Hello Friends,
I hope and pray that you all continue to stay well and safe and place yourselves, families and loved ones into the loving arms of Our Blessed Lady. August is her month and a special time for us to remember her Glorious Assumption into Heaven and to pick up your rosary and pray to Mary the Mother of Jesus!
If you’re on vacation, staycation and pottering around your home or garden please, try and find some time and sacred space for yourself to connect quietly with God, the God who loves you totally and utterly unconditionally!
The Sacrament of Marriage
Marriage is a Covenant
The Sacrament of Marriage is a covenantal union in the image of the covenants between God and his people with Abraham and later with Moses at Mt. Sinai. This divine covenant can never be broken. In this way, marriage is a union that bonds spouses together during their entire lifetime.
The sacrament of Matrimony signifies the union of Christ and the Church. It gives spouses the grace to love each other with the love with which Christ has loved his Church; the grace of the sacrament thus perfects the human love of the spouses, strengthens their indissoluble unity, and sanctifies them on the way to eternal life.
– Catechism of the Catholic Church 1661
The love in a married relationship is exemplified in the total gift of one’s self to another. It’s this self-giving and self-sacrificing love that we see in our other model of marriage, the relationship between Christ and the Church.
Marriage is based on the consent of the contracting parties, that is, on their will to give themselves, each to the other, mutually and definitively, in order to live a covenant of faithful and fruitful love.
– Catechism of the Catholic Church 1662
The Church takes the lifelong nature of the Sacrament of Marriage seriously. The Church teaches that a break in this covenant goes against the natural law of God:
Marriage is that sacrament by which a baptised man and woman are bound together by vows to an exclusive lifelong commitment to one another and to accepting and raising children. In this sacrament God gives grace for the fulfilment of these duties.
For Catholic Christians, the sacrament of marriage is a public sign that an individual is giving themselves totally to another person. It is also seen by many as a public statement about God because the loving union of a couple is an example of family values and God’s values.
What are the roots of Marriage?
God created human beings as male and female. This complementarity is the natural basis of Marriage, which throughout history has provided a stable, loving environment for the procreation and raising of children. Marriage is naturally monogamous and indissoluble but, due to the Fall, polygamy and divorce have often been tolerated.
Jesus says this was not God’s intention in creation:
“From the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” Mark 10:2-9
Christ and the sacrament of Marriage
The Catechism affirms that Marriage was “raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a Sacrament” (Catechism Catholic Church. 1601).
The nuptial relationship of Christ with his Church is made present in sacramental Marriage, marking it with a specifically Christian character. St Paul confirms this by referring to Marriage as a mystērion, which can be translated as ‘sacrament’. Saint Paul in his letter to the Ephesians, reminds us………………….
For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery mystērion is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.
Ephesians 5:31-32
This link with Christ and the Church implies: joy in loving union and a foretaste of the ‘Wedding Feast of the Lamb’ (Revelations 19:7); sacrifice, in that the spouses follow Christ in giving their lives for each other unto death; fruitfulness, in both the growth in holiness of the spouses and acceptance of children.
What is necessary for the sacrament?
The spouses confer the sacrament on one another. They must vow freely, have no impediments. Be committed to one another for life and be open to children from God. Following the established rite, each must say, “I take you…” in the presence of a minister and witnesses.
As Marriage is indissoluble until death, divorce is impossible. An annulment is the recognition by the Church that there was never a valid Marriage.
Let us remember all married, separated or divorced couples, that God will continue to shine his light and peace upon them all and bless all those couples who have had their loved tested by the various lockdowns and so many changes they have had to face.
Holding you all in my love and prayers
John