Marriage as being caught up in God's Love

From the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) from the Second Vatican Council (paragraph 48)

Husband and wife, by the covenant of marriage, are no longer two, but one flesh. By their intimate union of persons and of actions they give mutual help and service to each other, experience the meaning of the unity, and gain an ever deeper understanding of it day by day. This intimate union in the mutual self-giving of two persons, as well as the good of the children, demands full fidelity from both, and an indissoluble unity between them. Christ the Lord has abundantly blessed this richly complex love, which springs from the divine source of love and is founded on the model of his union with the Church.

In earlier times God met his people in a covenant of love and fidelity. So now the Savior of mankind, the Bridegroom of the Church, meets Christian husbands and wives in the sacrament of matrimony. Further, he remains with them in order that, as he loved the Church and gave himself up for her, so husband and wife may, in mutual self-giving, love each other with perpetual fidelity.

True married love is caught up into God's love; it is guided and enriched by the redeeming power of Christ and the saving action of the Church, in order that the partners may be effectively led to God and receive help and strength in the sublime responsibility of parenthood. Christian partners are therefore strengthened, and as it were consecrated, by a special sacrament for the duties and the dignity of their state. By the power of this sacrament they fulfill their obligations to each other and to their family and are filled with the spirit of Christ. This spirit pervades their whole lives with faith, hope and love. Thus they promote their own perfection and each other's sanctification, and so contribute together to the greater glory of God.

So it is crucial and important that the Church recognizes in marriage a sacrament through which God bestows grace through the couple for their mutual sanctification and ultimate salvation. God, in freely sharing grace, invites us to participate in His very divine life, redeeming us and raising us out of the pit of our sinfulness. And we know that God is Love, and that through marriage, God's invitation also includes the unique opportunity to participate in His very nature which is His continual act of wanting to love, the result of which is the creation of new life. Thus, by His grace in marriage, we are given insight into the very Creation of the universe, and the Creator's will for you and for me. We are then, in a sense, made co-creators with God.