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

The Sacrament of Matrimony: The Effects

The Sacrament of Matrimony: The Effects

                Okay, so you know you are called to the vocation of the married life, you’ve chosen your spouse wisely and you have had the wedding.  Did you ever stop to think just what the effects of that simple Nuptial Mass are?  What happens when two Catholics are sacramentally married?

There are several things that happen.  The first thing is that a covenant is enacted.  This covenant is between the husband and his wife and it mirrors the covenant of Christ with his Bride, the Church.  “The covenant between the spouses is integrated into God’s covenant with man: ‘Authentic married love is caught up into divine love’” (CCC 1639) 

A covenant is not like a contract.  In a contract, goods and services are exchanged between parties.  It’s a “you do for me and I will do for you” arrangement.  I do a certain job, and you agree to pay me the wage we have agreed on.  In a covenant, it is an exchange of people.  We see this most clearly with Moses and the Israelites, “You will be my people and I will be your God.” 

In marriage the covenant is similar.  The husband and wife covenant with each other to love each other “for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, until death us do part.”  In other words, it is an exchange of persons, which is why sometimes marriage is referred to as the “marriage covenant”.

The faithful living out of this covenant reflects Christ’s covenant with his Church to the world.  Through the married couple, the sacrificial love of Jesus is shown in an everyday sort of way both to our families and to those around us.  It reminds the world of the One who promises to always be with us and support us in our sickness and our health, when we have plenty and when we are in need, when things are good and when things are bad, for all of eternity.

Another thing that happens when two people are sacramentally married is that they are given supernatural grace to live together faithfully.  This grace strengthens their love, and causes it to grow ever deeper.  Ask any bride or groom if they love their new spouse with all of their heart on their wedding day and the answer will invariably be “yes”.  Ask the same couple thirty years later, and if they have faithfully lived their covenant, the answer will still be “yes”, but the love won’t be the same.  It will be stronger, deeper and more perfect than it was when they were first married.  That’s because they have weathered the storms of life together and they have grown and matured both as people and as a couple.  Our Christian faith journey is the same.  The more we grow in faith, the longer we walk with God, the more we come to know Jesus as he really is, the deeper our love and commitment to him.

As a couple grows in their love, that indissoluble bond strengthens.  When a couple marries knowing the marriage isn’t just “for now” but truly is “until death do us part”, when they are committed to that to the point that it is determined, even before they walk down the aisle that divorce is never, can never, be an option, that indissoluble bond is formed.  Right from the beginning.

How does a couple receive this grace?  Christ is the source.  As in everything else, it is only through Jesus Christ that any couple can manage to have a marriage that lasts a lifetime.  That is why receiving the Eucharist is such an important part of a Catholic wedding.  In receiving the Eucharist, the bride and the groom receive into themselves the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus.  They receive the fullness of his grace.  Enough grace to make them individually great saints, just from that single host.  (Thanks Fr. Parks for the contribution to today’s blog.)  And if they receive enough grace to become great saints, they definitely receive enough grace to have a marriage that lasts.  Every time they receive the Eucharist, they receive it all over again.  Maybe that’s why the great saints, both married and single, went to Mass every day.

“How can I ever express the happiness of a marriage joined by the Church, strengthened by an offering, sealed by a blessing, announced by angels, and ratified by the Father?...How wonderful the bond between two believers, now one in hope, one in desire, one in discipline, one in the save service!  They are both children of one Father and servants of the same Master, undivided in spirit and flesh, truly two in one flesh.  Where the flesh is one, one also is the spirit.”  (CCC 1642)