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Marriage

By Annie Vining MTh, President TOBET

Marriage is a reflection given to the RCIA participants St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Garland TX on January 27, 2004.

© 2004

  1. The prevailing view of marriage in our society
    1. An important and serious promise that the spouses make to each other
    2. A contract that can be dissolved if either side breaks his/her promise or even if either party simply wants to dissolve it
    3. Something that people enter into when they are “in love” which gives them the right to not feel guilty about sleeping with someone and to expect that person not to sleep with other people. (As one recent movie put it, “You can do it.”)
    4. A way for people, particularly women, to get the children that they want
    5. A tradition made up by man/society and therefore able to be redefined by man at his will
      This is very different from the way that God sees marriage.
  2. Marriage from God’s point of view
    1. Genesis:
      • God made man male and female in His image, which is that of the Trinity. This means He made man to be in relationship.
      • The most fundamental of all relationships is the family relationship
      • There are two ways for a family relationship to be established: the sharing of blood (being born into it) and entering into a covenant
      • God binds Adam and Eve together as a family through the covenant of marriage which He created in order to satisfy their longing to be in a relationship (their longing to be loved and to love). He made marriage to fit His original plan for man and woman’s happiness.
      • In Genesis the family bond that is established through marriage and the fact that God intends for us to find happiness through being in a family is further highlighted by the statement, “This is why a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife.”
    2. Covenants:
      • To better understand the marriage covenant, we must first understand covenants in general
      • They make a family bond
      • E.g.: Through the covenant with Moses, the Israelites become “God’s firstborn son”
      • God agreed to bless His people with His friendship and protection if they would keep his law. To our American ears this sounds like a contract right?
      • Wrong. It is more an explanation of how the relationship between God and His people works. If they accept His grace by leading lives that show that they want His grace, then He can bless them (this is true because God always respects our freedom and never imposes even blessings upon us). If they reject it, according to the covenant, then He must pay the price. This is what He did on the cross.
      • This would be much like a parent who says, “If you eat all your peas, then you will have lots of energy to enjoy playing with all the toys I have given you.” The flip side of this is that the parent most of all must pay the price for a child who consistently does not eat healthy food through doctors’ bills and worry, etc.
      • So, a covenant is not a contract that two persons enter into until someone breaks it, but it is rather a family bond in which both parties must try to give 100%. When one side can only give 30%, the other is not absolved of their responsibility toward the other, but rather must give 170% to make up for the difference.
      • We can see this in family life when for example, the mom gets sick and everyone else must work harder to keep all the housework under control
    3. The marriage covenant elevated to a sacrament by Jesus
      • Originally God designed marriage. When Jesus came, He elevated marriage to the level of a sacrament. A sacrament is a sign instituted by Christ to impart grace.
      • In Eph 5 (read it!) we read that the sacrament of marriage is an efficacious sign of the marriage of Christ with the Church. “This is a great foreshadowing (this word can also be translated “sacrament”), and I mean that it refers to Christ and the Church.”
      • This means that marriage is a participation in the bond (which is the New Covenant) that Christ established with the Church (“the bride of Christ”) when He gave up His body for us on the cross.
      • The bond of Christ with the Church is the glue that holds marriage together, so in order to understand marriage, we must understand what this bond of Christ with the Church is like
    4. The bond that Jesus established on the cross with His bride the Church
      • It has four main aspects (these are just like the four main aspects of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’s love for one another in the Trinity because Jesus came to reveal “the love of the Father”, and He did this most of all on the cross, which the Church calls, “the highpoint of revelation.”)
      • This bond was established through a gift of self that is:
        • Full: meaning that Christ actually died for us, He gave all that He had to give us, He held nothing back
        • Free: Christ said that no one takes His life from Him, he lays it down freely. The Father did in no way coerce Jesus to suffer and die for us
        • Faithful: Christ will remain with us until the end of time (and beyond!) and He Himself stated. We can see the tangible proof of this in the Eucharist, in which He remains with us in His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. Christ will never, never, forsake His bride, the Church, us!
        • Fruitful: Christ’s death on the cross bore the fruit not only of the sending of the Holy Spirit (‘unless I die, I cannot send the Spirit…’) but also the fruit of many many children of God, which is us. When we are baptized we become, as the letter of John in the Bible states, “the children of God.”
    5. “Marriage” (true marriage) is a participation in this same bond
      • In order to be truly married in the Church, one must intend to enter into marriage, which means that one must intend to enter into a gift of self that is full, free, faithful, and fruitful. Otherwise, you enter into some kind of a partnership, a contract as it were, but not into sacramental marriage, not into a participation in the love of Christ for the church which is the glue of the spouses.
      • Since many people have weddings in Catholic Churches but do not intend to actually enter into marriage (perhaps they never intend to be fruitful by having children), they may have had a nice ceremony, but they are not married. Lacking the glue, many times these partnerships fall apart and later the Church, through careful research, finds that there was no marriage there in the first place. The ceremony is declared null and void through a process known as annulment.
      • From the discussion of full, free, faithful, fruitful, we can see why the Church teaches as it does regarding the laws of marriage. For example:
        • Same sex unions can not bear the fruit of children, thus they are not a participation in the marriage bond of Christ with the Church any more than the “union” of a heterosexual couple who plans to contracept. They are a certain kind of (disordered) partnership, but to call them “marriage” is like calling an apple and orange
        • That since sex is a part of the marriage covenant (Jesus’ gift of Himself to us in the words of the institution of the Eucharist were not complete until he actually gave up His body for us on the cross, when He says, “It is finished.”), it is sacramental. This means that each time married couples have sex, grace comes down to earth. This is why the Pope encourages married couple to have sex often.
        • Couples should be prudent and generous in having children whom they bear not only physically but spiritually as well. Natural Family Planning (not the Rhythm Method) is 99.8% effective and makes it possible for couples to be entering into the covenantal bond, while contraception is by definition not open to life and therefore is against the fruitfulness required by the covenant.
        • Living together before marriage is prohibited because not only does it set a terrible example for other people (who generally assume the couple is sleeping together) but it also creates psychological, financial, and/or physical dependency between the couple that makes them unable to be free to say no, and therefore unable to enter freely into the marriage covenant. This is borne out by the statistic that over 75% of couple who live together before marriage get a divorce.
        • Remarriage is impossible, as Jesus tell us, because you are forever joined to your spouse through the bond of Christ with the Church. The only way it will fall apart is if Jesus decided He doesn’t love us anymore, which He has already assured us will not happen.
  3. Resources for Marriage
    1. Marriage makes one more like God and this is why the Church calls it a path to holiness, a vocation that God calls certain people to live. It is, as Vatican II called it, “A consecration to love.” Just as much as priests and nuns are consecrated and called to their vocations, married people are as well.
    2. The point of marriage is to increase the kingdom of God. To make you holier so you get to heaven and it is your responsibility to get your spouse and children there as well.
    3. When you add to these lofty goals the fact that Satan desires to destroy marriage since it is a powerful means of God’s grace for the building up of the kingdom, you can see that married people need lots of help in living out their vocation.
    4. There are three main ways to attain this help:
      • Prayer: Praying apart and together, in meditation and vocal prayers, attending the sacraments of Eucharist and Reconciliation often, and having holy sex frequently are all necessary helps offered to married people in living their vocation
      • Study: Learn about marriage at the natural level: Author Gregory Popcak is a Catholic marriage counselor who has great books out on marriage. Learn about marriage at the supernatural level: read about married saints such as St. Elizabeth of Hungary, Sts. Mary and Joseph, or from our own era, Blessed Luigi and Maria. Read the letters/encyclicals from the Pope regarding marriage, esp. Familiaris Consortio, Casti Conubii, Evangelium Vitae, the Letter to Families, Gaudium et Spes and Lumen Gentium (documents of Vatican II) or the Theology of the Body, Simplified version by Msgr. Vincent M Walsh (available online at www.giftfoundation.org). Read Christopher West’s book Good News about Sex and Marriage, a very easy to read Q and A book.
      • Practice making the gift of self on a daily basis that is full, free, faithful, and fruitful through virtuous works. Learn about and try to practice the virtues.


Annie Vining can be contacted at avining@tobet.org

The Theology of the Body Evangelization Team can be reached at info@tobet.org
 

© 2005
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