Class notes Matrimony formation class #3

Sacrament of Holy Matrimony

When God created Adam and Eve, He instituted Marriage. 

• Marriage is the complete and mutual gift of self to another person, body and soul, leading to a union of persons

• Complete: everything the person is and has
• Mutual: each to each; it cannot be one-sided or that would destroy the intended union of persons
• Because body and soul, can only be a man and a woman: their bodies are made for union, welcome the union, and bring forth new persons through that union of human persons
• It is a gift: that is, it must be freely offered and freely accepted by each spouse

• The union must be, then:

• Free-  Love that is not free is not love. Something that is stolen or coerced is not a gift. 
• Faithful- When you give someone a gift, you can’t decide later on that you want it back. Once you have handed someone a gift and said, “here, this is yours” you can’t snatch the present away, even if you are angry and upset. Marriage is the complete gift of oneself.  Once you give yourself away, you cannot take your self back, or give yourself to somebody else, because you are no longer your own. Marriage must be between only one man and only one woman for that reason. It is exclusive and permanent. The special gift and love in a marriage cannot be shared. It cannot be given for only for a period of time, or it is not a gift at all.  
• Entire- This union is not the gift of only part of yourself, but the gift of the entire body-and-soul human person. There must be nothing that is held back, nothing that is kept from the other, because that would destroy the perfection of the gift and the union.
• Fruitful-  If a marriage is not open to life, to having children and becoming a physical father and mother, it is not an entire gift. A marriage that is afraid of new life, that wants to control how much new life comes into being through their love is being stingy with their love. It destroys the union because it keeps back part of themselves, their fertility and ability to create new life. 

• Sexuality is an important part of this complete gift, because we are creatures of body and soul

• Sex (marital embrace, marital union) has a dignity, a purpose, and a meaning; it is neither dirty and shameful, nor merely about entertainment
• It completes the gift of self, by sharing oneself in an exclusive way: there is a language of the body, which is a full expression of the love that is meant to be present between husband and wife

• Therefore, the misuse of sexuality is to tell a lie with the body
• It is not the only expression of married love nor its foundation, but it confirms and completes the complete gift of self

• The fact of a Love Language of the Body not simply a romantic idea, but something very real 

• A large part of any communication is non-verbal
• Human beings have a real need for the touch of another (john Hopkins orphans)
• Giving one’s heart is a romantic idea, giving of seed and body is real and completes (Burke)

“Affection is not an urge to consume.” L&R 110

• Love cannot be separated from life

• Primary purpose of sex and marriage is to bring new persons into existence who are meant to be with God for all eternity
• The love of a man and woman is not just between themselves, but with God: they are the means through which He creates
• Since the human person was made to love and to be loved, every person was meant to begin their existence because of love, through of the love of their father and their mother. 
• The husband makes his wife have the new dignity of motherhood, and the wife gives her husband the new honor of fatherhood

• Marriage has two inseparable goods:

• Children, who need instruction, and guidance
• Good of spouses: help each other and support each other, love and be loved

• Builds up society
• It is school of love: learning how to be unselfish, because of other and because of children; Learning how to be unselfish in marriage begins with someone that it is easy to serve, someone that they are attracted to. But the love in marriage is meant to go beyond simple attraction and emotion, and to become a choice to serve and to love even without the help that the emotion gives. Love is more than an emotion. A man who is on a honeymoon with his wife is still in love even if he gets seasick and stops thinking about her. 

A Note On Celibacy

     If Marriage is such a good and holy thing, do priests and nuns close themselves off from an important part of being a human being? Does a priest or a nun have to deny their masculinity or femininity?

     The answer is no. We will give three reasons. 

• Sex is the physical expression where one human person gives him or herself completely and exclusively to their husband or wife to generate new life and a deeper union. The vow of celibacy or virginity is not simply a denial of one’s gender or a way to refuse to give oneself. Celibacy is giving oneself body-and-soul in another way.  It is giving oneself completely and exclusively to God. It says that one belongs to God so completely and exclusively that one cannot give oneself body-and-soul to a human person. This requires a special calling and Grace. 
• Priests and religious sisters are still Fathers and Mothers. There union with God by their vows of celibacy and virginity is for the purpose of generating spiritual life in other people. Their vows and union with God allow them to have a true spiritual Father and Motherhood.
• The vows point to Heaven where the human body will acquire new glory. Here on earth we are asked to help God create new life through the physical embrace of husband and wife. After the Resurrection, there will not be any more people being created. This does not destroy the body or it’s meaning, or destroy any earthly friendship.  Rather, it means that body-and-soul person will be transformed. Here on earth, our bodies change and develop until we are able to give ourselves to another person for the purpose of new life; in Heaven they will be developed and changed again for a different kind of union with God.  

• Grace builds on nature. During His earthly life, Jesus took the union of a natural marriage and elevated it into a Sacrament. As good as a natural marriage is, the marriage that is a Sacrament is incomparably better. It contains everything good that a natural marriage is and has, but gives it a new meaning and a new life. Every good part, every gift and pleasure is elevated and transformed by the Grace of God.  

• God blesses and makes it become not simply a union of their own efforts, but in and through Him, with His Strength and Grace. 

• What is a Sacrament?

• The classical definition of a Sacrament is this: “A Sacrament is an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace.” (Baltimore Catechism 3, no. 13, q. Sign
• A sign is a thing which points to something beyond itself. What it means – what it actually is – is not just the thing in front of us, but also something more.

• A stop sign doesn’t cause the traffic to stop, but simply says they should. It points out something a driver should follow to be safe. 

Outward sign

• The Sacrament is something we can see and touch and feel. It not only gives something to our souls, but it points to what is happening in our souls invisibly. The sign shows us what God is doing, pointing to something beyond itself. Thus, in Baptism, where a person is washed with water while the Name of the Trinity in Three Persons is invoked, the meaning, what’s really going on, isn’t simply that somebody is being washed while the Trinity is mentioned. 

Effective sign

• Unlike a stop sign or smoke, the Sacrament doesn’t merely point out something to us – in this case, grace. It actually causes it to occur. The visible part of the Sacrament shows and explains the other, invisible part. But more than that: by the power of God it causes the invisible grace. 

• The outward sign of a Sacrament is something like the flame of a candle: the flame shows us that there is heat, and causes the air to be hot; or like the muscles of a weightlifter, showing and causing his strength. 

Instituted by Christ

• Christ gave us the seven Sacraments. There are no more and no less. He gave us what is most important in each Sacrament and taught the Apostles what they meant and what they did. They are from Jesus, and they are the ordinary means of our salvation. Because they were given to us by Jesus, the Sacraments cannot be added to by the Church, not can anything important be taken away. 

• However, Jesus allowed the Apostles to add ceremonies to the Sacraments, to adorn them and to add words and actions which explain and clarify what is actually taking place. He allowed them to decide where and when they could be celebrated.

To give grace

• The Sacraments are the ordinary means that God unites man to Himself. Each of the seven Sacrament is given to bring man to Himself in a particular way and at a particular moment in each person’s life. The Sacrament gives us two kinds of Grace:

• Sanctifying Grace or an increase of it. It  makes us holy and pleasing to Him. It is this that makes us His adopted sons. 
• We are also given a special grace particular to that Sacrament, a Sacramental Grace, allowing the purpose of the Sacrament to take place. For example, the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony not only increases Sanctifying Grace when received correctly, but it also gives the couple the graces they need to live out their married lives in a holy manner, pleasing to God.

Bound together before God

The Sacrament of Marriage means that a man and a woman give themselves to each other, completely and freely. They give themselves to each other by their wedding vows, deliberately handing themselves over to each other, not simply before their families and the society, but before the eyes of God. 

The gift comes from their own will, but its strength, permanence and beauty come from God. “Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate.” (Matthew 19:6) 

A sacramental marriage is not simply a human action; it is an act of praise and worship of God. It is a religious action. It is the gift of a man to a woman, and of a woman to a man, but done to praise and glorify God.  The very act of marrying begins to fulfill the vocation of man in a special way: it unites man to God, it unites human persons to each other, and it blesses the physical world, because it is in the physical world that God has been honored and glorified. 

This gives the promises a special beauty and solemnity, while losing nothing of the goodness that a natural marriage has. The promises of marriage are not simply made to each other or to some human society, but they are made to God. They are promises of love for each other because God has wanted it. They are promises before God, for the sake of God, given to God Himself as an action of religious honor, praising and glorifying God.

Union in Christ

The union of a husband and wife in Sacramental marriage flows from the Union of each to Jesus in their Baptism. 

• When the man and the woman were baptized they were joined to God Himself, becoming members of the Body of Christ. They received Life from Him, they became able to do actions that were supernaturally pleasing to God. Because of the grace given to them by their Union to Jesus they were able to make daily life supernaturally pleasing to God, glorifying Him in everything they did. They were able to offer every part of their lives as sacrifice, joining it to the One Perfect Sacrifice of the Cross. 
• But Baptism doesn’t simply unite man to God, but it also unites all the baptized together. “[W]e, though many, are one body in Christ and individually parts of one another.” (Romans 12:5) This union is made special and deeper in marriage, but it can only become that way because a man and a woman were first united to Jesus. 
• Their marriage is therefore a mutual union in service to God. It gives the husband and a wife a new office, a new task, in the Mystical Body of Christ. Before their Marriage they possessed one job, after their Marriage they have another task they are asked to do for God.  
• Before his marriage the man is meant to stand before God out of love, and ask God where He wishes him to serve and to love Him. In marriage, God points out the woman and tells the man to serve and love Him by taking care of this woman. He gave the man his wife to care, honor, and to help God bring to Heaven. Then, he is supposed to care and raise the children that God gives him through his wife. That is the way the married man is asked to serve and love God. And before her marriage the woman is meant to ask God where God wishes her to be, how she is supposed to serve and love God. If she is to be married God points out the man and tells her to serve Him by caring and respecting her husband, helping God bring him to Heaven. Then, she is supposed to care and raise the children God gives her through her husband. That is way the married woman is asked to serve and love God. 

But this union to each other in Christ must be 

• Free
• Faithful 
• Fruitful
• Entire 

This is not simply because they love each other and makes vows to each other, but also because they love God and have made the vow to Him. 

Sacrament flows from the Cross

Marriage is Sacrament for the Baptized. That means that it is not simply a good gift for mutual support and help, but that it is a means of 

• Grace
• supernatural Life

and 

• a path to Holiness. 

• The Sacrament of Marriage brings the couple in their union closer to God. It makes them pleasing to Him in a new way. It then gives the couple all of the graces they need to live out their married life and raise their children. Of course, the husband and wife have to use the graces offered to them. 
• Every Sacrament flows from the Cross, hands on the Grace won by Jesus through something we can see, and hear, and touch. The Sacrament of Marriage is not simply a union and love forged by two weak human hearts and wills: it is a permanent bond created by God. It is a union given by God. It is Grace won by God by His death. 

Every Sacrament makes real what it signifies 

The Sacrament signifies a union with Christ and with each other for the purpose of raising children, and in that, the holiness and good of the husband and wife. 

• The Sacrament signifies this special Union with Christ, and with each other in Christ, and so really causes it to exist. 
• This is one reason why married couples should go to Holy Communion – the Sacrament of Union – to help them receive the Graces of Marriage fruitfully.

• The matter and form of the Sacrament is the acts of the Married couple, their mutual exchange of themselves in their wedding vows. In their vows they promise to give themselves as husband and wife to each other. This promise takes place before the Church, especially before the priest who represents God Himself. 
• Once the vow has been consummated – once they have given themselves to each other in the physical embrace of married love, expressing in a bodily way what they have sworn with their mouths and wills – the marriage can never be dissolved. No earthly power, or even any power in the Church, even the Pope himself can make them no longer married. 

(Before their marriage has been consummated, the Pope may dissolve the marriage, but no other authority can. Since they have made a vow before God, they would have to be released from their vow by God’s chief representative.) 

• The Ministers of the Sacrament are the husband and wife themselves. The husband is the means through which God gives Grace to his wife, and the wife is the means through which God gives Grace to her husband. Ordinarily, in order to properly act as ministers of the Sacrament, they must promise themselves to each other before a priest. This makes the meaning of the Sacrament – their union with each other in Christ – clearer and more explicit. 
• Every Sacrament points to Grace and gives those who receive it new life. Marriage is a “Sacrament of the living”, meaning that it must be received in the state of Grace to be good and fruitful. It does not restore a union lost by sin, but it is meant to perfect the union with Christ through each other. If someone is married when they are in mortal sin, the Sacrament is valid, though illicit. They really do get married, but they do not receive any grace. It is a marriage, but not to their spiritual benefit. Once they go to Confession the graces they would have gotten in their Marriage are given to them as well. This is one reason why couples about to married should first go to Confession. 
• The Sacrament of Marriage, when received properly, increases Sanctifying Grace in the souls of the husband and wife. It makes them more pleasing to God, more closely united to Him and more like Him. The good things they do become that much more pleasing to Him, because they are that much more “supernaturalized”.  
• Marriage also imparts special Sacramental Graces to the husband and the wife. It sanctifies their love, making it less for natural reasons and more true supernatural charity, it helps them to bear with each other’s faults, and it helps them raise and train their children in the right way. 

Sex in a Sacramental Marriage

The sexual union of a husband and wife is the bodily part of their vow. It makes their vows lived out and completely permanent. It is the most complete expression of it since it involves the body as well as the soul.

• Originally, in the Garden, Adam and Eve were created in grace. They did not receive grace through physical Sacraments, but grew in Grace and Union with God through deliberate acts of love for God – whether prayers, or work for His sake.
• The bodily union of husband and wife was meant to be a religious act, since it was meant to be the action of holy people done out of love for God through each other. If Adam hadn’t sinned, the union itself would have caused an increase in Grace since it was an act of love for each other, created new life for God, and was done out of love for each other because they loved God.  
• Their children were originally meant to receive friendship and union with God not because of the Sacrament of baptism, but simply because they were the children of Adam and Eve. 
• The physical union of a husband and wife would not only have been the source of physical life for the baby, but also the source of supernatural friendship and union with God. 
• The Fall hurt the union of men and women in marriage, and cut it off from it’s supernatural heart – which was the strength and life of marriage. 
• The Sacrament of Marriage heals that particular area wounded by the Fall, making the union of husband and wife holy and good once again. (Baptism gives the soul the grace lost by original sin.)  Human sexuality is healed and blessed in a Sacramental marriage.
• Like any marriage, human sexuality in Sacramental Marriage has two inseparable ends or goods: the children God gives the husband and wife, and the good of the spouses. 

Children for Heaven

In their marriage the husband and wife give themselves body-and-soul to God through each other. The primary reason for this, out of which all other reasons flow, is to help God create new life.

• In their marriage, the husband and wife have consecrated their bodies to God. They have allowed themselves be the means through which God creates new souls to be joined to Him through His Church. 
• Their union isn’t simply for the creation of new human life, but new human life purposely consecrated to God. Because the husband and wife are members of the Church, they are promising to raise their children for Christ. They will make sure that their children receive the Sacraments they need for Heaven, and will help raise them not simply for this life, but for Eternal Life with God. 

Good of Spouses 

The second good of marriage, which is inseparable from the good of children, is the good of the spouses, their union to each other. 

• Living together as husband and wife in Christ, a man and a women offer each other mutual support and help. But this is not only in their daily lives, but also in their spiritual lives and their striving for Heaven and Eternal Happiness. 

• They pray together and for each other, and are meant to stand as beacons of grace and a source of grace for their spouses. 
• They advise and inspire each other, and work together for their children out of love for God and with the strength He provides. 
• They each give themselves to each other in Christ, and so the husband serves the wife and the wife serves her husband. 
• They help heal disordered concupiscence in their gift to each other and in their helping each other see the meaning and purpose of their union. 

• The establishment of marriage as a remedy for concupiscence does not mean that sinful thought or action become legitimate in a new context, or imply any use of the other, but it is rather that in marriage one exchanges a false desire for a true love. It is a cure for concupiscence, not by means of a mere outlet or release of sexual tension, but by means of a transformation of selfishness through a self-gift and a bond of union.

This allows them to become better and holier. Their weaknesses are healed and their virtues are awakened and kindled in their lives together. 

Image of the Church

Those who are married in the Church become images of the Church. Their union to each other takes on a special value and symbolism. Their marriage is so holy that is shows the love of Christ to the Church and the Church to Christ.  “ ‘For this reason a man shall leave [his] father and [his] mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church.” (Ephesians 5:31-32)

• Someone should be able to look at them, and at their love for each other and their children, and from that be able to understand a bit better the love and union of Jesus to the Church. 
• Their marriage is therefore 

• Permanent
• exclusive, and 
• Fruitful  in a special way.

 Since Jesus can never stop loving His Church, since He will never deny her or reject her – though some of her members might leave Him – the union of husband and wife in Christ takes on a share of that permanence. 

• It is especially exclusive, between one man and one woman, since Jesus formed only one Church. His Church is never unfaithful to Him as He is never unfaithful to her. The Sacramental marriage shares in the faithfulness. 
• The union of Jesus and His Catholic Church is permanant because it was made by God, and kept alive and free from error by the Strength of God Himself. “[Y]ou are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18) In the same way, especially since they are symbols of His union to His Church, He will give His Strength and His Grace to Sacramental marriages – if the couple chose to accept It. 
• The Church is also fruitful, constantly bringing new souls to life in God by the Sacraments. The Sacramental marriage should also be as fruitful as God wishes it to be, bearing children for the Church and for Heaven.   

Building up the Church

Every society has an interest in the marriage of its members, since the marriage provides children: building up and forming the society. The Church is a supernatural society, the union of God and man. The Sacramental Marriage builds up the Church in at least two ways.  

1) It provides new souls, the children, as new members. It helps them to grow up united to God, always receiving the Graces they need to serve and love God, and so Glorify Him.

2) It builds up the holiness of the spouses, making them better and more perfect members of the Church. 

School of Love

Holy Matrimony is then a special kind of school of love. It is training not simply to care for other people, but to care for other people out of love of Christ. It allows the couple to receive the Grace and love of Christ so that they are able to live out this life as best they can. 

• Marriage is meant for the holiness of the spouses, not simply their happiness. It was the path that God asked them to walk to Him, by helping their husband and wife to Heaven.

• One of the ways that modern society twists marriage is to say that it for the happiness of each particular spouse: in other words, that when times get difficult and one or the other is not happy, it’s no longer a marriage. But this understanding is completely shallow and shriveled.
• Yes, marriage helps people be happy. But because we live in a world that is wounded and is in need of healing, there will always be suffering until we are united to God in Heaven. Marriage is not simply about earthly pleasure, though God uses that as a sign to show us the goodness of marriage, but it is about Eternal Glory and Happiness. It is a place where a man and women learn to be holy, to be united to God – through each other. 

To ignore the permanence and the exclusiveness that a marriage is supposed to have, is to reject part of the love and the gift that it is supposed to be. 

Daily Life and Holiness

Marriage helps the husband and the wife to become holy in the ordinary, daily lives. It provides each person help to live their daily life, and help to live it in the way it is supposed to be lived, and for the reasons that God gave life to us. The married life is not irrelevant to holiness and union with God, and holiness and union with God is not irrelevant to living a good and beautiful married life. 

• Marriage is, of its very nature, a gift of oneself. Elevated and healed by the Sacrament, the gift becomes a holy thing, beautiful and pleasing to God. It is a way to live bodily the grace and love given by God, and a way to come closer and closer to God through daily, ordinary, bodily life, charged and enflamed with Grace. It occurs through another human being, through the transformation of human love.