Marriage and Baptism

CHRIST came to restore to us the divine life lost by original sin. He instituted baptism as the practical means of entering upon the supernatural. The baptized person is not only a soul and a body, but a soul in which God lives.

According to one of the Fathers of the Church baptism is a marriage between God and the soul; he goes so far as to call the soul Spirita Sancta the feminine form for the Holy Spirit (Spiritus Sanctus). Without this marriage of God and the soul, the individual can have no spiritual fecundity. It is impossible: The most noble human act performed by one in mortal sin has no value at all for heaven.

What then is the marriage of two beings of flesh and bone?

It is the image on an earthly plane of a union which is more beautiful although invisible—the union of God and the soul.

Baptism, marriage—two sacraments of union—and the second will always be but a symbol of the first. Union of God with the soul, union of husband and wife. Two sacraments of union; two sacraments of fecundity. Without God, the soul can do nothing fruitful for heaven; without each other, husband and wife cannot beget children. And just as Saint Paul could call all sin adultery since it is deliberate divorce from God, so every break in the marriage bond is blameworthy and true adultery.

Both baptism and marriage then are sacraments of inviolable union. A rupture of the union whether a divorce from God or a divorce from one’s partner in marriage can in either case be called adultery.

What better guarantee have the wedded couple of their reciprocal fidelity than their common life in the state of grace! Each of the two refusing to be divorced from God is thus more sure of the other. United as they are by the same promise, by conjugal embraces, they are likewise united with each other by the same Holy Spirit who forms the Bond between them. Any husband or wife who denies this is already committing an offence against the integrity of the gift of self. Each of the two must live the truth of Tertullian’s definition of a soul in grace. “What is a Christian?” he asked. “A Christian is a soul in a body and God in that soul.” To give to one’s partner in marriage only the first two elements and refuse the third is not to give all, not to give the best. Truly it is a plunder, a plunder which injures husband and wife. Is it possible not to realize this? It remains profoundly true just the same: Indeed, it is a double betrayal. For who can say that one who has been coward enough to betray God will not be just as likely to betray the partner of his life?

So true is this, that only fidelity to God can give completeness to marriage.