Not even the angels in Heaven can ...

My fiancée and I have our second marriage preparation meeting this weekend. We are looking forward to it! We really want to engage our preparation for marriage, not as a list of requirements to be checked off, but as a great mystery to be embraced. Yes, there are regular prep sessions, engaged encounter retreat, FOCCUS, NFP classes, witness forms, relationship biographies, etc... but these requirements reflect, for us, how intricate and significant married life really is. It spite of requirements, it seems marriage is something that is simply profound, or is that profoundly simple? But that's too easy to say...

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in paragraphs 1623 and 1624, says:

In the Latin Church, it is ordinarily understood that the spouses, as ministers of Christ's grace, mutually confer upon each other the sacrament of Matrimony by expressing their consent before the Church... The various liturgies abound in prayers of blessing and epiclesis asking God's grace and blessing on the new couple, especially the bride. In the epiclesis of this sacrament the spouses receive the Holy Spirit as the communion of love of Christ and the Church. The Holy Spirit is the seal of their covenant, the ever available source of their love and the strength to renew their fidelity.

I think there is a tendency in our culture to see marriage as our own... that is, it belongs solely to the couple (and to society at large, seeing fit to redefine marriage in whatever way). The Roman Catholic understanding holds that matrimony is a sacramental covenant, given by God, sealed by the Holy Spirit, and mutually conferred by the couple upon each other. What is a sacrament if not a means by which God gives grace for sanctification and holiness? So, then, marriage is a means through which God perfects a couple in holiness, both in their mutual self-giving and consent as well as in their self-giving to God as one flesh. It therefore seems that marriage cannot belong to the couple alone simply because such an understanding omits the essential element of God, since He gives grace in order to draw the couple closer to Him! The sacrament binds the couple together as one flesh, but it also binds the couple together to God in a sacramental bond.

This is quite profound, actually! As the Catechism paragraph above states, the sacrament is conferred by the couple on each other by expressing their consent before the Church. Consent is at the root of what makes a marriage valid and sacramental:

- Fidelity: Consent to be faithful to each other.
- Commitment: Consent to be faithful until death.
- Openness to new life: Consent to be fruitful by allowing love to grow and bear fruit, opening the relationship to children.

A marriage that includes the full consent of the couple to each other is, then, indissoluble until death. But these should not be taken just as formal requirements. If that is all they are, then it's difficult to expect them to be taken seriously. No, they are actually at the heart of marriage itself. In an era of quick divorce, fidelity until death is quite a challenge. The same can be said of the third requirement of openness to new life.

For couples that are biologically capable, welcoming children involves allowing the extension and expansion of an overflowing love to bear fruit in new life. As stated above, the ever available source of this love is the Holy Spirit. Yet, having children is, as you parents know, a great responsibility. Yet, it is inseparably linked to married life, which is also a great responsibility. This, of course, demonstrates something basic about our God: that love and life are inseparably linked to one another. Just as God's love bore fruit in the garden of Eden and in all creation, so does a married couple's love grow and bear fruit in new life. And, because of His love, God always gives of Himself, from Himself, (directed outwardly) for the good of His Creation, even so does married love also give of itself, from itself, not just the couple to each other (as one flesh), but also outwardly into creation. And, just as God sacrificed His only begotton Son, Jesus Christ, out of love for the entire world, so the couple must embrace sacrifice in subordination to each other. (remember St. Paul - husbands must love their wives just as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself over for the Church's sanctification!) Where is this leading...?

The Second Vatican Council beautifully summed this up in Gaudium et Spes, by drawing upon Scripture:

Hence, true married love and the whole structure of family life which results from it, without diminishment of the other ends of marriage, are directed to disposing the spouses to cooperate valiantly with the love of the Creator and Savior, who through them will increase and enrich his family from day to day.

True married love enables a man and woman to become sacramental participants in God's divine love, as one flesh, and through this, they also become participants in God's act of creation as co-creators in the outpouring of God's love of the world.

As St. Paul said, this is indeed a great mystery to me. But what I understand is this. Not even the angels in Heaven can do what a couple does when it brings new life into the world, or what a woman does when she nurtures new life in her womb. We humans are of great value to God, and women, in particular, are richly gifted.