What Are You Looking For? Part 2: The Liturgy and the Sacraments

The Sacrament of Matrimony: Let's Get Married

The Sacrament of Matrimony: Let’s Get Married

            Once you have decided that you are called to the vocation of marriage, which is determined by asking God if you are called to the vocation of marriage, it’s time to begin to be open to finding your bride, or groom.  If you are a faithful Catholic, there is one thing you should expect your future spouse to be.  They should be a faithful Catholic as well.  Not just a Christian, but a Catholic Christian specifically.

 If you have been reading these blogs, or read the Catechism, or learned your faith, then you have come to see (hopefully) that there are some pretty big differences between the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant traditions.  And (hopefully) you have come to see that the differences matter, especially when you are looking at spending the rest of your life with someone.  For example, if you marry a Protestant and you begin going to a Protestant church, you trade sacraments for symbols.  You trade the body, blood, soul and divinity really present in the Eucharist for…bread and grape juice.  You lose the Sacrament of Reconciliation for the absolution of mortal sins.  In short, because you know differently, you are expected by God to live differently.

For any Christian, Catholic or not, you also have the right to expect certain things from your potential spouse.  You have the right to expect them to be a Christian, and to believe as you do.  You have the right to expect them to be a virgin.  Just as they have the right to expect you to be one.  I know that’s not popular in today’s world, but it is the way God intended it to be.  And there is a reason he intended it to be that way.

When most people think of a marriage they think of the church, the gown, the cake, the food, in short they think of the wedding.  Not the marriage.  “In the Latin Rite (the Roman Catholic Church) the celebration of marriage between two Catholic faithful normally takes place during Holy Mass, because of the connection of all the sacraments with the paschal mystery of Christ…It is therefore fitting that the spouses should seal their consent to give themselves to each other through the offering of their own lives by uniting it to the offering of Christ for his Church made present in the Eucharistic sacrifice, and by receiving the Eucharist so that, communicating in the Same Body and the same Blood of Christ, they may form but ‘one body’ in Christ.” (CCC 1621)

The entire vocation of marriage is summed up in one phrase: “the spouses should seal their consent to give themselves to each other through the offering of their own lives…”  That is what marriage is.  It is the offering of your own life to another.  Because of this, a valid, sacramental marriage can never be coerced.  A shot-gun marriage isn’t a sacramental marriage; unless both are willing to be married.  Of course, since both should be virgins, the shot-gun becomes unnecessary.  “The consent must be an act of the will of each of the contracting parties, free of coercion or grave external fear.” (CCC 1638)

Because the bride and the groom are the ones performing the sacrament, they should go to confession before they get married.  This makes the Sacrament of Matrimony unique.  Not because the couple should go to reconciliation before receiving the sacrament, but because the bride receives the Sacrament of Matrimony from her groom and the groom receives it from his bride.  They “mutually confer upon each other the sacrament of Matrimony by expressing their consent before the Church.”  The priest is there to give the Eucharist to the couple as well as to ask for God’s grace and blessing on them.  He also asks the Holy Spirit to descend on the couple (epiclesis) to seal their covenant.  From that day forward, the Holy Spirit will give the couple the strength to weather all of life’s storms and to continue to live and love every day in faithfulness, mirroring Christ’s love for his Bride.

Marriage is so much more than dresses, and cake and flowers.  A wedding is so much more than those things.  A wedding is the beginning of the covenant between one man and one woman to offer their own lives to the other, “’til death do us part.”