Pt.3 /4

The previous articles covered what the Catechism and Sacred Scripture teach us about marriage and love. This week we will look at what makes a marriage sacramental.

God provided all that was necessary to thrive for our first parents in the Garden of Eden; however, they chose instead to succumb to temptation from the evil one.

Eve was created for Adam to complement and help him. Natural marriage is what God established in the Garden, a vocation of self-donation between man and woman. Marriage is not about what you ‘get out of it’ but what you bring into it. In choosing to be “like gods,” they grasped the fruit and put sin and all its effects into motion for all humanity. Evil promises lies and delivers counterfeits. Yet, God did not abandon humanity and promised in Genesis 3:15, the first announcement of the Messiah and Redeemer.

In Jesus, we have our promised Savior. He has healed and brought marriage back to its original unity and meaning. At Cana, Christ enacts his first miracle at a wedding. Through grace and divine power, water is miraculously transformed into new wine. He does the same at our sacramental wedding by taking the things of earth, (the couple) and infusing them with his Divine life and love. In other words, Christ elevates the natural into the supernatural. Marriage becomes a Sacramental sign of Christ’s love for His Church. God’s grace influences everything, but in the Sacrament of Matrimony, in a particular way, helps the couple grow in grace and holiness.

Marriage is a sacrament if it is between two baptized persons. If one spouse is unbaptized, it is a natural marriage. If in the future, the unbaptized becomes baptized in the Trinitarian form, the marriage becomes sacramentalized immediately. 

The bar is high for spouses to mirror Christ’s love. The Church holds up the ideal. Marriage ends only with the death of the spouse…”until death do I part.”

Marriage is a sign of faithfulness, fidelity, fruitfulness, and witnesses God’s love in and to the world. Catholics, who were not married in the Church, are invited to bring their marriage into right relationship with Christ and His Church through the process called, Con-validation.

All Christians, through baptism, are called to holiness. It is in and through marriage and family life that we learn how to live like Christ, impacting the world for good.  So much is learned in the family; how to share, cooperate, pray, respect and place others first. The gift of the Holy Spirit enables us to model God’s life and love because actual and sacramental graces assist us. Holy marriages, beget holy families.