Marriage

Marriage is the covenant by which a man and a woman give themselves to each other for their whole life, forming a community ordered to their mutual love and to the welcoming of children. Between two baptized persons, Christ raised it to the dignity of a sacrament, a sacred sign that gives the grace of God.

Instituted by God from the origin

God inscribed marriage in the nature of man and woman from creation. Creating them one for the other, he unites them in a single life and blesses them for fruitfulness. “Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh.” Genesis 2:24

To become “one flesh” says more than the union of bodies. The Hebrew word rendered as “flesh,” basar (בָּשָׂר), means the whole being, the person in his concrete condition. Two beings until then separate now form a single life, united in body, heart, and shared existence, which Christ draws from this very verse: “Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.” Matthew 19:6 This unity takes flesh in the child, born of the two and one of their union.

God finally opens this union to life, making the spouses the first to hand on his own. “Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it.” Genesis 1:28

The ends of marriage

Marriage serves two ends that God has joined together. The first is the good of the spouses themselves: they are made one for the other, help each other, complete each other, and grow together toward God. “And the Lord God said: It is not good for man to be alone: let us make him a help like unto himself.” Genesis 2:18 The second is the welcoming and education of children: the love of the spouses, by its very nature, is prolonged in the life it transmits and raises. These two ends hold together: the union of the spouses opens to the child, and the child is born of the gift the spouses make to each other.

Raised by Christ to the rank of a sacrament

Christ raised marriage to the dignity of a sacrament by uniting it to his own covenant with the Church. When Paul cites the “one flesh” of creation, he declares that this verse looked to Christ and the Church: “A man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh. This mystery is great: I speak in reference to Christ and the Church.” Ephesians 5:31-32 The union of a man and a woman thus prefigured the union of Christ, the new Adam, with the Church born from his opened side on the Cross, as Eve was drawn from the side of Adam. Christ reveals and fulfils the meaning that marriage bore from creation. The love of the spouses reproduces the love of Christ for the Church: as Christ gives himself for her to the Cross, remains united to her without ever separating from her, and makes her fruitful, the spouses give themselves to each other wholly, remain united for life, and open their love to life. The visible union of the two spouses thus gives to see the invisible union of Christ and the Church: it is in this that it is the sign of it. This elevation supposes the baptism of the two spouses, which makes them members of Christ: it is because they belong to him that their union can bear the sign of his union with the Church. The marriage of two baptized persons is therefore always a sacrament, whether they are Catholics or of different Christian confessions; and if one is not baptized, their union, a marriage willed by God, is raised to the rank of a sacrament the day he receives baptism.

Unity and indissolubility

Marriage possesses two properties essential to it: unity and indissolubility. Unity: one man and one woman. Indissolubility: the bond lasts until death, for what God unites, no one can undo. Christ affirms it, returning to the design of the beginning. “What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.” Matthew 19:6 To those who invoked the permission to divorce granted of old, he replies that it was a concession to hardness of heart, and points back to God’s first plan. “He saith to them: Because Moses by reason of the hardness of your heart permitted you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.” Matthew 19:8

Divorce and remarriage

A sacramental and consummated marriage is broken only by the death of one of the spouses; no authority on earth can undo it. Civil divorce separates bodies and goods, but it does not break the bond that God has tied: in God’s eyes, the spouses remain united. This is why one who, divorced, remarries while his spouse is living contracts a union that the Church cannot hold to be a marriage. Christ says it plainly. “Every one that putteth away his wife and marrieth another committeth adultery: and he that marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.” Luke 16:18 Mark reports the same word without reservation. “Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another committeth adultery against her. And if the wife shall put away her husband and be married to another, she committeth adultery.” Mark 10:11-12

In Matthew, a clause, “except for an unlawful union,” makes no exception to indissolubility: it concerns unions that were not true marriages, not a valid bond that could be broken. “whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery.” Matthew 19:9 When a marriage has lacked from the origin an essential condition, a free consent, openness to life, the faith pledged, the Church can, after examination, recognise its nullity: she then breaks no bond, she declares that it never existed. A declaration of nullity is therefore not a divorce.

At the death of one of the spouses, the bond ceases, and the surviving spouse is free to remarry in the Lord. “A woman is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth: but if her husband die, she is at liberty. Let her marry to whom she will: only in the Lord.” 1 Corinthians 7:39

Consent and grace

The ministers of the sacrament are the spouses themselves, who confer it on each other by exchanging their consent, the free yes by which each gives and receives the other; this exchange of consent is at once its matter and its form. The priest or the deacon assists as the qualified witness of the Church, receives this consent in the name of the Church and blesses the covenant. By this sacrament, God grants the spouses a proper grace: it strengthens their love, helps them to sanctify each other and to welcome and raise their children in the faith. The home they form thus becomes a domestic Church, the first place where the faith is lived and handed on.