Marriage as a Sacrament
Throughout the whole of Scripture, there are ongoing references to the reality of marriage. Marriage is a covenant in which a man and a woman establish a partnership that embraces their whole lives. This covenant is a commitment to the good of the spouses as well as the procreation and education of children. When baptized persons exchange this covenant of commitment in marriage, it is a sacrament of the Church. Marriage is part of the order of creation. Marriage also experiences the result of sin which prompts spouses to seek God's help in living out the marriage covenant in a life giving way. Scripture provides powerful images for the marriage relationship - the nuptial covenant between God and Israel, the spousal love of Christ and the Church.
Minister of the Sacrament
In the Latin Rite, marriage takes place between two baptized members of the Church during the celebration of the Eucharist. The spouses in the Latin Church are the ministers of Christ's grace and "confer upon each other the sacrament of Matrimony by expressing their consent before the Church." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1623)
Requirements
Essential to the marriage covenant is the freedom of both the man and woman to express their consent to the covenant. Such freedom excludes force or constraint of any kind as well as the absence of any natural or ecclesiastical impediments. No marriage takes place if such free consent is not present. Without free consent, the marriage is invalid. Marriage is an ecclesial reality in which the priest or deacon receives the consent of the spouses in the name of the Church in the framework of a public liturgical celebration.
Interfaith Marriages
In today's world, marriage often takes place between a baptized Catholic and a baptized person of another faith tradition or a person who has never been baptized. It is important that in such situations spouses become aware of the challenges involved in what is termed a "Mixed Marriage." Permission or a dispensation is given to the Catholic party for entrance into a "Mixed Marriage" with the understanding that both parties know the purpose of marriage and the Catholic party agrees to the baptism and education of children in the Catholic Church to the best of his or her ability. In such situations, it is important to "to help such couples live out their particular situation in the light of faith, overcome the tensions between the couple's obligations to each other and to their ecclesial communities, and encourage the flowering of what is common to them in faith and respect for what separates them. " (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1636)
Effects of Marriage
"From a valid marriage arises a bond between the spouses which by its very nature is perpetual and exclusive; furthermore, in a Christian marriage the spouses are strengthened and, as it were, consecrated for the duties and the dignity of their state by a special sacrament. " (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1638)
Essential elements of marriage are:
Fidelity, indissolubility and an openness to fertility.
Defects of Marriage
Polygamy is contrary to conjugal love. Despite the commitment that spouses make to a lifetime fidelity, situations do arise where it becomes impossible for a couple to continue living together. The Church does allow for a separation, and even a divorce for civil reasons. However, the Church does not recognize a new union as valid if the first marriage was valid. A civil remarriage creates a situation which contradicts God's law and excludes people from the Eucharist. However, pastors and the whole community must have a solicitude for divorced and remarried persons and their families. In living out the marriage covenant and the marriage sacrament, spouses need to recognize the presence of God's grace which helps them to achieve holiness in their marriage. Such grace is especially present to couples as they respond to the fundamental task of marriage and family which is to be at the service of life.
Family
The Second Vatican Council calls the family "the domestic Church." Within the family, parents are the first teachers of the faith. All members of the family live out the priesthood of the baptized in a special way through their commitment to their faith and worship which makes the home the first school of Christian life. The Church must also be attentive to the many single persons who are part of the Church today.
42 How is Marriage a Sacrament?
Marriage between baptized people is a sacrament, for married love is a sign of Christ's love. The mutual promises of the baptized man and woman and their life in accordance with those promises bring God's grace to one another. In the marriage ceremony, then, the man and woman administer the sacrament to one another. The priest, representing the Church, acts as a witness only.
Saint Paul identified the union between husband and wife with the union between Christ and his Church: "Husbands should love their wives just as Christ loved the Church and sacrificed himself for her to make her holy. In the same way, husbands must love their wives as they love their own bodies; for a man to love his wife is for him to love himself. A man never hates his own body, but he feeds it and looks after it; and that is the way Christ treats his Church, because it is his body "and we are its living parts" (Ephesians 5:25-30).
In the Encyclical, On the Regulation of Birth(1968), Pope Paul VI indicated four characteristic features of married love: such love is fully human; it is total; it is faithful; and it is creative of life, or fruitful.
Baptisms, weddings, and funerals are the three occasions when, traditionally, everyone goes to church. And most people have little doubt which event they prefer. Baptisms generally focus on an infant "on a tiny baby only just alive and, literally, kicking!" At a funeral we come together to pray for someone who has just died. But most weddings center on two people who enjoy the full vigor of youth. For the couple, the wedding ceremony is the beginning of a new life; and for those who witness their love it is a poignant moment fulfilling years of expectation and hope
On their wedding day the man and woman are fully alive. For both, it is probably the most important decision they make in life. In the ceremony itself a mixture of shyness and nerves probably prevents the bride and groom from knowing what's happening to them! But they recognize the simple actions of the ceremony, rehearsed a hundred times in their minds, as expressing all that they are ( and have ) as man and woman.
As they are drawn together in marriage both the man and woman naturally come to ask themselves two basic questions: What have I to offer my partner? What has my partner to offer me? These are not the kinds of questions which we ask ourselves over the breakfast table or while we are enjoying ourselves at the local disco! Nor are they the kinds of questions which we ask ourselves when our marriage has already become lifeless, with the heart gone out of it. Yet they are questions which everyone "Christians and non-Christians alike" ask themselves in their quieter moments. For we recognize life in ourselves and in our partners. But what, we wonder, is the source of that life? Is it really worth exchanging with another?
These same questions are reflected in the documents of Vatican II. Believers and nonbelievers are agreed that we humans are the center on which all things on earth focus - the apex of nature - but who and what are we?
The Christian answer is clear. Created in the image of God, we are "appointed by him as master of all earthly creatures that we might subdue them and use them to God's glory" [The Church Today, #12). We need to recognize this answer before we can understand Christian marriage. For it is our dignity as human beings, created in the image of God, that makes the life we give and receive in marriage a worthwhile exchange.
When we were baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit we were lifted up into the life of the Trinity. That is the dignity of the Christian. And when two Christians come together in marriage they exchange not only their own life but the life, too, of the Trinity which they share.
On their wedding day, in other words, the man and woman who are baptized as Christians are alive, not with their own life but with the life of Christ. It is a happy occasion!
Now test your understanding of this lesson. Open the self-correcting quiz #42 .
43 What do we mean when we say that married love is fully human?
Every human society recognizes married love as the usual means by which men and women reach their human fulfillment. And so every marriage is a public act, approved and witnessed by the society in which it takes place. In most countries this takes the form of the marriage being registered by the State.
The importance of marriage as reflecting the life of the Church has led the Church to deepen her involvement in all that surrounds the consent of the man and woman. She insists that all marriages in which one of the partners is a Catholic take place according to her laws as laid down from time to time. She insists on thorough premarital instructions in which the couple have an opportunity to reflect on the nature of the marriage relationship the joys and problems of married life, and the responsibilities they will assume toward each other and their children.
The purpose of such involvement is to help the couple to make a free, fully human consent, so that the giving of themselves to one another may truly reflect Christ's if giving of himself to his Church. In the wedding ceremony the giving of the ring, as a sign of love and fidelity, seals the consent between husband and wife.
Carved on many a school desk for the benefit of future generations can be seen the simple outline of a heart through which runs the Christian names of two young lovers. Usually the carving is richly inlaid with blue ink! Thus are two names locked together in the first stirring of romantic love.
The roughhewn carving is symbolic of adolescent love, drawn with passion, yet awkward. It takes time for the sharp scratches to blend into the wood; only over the years are the rough cuts made smooth. And so it is with love. With the passing of the years it grows deeper but less obtrusive.
It is a very rare marriage indeed in which the maturing of love has not been won after much struggle and pain. It is as though the union of husband and wife can only be achieved after the friction of constant running together in daily life has smoothed out the more abrasive differences of character and outlook. And, to a great extent, that is what must happen in marriage. The locking together in love, carved so naively in wood and achieved so painstakingly in reality, is the fruit of a lifetime of self-sacrifice.
The great majority of people discover this hardship in marriage. We draw on the love of our partner when we need someone to "lean on." And, at other times, when we have to make up for our partner's weakness by showing the strength of two people, we are forced to search for the hidden reserves of love. This is hard, yes; but isn't this how we become more fully human ‹by learning to depend on others and by being dependable? We are formed by our relationships with others. The depths of our being are formed by our most intimate relationship ‹our marriage.
Husband and wife, wedded in Christ, become more perfect by discovering the love of their partner and by revealing that love within themselves. And that love is God's love. Married people discover and reveal God's love, in other words, in their everyday relationship with one another. By word and deed husband and wife encourage, build up, and perfect one another in the life of Christ.
The words of a partner in marriage can also cut deeply. Only people who know each other well know exactly where to put the knife to hurt most! This can be destructive. But it doesn't need to be if only we remain willing to learn ‹ willing to learn about ourselves and our own failings; willing to learn about and to accept the partner's shortcomings; willing, in a word, to learn about love.
We are formed by God's Word, both when it comes to us in the Scriptures or through the partner in marriage. It is his Word, indeed, which carves out our hearts, a roughhewn image on our wedding day but which from day to day, year to year, cuts deeper into our being, growing more and more like the heart of Christ.
44 What do we mean when we say that married love is total?
Married love is total in that husband and wife generously share everything, allowing no unreasonable exceptions or thinking just of one's own interests. The capacity to give oneself in such a way (to love a person for his or her own sake rather than one's own ) demands a certain maturity. This maturity can only be developed within a stable Christian family and community life.
"This love is uniquely expressed and perfected through the marital act. The actions within marriage by which the couple are united intimately and chastely are noble and worthy ones. Expressed in a manner which is truly human, these actions signify and promote that mutual self-giving by which spouses enrich each other with a joyful and thankful will" (The Church Today, #49).
In controversy against the Pharisees Jesus emphasized the totality of married love. After reminding them that the Creator from the beginning had made them male and female, he said: "This is why a man must leave father and mother, and the two become one body. They are no longer two, therefore, but one body. So, then, what God has united, man must not divide" (Matthew 19:5-6).
Can the man and woman on their wedding day really understand what they are doing? In one sense, of course, they can't. They can't foresee the ups and downs of life. They can't be sure what burdens each will place on the other. They can't know when sickness, physical or mental, will test their union to the limit.
But even though they don't know the details of what lies ahead, they can understand what they are doing to the extent that they have already learned to love. They still have a lot to learn, of course! But, founded on God's giving of himself, the couple have learned already that loving is based on giving. Total loving means total giving.
As small children, we begin to love others because we are constantly receiving love from those around us. But as we grow up it gradually begins to dawn on us that love is not just a matter of receiving. Love means giving as well as receiving. It is a two-way thing. "In adult life," writes Father O'Neill in his book About Loving, "we must take a further step in love and discover that, when two mature persons love one another, they begin to reach out in generosity beyond themselves. Mature love must overflow to others."
Giving, then, is as much a part of love as receiving; and we have to be perfectly sure just what this rather unique form of giving entails. It is not just a question, as many of us might think, of "giving up" something. If we see love simply in terms of sacrifice, it can often mean that we have not progressed beyond seeing love as a child sees it. Our attitude is: "I have received lots of things. They are mine, but I will give something up for you."
What, then, do we mean when we say that in marriage one person gives himself or herself totally to the other?
Erich Fromm sums up the attitude of the Church beautifully in his book The Art of Loving: "He gives of himself, of the most precious he has, he gives of his life. This does not necessarily mean that he sacrifices his life for the other, but that he gives of his joy, of his interest, of his understanding, of his knowledge, of his humor, of his sadness, of all expressions and manifestations of that which is alive in him."
This may all sound a bit theoretical. A young wife, however, writing recently of her own marriage puts it all in more everyday terms. "You could say I am now a very different person to what I was two years ago. I think I can truthfully say I now share in Jim's capacity to feel for others and his sense of fun. Not that he hasn't changed. People also assure me that he has taken on some of my qualities, fortunately, my better ones!"
This is exactly what the Church prays will happen when a couple give themselves "freely and without reservation" in marriage. We pray that they will enrich each other with their own unique gifts. We pray, in other words, that love will produce love.
Now test your understanding of this lesson. Open the self-correcting quiz #44 .
45 What do we mean when we say that married love is faithful?
Married love is faithful and exclusive of all other until death. Although such fidelity is often difficult, it is possible through the grace of him who "loved us first" (1 John 4:19). The appearance of Jesus at the marriage feast of Cana, where he performed his first miracle, was the fulfillment of the Father's desire to "betroth Israel to himself forever" (Hosea 2:21).
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus laid down his New Law, emphasizing the importance of its inner spirit over mere external observance: "You have learnt how it was said: You must not commit adultery. But I say this to you: If a man looks at a woman lustfully, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Matthew 5:27-28).
Jesus intended that faithfulness in marriage would be a sign of his own faithfulness. And so divorce in marriage was impossible: "The man who divorces his wife and marries another is guilty of adultery against her" (Mark 10:11). But Jesus also intended his own mercy to the sinner to be a sign of the mercy to be shown by his disciples. To those who wished to stone the woman caught in adultery he said: "If there is one of you who has not sinned, let him be the first to throw a stone at her" (John 8:7).
"Will you love and honor each other as man and wife for the rest of your lives?"
This is one of the questions that the minister asks the bride and bridegroom on their wedding day. What answer can they make? Wouldn't it be reasonable if they replied: "Yes, provided everything goes according to plan. . . Yes, if at all possible"? But that is not the answer the Church demands! She expects the reply: "I will... I will."
Should one of the partners ‹ in pronouncing his or her vows ‹ explicitly exclude lifelong faithfulness there would, of course, be no marriage. Regardless of how common divorce and remarriage have become, Christian married couples pledge themselves to imitate, and in a way represent, Christ's faithful love for his bride, the Church. The binding nature of this loving covenant is indicated in the words of consent given by each partner in the marriage ceremony: "I will love you and honor you all the days of my life."
Is faithful love truly possible? As the bride and bridegroom emerge from the church, in some places, confetti is scattered, a less expensive form of the sweets which were originally thrown. These sugared almonds, a mixture of sweetness and bitterness which today takes the form of the almond paste on top of the wedding cake, are a reminder of the nature of the life which follows. And for many couples who put so much preparation into the wedding day, the "bitterness" ,the anticlimax, follows very quickly. Waking up, they realize that they are the same people.
The Christian husband and wife, however, realize that now they are not the same persons! Their love makes them not two persons but one body. They can now "honor" one another. Or, as the old English rite expressed it: "With my body I thee worship."
This is not idolatry, the worshiping of a "false God." It is the worship of the "true God" whose life beats in the hearts of the married couple who are bound in faithful love. The love two people have for one another in marriage is like the love God has for us. It is the love God has for us. It is the same love. And that love is faithful.
As Ronald Knox tells us: "Like swimmers carried away by a silent undertow that is too strong for them, a married couple are swept into the current of the divine love which reaches beyond time and sense; they are united, beyond their knowing, with that divine will which made them for one another." In faithfully loving one another, in putting their faith in one another, a married couple are drawn deeper into the love of God and reveal that love to the world.
This is what we mean when we say that marriage is a "sacrament." It is a "sign" of God's love, bringing about a new presence of Christ in the world. Faithful love is possible, for Christ has shown such love for his Church. And now, in the union of marriage, two people united in one flesh share and show his same love.
46 How is married love fruitful?
Married love bears fruit, through a deepening of love between husband and wife, to bring new life into being. "Marriage and married love are by their nature ordained to the begetting and educating of children" (The Church Today, #50). But marriage is not instituted solely for procreation. Another purpose of marriage is mutual support and growth of love between husband and wife. Therefore, marriage maintains its value and permanence even when offspring are lacking.
When there is a question of harmonizing married love with the responsible transmission of life, the moral aspect of any procedure must be determined by objective standards. Catholics may not, then, undertake methods of regulating procreation which are found blameworthy by the teaching authority of the Church (see The Church Today, #51),
In bringing children to birth and educating them, parents are cooperators with the love of God the Creator. Responsible parenthood requires, then, that husband and wife, keeping a right order of priorities, recognize their own duties toward God, themselves, their families, and human society. In fulfilling these duties, parents are called to "interpret the love of God.
True married love is fruitful. We describe the act of sexual intercourse as "making love." And this is a good description to use. For intercourse is not only the physical expression of the total giving of husband and wife to one another, but it actually makes their love for each other grow.
The first fruit of married love, in other words, is a deepening of love. It brings the couple closer to one another as they are drawn to share one another's burdens; and it binds them closer to God, who is love and whose love they are called to share.
"Making love" is a couple's greatest activity. This activity is not limited, of course, to sexual intercourse but to all the experiences that a couple share. Besides these tender, affectionate experiences, it also refers to the sacrifices they make, as well as the mistakes, misunderstandings, and quarrels they have with one another. It remains true, nonetheless, that sexual intercourse is the climax of lovemaking. It is the moment when a new person can be conceived.
It is the moment, too, when man and woman share most intimately in God's lovemaking. The child of their love is the fruit of a unique partnership between God and them. Because they share in God's creative love, husband and wife are privileged to share in the most exalted part of God's creative love the creation of a human being. Their generosity and love are surely a brilliant reflection of the Creator's love when he first brought the world into being.
This is a great privilege. But it is also a great responsibility! The Church reminds parents that they are "cooperators with the love of God the Creator, and are, so to speak, the interpreters of that love" (The Church Today, # 50). Parents "interpret" the love of God to one another and to their children! Any act ‹ such as artificial birth control, sterilization for that purpose, or abortion, which does not interpret his love is a lie.
Born of God's love, the children are to grow in God's love. As Father Gerald Vann, O.P., reminds us in his book, The Heart of Man: "The child's power of vision must be cherished, enlarged, deepened; to destroy it is a sort of murder." These words may strike us as harsh. But they are also true! The parents' responsibility to bring a child into the world does not cease with birth. It is wrong to destroy that life before birth. It is equally wrong to stunt the growth and development of a child after he or she is born.
"The child is the parents' love made flesh; and at the same time in the making of the child they make their own oneness." In these words Father Vann sums up for us the unique relationship between parents and children. "Making love" is creative. It creates a new man and woman, making them "one flesh." It creates a child. It creates a family. It creates the love of God in the world.
Now test your understanding of this lesson. Open the self-correcting quiz #46 .