Marriage: A Source of Hope, Spring of Renewal and Pursuit of Lasting Love
February 6, 2025 at 2:40 p.m.
As Catholics, we celebrate marriage in the Church as “a sacrament.” The Baltimore Catechism states that a sacrament is one of the seven “outward signs instituted by Christ to give grace (Question 574).” The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) similarly defines a sacrament as an “efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us (CCC 1131).” The 1983 Code of Canon Law (CCL) states that “the sacraments of the New Testament were instituted by Christ the Lord and entrusted to the Church” as “actions of Christ and the Church … “signs and means which express and strengthen the faith, render worship to God, and effect the sanctification of humanity and thus contribute in the greatest way to establish, strengthen, and manifest ecclesiastical communion (canon 840).”
CCL goes on to define the Sacrament of Marriage as “a covenant by which a baptized man and a woman “establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring (canon 1055).”
The Church establishes laws and regulations for the baptized faithful that govern its valid celebration.
As Catholics, we understand sacramental marriage as something not just between a baptized man and woman but between the two parties and God. That is why we refer to the Sacrament of Marriage as a “covenant.”
St. John Chrysostom (347-407), the famous theologian from the Church in the fourth century, encouraged couples who marry “to do as they did at Cana in Galilee. Let them have Christ in their midst (Homily 22 on the Gospel of John).”
Baptized couples choose to be married in the Catholic Church for that reason in the sight of an eternally faithful and generous God who so loved the world that he gave himself to us in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the spirit of this faithful and generous God, husband and wife give themselves in love to one another. A spiritual life then grows as love finds its center beyond themselves. Faithful and committed relationships offer a door into the mystery of spiritual life in which we discover this: the more we give of self, the richer we become in soul; the more we go beyond ourselves in love, the more we become our true selves and our spiritual beauty is more fully revealed. In marriage we are seeking to bring one another into a spiritually fuller life.
A couple does not begin marriage with perfect love. The couple grows in love and grows by loving. Love is hard work. Sometimes married love brings sufferings and sacrifice. If not, love has been a disguised form of selfishness. But just as the Church is strengthened through sufferings and sacrifice, a loving relationship in marriage grows “in the valleys.” There is often more growth in the valleys than on the mountain tops. Both, however, bring a unique share in God’s blessings and rewards.
The Lord Jesus Christ Jesus has commanded his followers to love as he has loved. How did Jesus love? He loved until it cost him. He loved all the way to the cross and death. That is love. If he had stopped loving before Calvary then it would not have been love at all. It would have been only for what he could get out of it. But love, in the sense that Jesus means, is loving even when it means undergoing sufferings and sacrifice for the sake of the other. That is real love, loving for the good of the other. That is precisely how the Lord Jesus Christ explains his love in the Gospel of John when he said: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John 15:13).”
Again and again, human beings gave God all sorts of reasons to turn his back on us but he kept on loving us because he made a covenant with us, not a contract. You can use all sorts of legal means to wiggle your way out of a contract but a covenant is irrevocable. That is precisely the love of God we see for us in his covenant with us.
There are many ideas of “marriage” proposed in the world today but true married life for the baptized is a sacrament received in the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, it is a covenant “until death do us part,” not a contract. Married couples each and every day need to turn to Christ to sustain their love for each other.
The Sacrament of Marriage is something very human, fulfilling the desire in the hearts of all of us to share our lives with one another. But marriage is at the same time a Sacrament of God and the Church that is faithful, fruitful and forever.
In this Jubilee Year, as we celebrate “National Marriage Week (February 7-14)” and “World Marriage Day (February 9)” throughout the Diocese of Trenton, let all married couples respond to Pope Francis’ invitation to be “pilgrims of hope” to one another as we focus on building a culture of life and love that begins with supporting and promoting marriage and the family as a “source of hope” in and for the world.
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As Catholics, we celebrate marriage in the Church as “a sacrament.” The Baltimore Catechism states that a sacrament is one of the seven “outward signs instituted by Christ to give grace (Question 574).” The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) similarly defines a sacrament as an “efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us (CCC 1131).” The 1983 Code of Canon Law (CCL) states that “the sacraments of the New Testament were instituted by Christ the Lord and entrusted to the Church” as “actions of Christ and the Church … “signs and means which express and strengthen the faith, render worship to God, and effect the sanctification of humanity and thus contribute in the greatest way to establish, strengthen, and manifest ecclesiastical communion (canon 840).”
CCL goes on to define the Sacrament of Marriage as “a covenant by which a baptized man and a woman “establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring (canon 1055).”
The Church establishes laws and regulations for the baptized faithful that govern its valid celebration.
As Catholics, we understand sacramental marriage as something not just between a baptized man and woman but between the two parties and God. That is why we refer to the Sacrament of Marriage as a “covenant.”
St. John Chrysostom (347-407), the famous theologian from the Church in the fourth century, encouraged couples who marry “to do as they did at Cana in Galilee. Let them have Christ in their midst (Homily 22 on the Gospel of John).”
Baptized couples choose to be married in the Catholic Church for that reason in the sight of an eternally faithful and generous God who so loved the world that he gave himself to us in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the spirit of this faithful and generous God, husband and wife give themselves in love to one another. A spiritual life then grows as love finds its center beyond themselves. Faithful and committed relationships offer a door into the mystery of spiritual life in which we discover this: the more we give of self, the richer we become in soul; the more we go beyond ourselves in love, the more we become our true selves and our spiritual beauty is more fully revealed. In marriage we are seeking to bring one another into a spiritually fuller life.
A couple does not begin marriage with perfect love. The couple grows in love and grows by loving. Love is hard work. Sometimes married love brings sufferings and sacrifice. If not, love has been a disguised form of selfishness. But just as the Church is strengthened through sufferings and sacrifice, a loving relationship in marriage grows “in the valleys.” There is often more growth in the valleys than on the mountain tops. Both, however, bring a unique share in God’s blessings and rewards.
The Lord Jesus Christ Jesus has commanded his followers to love as he has loved. How did Jesus love? He loved until it cost him. He loved all the way to the cross and death. That is love. If he had stopped loving before Calvary then it would not have been love at all. It would have been only for what he could get out of it. But love, in the sense that Jesus means, is loving even when it means undergoing sufferings and sacrifice for the sake of the other. That is real love, loving for the good of the other. That is precisely how the Lord Jesus Christ explains his love in the Gospel of John when he said: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John 15:13).”
Again and again, human beings gave God all sorts of reasons to turn his back on us but he kept on loving us because he made a covenant with us, not a contract. You can use all sorts of legal means to wiggle your way out of a contract but a covenant is irrevocable. That is precisely the love of God we see for us in his covenant with us.
There are many ideas of “marriage” proposed in the world today but true married life for the baptized is a sacrament received in the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, it is a covenant “until death do us part,” not a contract. Married couples each and every day need to turn to Christ to sustain their love for each other.
The Sacrament of Marriage is something very human, fulfilling the desire in the hearts of all of us to share our lives with one another. But marriage is at the same time a Sacrament of God and the Church that is faithful, fruitful and forever.
In this Jubilee Year, as we celebrate “National Marriage Week (February 7-14)” and “World Marriage Day (February 9)” throughout the Diocese of Trenton, let all married couples respond to Pope Francis’ invitation to be “pilgrims of hope” to one another as we focus on building a culture of life and love that begins with supporting and promoting marriage and the family as a “source of hope” in and for the world.