Christ and Marriage

OUR LORD did not come to destroy but to fulfill the law. Marriage was to remain exactly what it was in the Natural Law:

the exchange of two wills for the purpose of procreation. Our Savior who knew very well the difficulties of the marital state made a sacrament of this mutual exchange of wills, a rite that imparts grace. Each of the two in becoming united to the other will enrich that other one with an increase of sanctifying grace. Both should be in the state of grace before the marriage takes place since it is a sacrament of the living, which means that its purpose is to intensify the divine life already existing in the soul. By their gift of themselves to each other they also obtain for each other a gift of new growth in the divine.

Because marriage is fundamentally a contract—a double yes giving to each of the two complete right to the other—it has this special feature that there is no other minister than the two concerned. Sometimes people say, “That’s Father So and So; he married us.” The expression is incorrect. It is not the priest who marries the bride and groom; they marry themselves. They themselves are the ministers of the sacrament which they receive at the same time. The priest is there only in the capacity of a witness representing the Church; as the witness required for the validity of the marriage; but a witness only.

What eminent dignity therefore has the sacrament of Matrimony! What eminent dignity have the bride and groom!

They are for each other transmitters of the divine.

The bonds which they contract bear upon two points: the oneness of the couple, the indissolubility of their bonds.

Our Lord, who made of marriage a grace-giving rite, also stressed the double obligation of unity and indissolubility.

Oneness: They form a single unit. They shall be two in one flesh, says Genesis. But due to human grossness, forms of polygamy were introduced. Our Savior forbade them, and the Church has always taken care to require the observance of the law. Love itself demands it. Marriage is such an intimate reality. To live it with several individuals at the same time is condemned by natural feeling itself. Divine law merely reaffirms this basic requirement. Furthermore, family stability as well as the happiness of the children militate equally in favor of oneness.

Indissolubility: Marriage creates a oneness forever; a oneness that can be dissolved only by the death of either partner. The encyclical of Pius XI, “Casti-Connubii,” reminds the world of this:

“For each individual marriage, inasmuch as it is a conjugal union of a particular man and woman, arises only from the free consent of each of the spouses; and this free act of the will, by which each party hands over and accepts those rights proper to the state of marriage is so necessary to constitute true marriage that it cannot be supplied by any human power.

“This freedom, however, regards only the point whether the contracting parties really wish to enter upon matrimony or to marry this particular person; but the nature of matrimony is entirely independent of the free will of man, so that if one has once contracted matrimony he is thereby subject to its Divinely made laws and its essential properties.”