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ARCHBISHOP BELTRAN

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June 28, 2009

The Good News...

           ...Marriage is a Sacrament

The  cultural  attitude  toward  marriage has deteriorated more and more in recent years.  Not only has the sacredness and holiness of marriage been cast aside, but even the literal meaning of the word “marriage” has been debased.

The Church from its very inception has acknowledged the natural bond of marriage as divinely insti-tuted. Moreover, Jesus elevated that bond to a sacrament. Clearly the Church teaches that marriage is a sacred bond between a  man and a woman. When this bond is validly shared by two baptized people, it is a sacrament.

Traditionally, June is the month when many weddings are celebrated.  Therefore, I thought it opportune to quote a short passage from the USCCB document on married love.

MARRIED LOVE AND THE GIFT OF LIFE

Getting married. What a blessed and hope-filled time.

Men and women considering  marriage yearn for certain things. They want to be accepted unconditionally by each other. They want their marriage to be filled with love and happiness. They want a family. In short, they want their marriage to be a source of joy and fulfillment their whole life long.

God’s plan for marriage, from the time he first created human beings as male and female, has always included all this and more. The desire and  ability of a man and woman to form  a lasting bond of love and life in  marriage are written into their nature.

In the Rite of Marriage (1969), a man and woman are asked if they  will love one another faithfully and totally — in short, if they will love as God loves. “Have you come here freely and without reservation to give yourselves to each other in marriage?” asks the bishop, priest, or deacon.

“Will you love and honor each other as man and wife for the rest of your lives?

“Will you accept children lovingly from God, and bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church?” These are different ways of asking the same basic question: Are you ready to accept this person, and all that may come from your union, completely and forever?

The spouses seal their love and commitment through their sexual union. Many today find it difficult to understand how profound and meaningful this union is, how it embodies these promises of marriage. Our  culture often presents sex as merely recreational, not as a deeply personal or even important encounter between spouses. In this view, being responsible about sex simply means limiting its consequences — avoiding disease and using contraceptives to prevent pregnancy.

This cultural view is impoverished, even sad. It fails to account for the true needs and deepest desires of men and women. Living in accord with this view has caused much loneliness and many broken hearts.

God’s plan for married life and love is far richer and more fulfilling. Here sexuality is the source of a joy and pleasure that helps the spouses give themselves to each other completely and for their entire lives.

What does the Church teach about married love?

Marriage is more than a civil contract; it is a lifelong covenant of love between a man and a woman. It is an intimate partnership in which husbands and wives learn to give and receive love unselfishly, and then teach their children to do so as well. Christian marriage in particular is a “great mystery,” a sign of the love between Christ and his Church. (Eph 5:32).

Married love is powerfully em-bodied in the spouses’ sexual relationship, when they most fully express what it means to become “one body” (Gn 2:24) or “one flesh.” (Mk 10:8, Mt 19:6). The Church teaches that the sexual union of husband and wife is meant to express the full meaning of love, its power to bind a couple together and its openness to new life. When Scripture portrays God creating mankind “in his image,” (Gn 1:27), it treats the union of man and  woman as joining two persons equal in human dignity (“This one, at last, is bone of my bones/and flesh of my flesh,” (Gn 2:23), and as being open to the blessing of children (“Be fertile and multiply.” (Gn 1:28).

Married love differs from any other love in the world. By its nature, the love of husband and wife is so complete, so ordered to a lifetime of communion with God and each other, that it is open to creating a new human being they will love and care for together. Part of God’s gift to husband and wife is this ability in and through their love to cooperate with God’s creative power. Therefore, the mutual gift of fertility is an in-tegral part of the bonding power of marital intercourse. That power to create a new life with God is at the heart of what spouses share with each other.

To be sure, spouses who are not granted the gift of children can have a married life that is filled with love and meaning. As Pope John Paul II said to these couples in a 1982  homily, “You are no less loved by God; your love for each other is complete and fruitful when it is open to others, to the needs of the apostolate, to the needs of the poor, to the needs of orphans, to the needs of the world.