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In Revelation is a vision of the Church as the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven as Christ’s Bride. Marriage is the Sacrament that expresses this spousal love of Christ for his Church. Jesus consecrates human love, transforming it into Christian love, by which he wants his followers to be known. There is a great crisis in the Church today. Christians have lost the vision of Revelation which roots marriage in the divine love of Christ, and have reduced it back to a merely human institution, built solely upon the decision of the couple. All cultures have marriages, but in Christianity it is no longer just a human institution. As a human institution it is true that two people “decide” to get married. But as a Sacrament of the Church, marriage is a decision and action of God; it is a particular presence of the risen Christ in the life of the Church. As a Sacrament, the couple’s marriage is not their property: it belongs to Christ and the Church. The Sacrament is entrusted to the couple who are its ministers or stewards. The Sacrament of Matrimony exists only within the Church, for the glory of God, and His Kingdom. Marriage is not first what we decide we will do with our lives. Instead, it is the response to serve God in a path He calls us to. Christians are not free to do as we please with our lives; we belong to God! St. Paul teaches: “You are not your own; you have been purchased at a price! Therefore glorify God in your bodies [and your lives]” (1 Cor 6:19-20). Because of our baptismal consecration, which sets us apart for God, we approach life decisions differently from the pagans. What happens when two Christians get married, as opposed to two non-Christians? When a Christian man and woman join their lives together at God’s altar, they are no longer just a man and woman in love with each other. By means of their vows, God creates something bigger than them: a new reality, an “efficacious sign of the covenant between Christ and his Church” (Catechism 1617). God creates a living symbol of Christ’s unbreakable love. What God has joined therefore, man cannot break (Mt 19:6). If a man and woman freely vow their lives to each other with the Church’s blessing, the Sacrament exists and will exist until one of them dies. God is the author of this reality, and its validity is not dependent on the perfection or holiness of the couple, only their original free consent. Once joined in marriage, the couple can never go back to being ordinary people free to do something else with their lives. From that moment, their lives are permanently at the service of Christ and the Church. God instituted this Sacrament to manifest the divine love of Jesus Christ through human lives, and His love is fruitful of communion: fruitful of persons. At the summit of creation’s beauty is the relationship of Adam and Eve. Creation is completed at the moment God blesses their love: “be fruitful and multiply.” God’s plan for creation and human love in marriage is to bring forth children. By means of loving union, God expands the human family, pro-creating new persons through human activity. Love does not close in on itself, but expands always outward to embrace new life. It’s strange to have to say such a basic truth from the pulpit. The Sacrament of Marriage, by its nature, is ordered to having and raising children. In this, God is glorified. This is the great “service” of marriage, which our selfish modern contraceptive mentality fails to grasp. But marriage is not just about “having children,” it is about raising them correctly, in God’s grace. It is serious and sacred duty, work. Every wedding is a commissioning of disciples by Jesus, a sending out of his followers two-by-two into the neighbourhoods out there, into a home, to evangelize and bring the peace of God’s Kingdom to the family who lives in that home: to the disciples’ own children and relatives (Lk 10). Matrimony makes the family a domestic Church. It is an awesome responsibility to be a Christian parent empowered with Christ’s authority. It is a joy in Christian marriage to receive one’s spouse not just as “someone I love,” but as a companion given by the Lord to help do His work together. It is a totally different motivation for serving your spouse and family, when you realize it is Christ and the Church you are thereby serving. Marriage is the most difficult of all the Sacraments to celebrate. Unlike others, Jesus does not use a simple material such as bread and wine, water, or oil. For this sacrament, he uses people for the material: two human beings, with all of their complexities and circumstances, gifts and faults. Marriage and family life are the summit of creation, so it is no surprise that original sin has injured our human nature very deeply in this area. Marriage and family life are a great struggle made all the more difficult by sin. We see this struggle in trying to provide for and raise children, in the area of sexuality, and in remaining faithful to commitment. That was the immediate punishment of sin: pain in childbirth, toil & labor in providing for one’s family. Divorce, adultery, and polygamy have always been weaknesses even for great people of the Bible seeking to follow God’s covenant. Today we are also strongly tempted by the poisonous contraceptive mentality: the false promise of an “easy way out” of the difficult task of having and raising more children. As if our inclination to sin isn’t enough, we have society encouraging the very behaviors which undermine marriage. We are taught that sexuality has no necessary connection either to children, or to marriage. Consequently it is very difficult to prepare correctly for marriage in this society. We are like the family of Abraham’s nephew Lot, living in the cesspool of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gn 19), trying to follow God but heavily influenced by the paganism all around them. Jesus is aware of this struggle, but is firm about the sanctity of marriage and returning to the way God created us in the beginning (Mt 19): “He who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery.” Also the Letter to the Hebrews: “Let marriage be held in honor among you, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the immoral and adulterous” (Hb 13:4). Christians are called to a new and higher kind of love, one that is ready to face the weaknesses of human nature, and not succumb to them. This is why he says it will be our love that we will be known for his followers, because Christians have a higher standard of love. Jesus does not fail us. To signal himself as the Bridegroom come for his Bride, Jesus performs his first miracle at a wedding, bringing an abundance of new wine and joy (Jn 2) where humans are weak and fail. The Sacrament of Marriage includes the graces and miracles needed to face and overcome the difficulties of life, especially our inability to provide our own wine, “happiness.” At the end of the Bible (Rv 21), marriage once again expresses the fullness of Christ’s New Creation. The end of the world is actually the wedding celebration of Christ the Lamb with his holy and immaculate bride, the Church. Let us pray for and encourage each other to continue faithful in marriage, opposing the selfishness and quick-fix approach to life of this society. Let us also help young adults prepare well for marriage, because they are being taught the worst possible habits by our pagan society, which betrays them and the original dignity of our creation. We must not tolerate the behaviors that undermine marriage and cause such great suffering for the human family. Above all, let us fulfill what Jesus asks at the Last Supper: “Such as my love has been for you, so must your love be for each other.” We are Christians, and our approach to love and marriage is very different, supernatural. Marriage is the beautiful sacrament by which mere human beings give expression to the faithful, life-giving, sacrificial love of Jesus himself. Jesus says, “they will know you for my followers by your love for one another,” Love which begins in marriage and family; love which is open to children; love which is faithful till death; love which directs children in the ways of God. May God bless and assist us to be faithful. Appendix: Sins against Marriage “You shall not commit Adultery.” Adultery is a terrible and unthinkable sin for a Christian. To break one’s marriage vow or compromise another’s marriage vow is to desecrate a Sacrament. You cannot go to heaven and be with God while guilty of this sin. Adultery is a fundamental violation of baptismal consecration, which we are called to live out through marital fidelity. A similar rejection of baptismal grace is the sin of Fornication (sex outside marriage). It denies that our bodies and lives are consecrated to God, and it is also a sin against one’s future marriage. Fornication prevents a couple from preparing properly for marriage, undermining the very commitment they will need to make. Another crisis and misunderstanding of this Sacrament is the widespread practice of Cohabiting, and marrying “outside the Church.” It’s like saying, “in everything I’m a Christian, but when it comes to my married life I am still a pre-Christian and not subject to Christ.” For a Catholic to marry without the Church’s blessing is not to marry at all, and also to give scandal. Divorce, freely chosen, is a devasting sin by which a spouse abandons family and children. Fidelity to one’s calling and obedience to its demands are a sacred moral obligation. Even in difficult circumstances where temporary or permanent separation might be a necessity, remarriage is not an option because civil divorce does not end a Sacrament. There are situations where a marriage never was a valid sacrament from the beginning, and in such cases a formal investigation can be made by the Church tribunal and a “decree of nullity” issued based on corroborated evidence that something essential was missing (for instance, marriage under duress, inebriation while giving consent, emotional or psychological disorder that prevented free consent, etc). But a decree of nullity (Annulment) is not the same as divorce, which claims to end a marriage. If a decree of nullity is secured through lack of honesty or manipulation, it does not undo a valid marriage. The attempt to redefine sexuality as something with no reference to marital fidelity and children, is gravely sinful. Thus, the practice of Contraception or sterilization – any deliberate attempt to destroy the natural fertility of sexual relations – is a direct violation of the Sacrament of Marriage and God’s original blessing to be fruitful and multiply. Of course, any attempt to legitimize unnatural Homosexual relationships would be seriously sinful. In fact, this is an extreme embodiment of pagan immorality and a rejection of God. In addition to the classical story of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gn 19), St. Paul speaks pretty bluntly about these things in Romans 1. Such activities are an insult and direct affront to the Creator and His plan for marriage. It may be true that not all are called to marriage, but this does not give license to rewrite human nature and the meaning of marriage. Those not called to marriage are still called to respect it, live chastely, and give glory to God in other ways. 
  
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