, and the truth of their relationship. Because of original sin, however, human "love," either through ignorance or selfishness or weakness, fails to love the other according to the truth of the other-- that is, human persons often love the other impurely. The Church teaches, therefore, that conjugal love must be pure: that is, consistent with the truth of the other, the self and the relationship. To be consistent with these truths, the conjugal act can only be done within marriage; outside of marriage the conjugal act is dishonest or impure. Further, the conjugal act is true and pure only if its inseparable procreative and unitive reality is respected. The full demands pure, or truthful, family love were only gradually revealed by God and only fully revealed by Jesus Christ. Hence, we can say, it is not until Jesus' revelation of Trinitarian love, that husbands, wives, parents and children were able to love each purely: that is, love each other according to the full truth, value and dignity of who each really is.