Marriage Sacrament

EWTN Global Catholic Radio and St. Joseph Communications proudly present Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen. This 50-part series was recorded on phonograph records in the 1960s and the sound quality is sometimes limited, but the word of God spoken by Archbishop Sheen is timeless. And now here is Archbishop Fulton Sheen. Peace be to you. Before speaking of marriage as a sacrament, it is important to show that in the natural order, the human order, that is to say in the order apart from grace, marriage is an unbreakable bond until death's part. This was affirmed by our blessed Lord. The Pharisees came to him on one occasion and asked if it was right for any man to put away his wife for any cause whatsoever. Our blessed Lord answered, Have you never read how he created them when they first came to be, created them male and female, and how he said, A man therefore will leave his father and mother and will cling to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. And so they are no longer two, they are one flesh. What God then has joined, let no man put asunder. It is to be remarked that in these words of our blessed Lord, he was speaking of marriage from the beginning. When therefore the question of divorce arose, our blessed Lord said, And I tell you that he who puts away his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who commits adultery who marries her after she has been put away. These words sound like a great judgment upon a civilization such as ours, where there is one divorce for every four marriages and many consequent remarriages after such divorces. It must therefore not be thought that divorces and remarriages are wrong for Catholics only. They are indeed especially wrong for Catholics, but they are a violation of the law of God, the natural law of God, by everyone, whether he be Tibetan or Muslim or Hottentot or a so-called Christian. Original sin and the deluge did not block out the divinely established order of man and woman. Conjugal love conquered both the deluge and original sin and survived both, and we will see later on how our blessed Lord is going to lift it up into the supernatural order. We are interested for the moment only in the human natural order. The point is that it was instituted, that is to say marriage, not by a man, but by God. He made it a union, not a contract. By it, two persons become one. They become spiritually, mentally, and physically united. Certainly there are judges that will grant divorces, but how does God look upon them? After the divorce, they are not two separate individuals as they were before the marriage. They are fragments of a joint personality, like a babe that has been cut in two. That is the way God looks upon any divorce, regardless of who the person be. Now, from another point of view, this marriage of man and woman is meant to be an enduring marriage by the very nature of love. There are only two words in the vocabulary of love, you and always. You because love is unique, always because love is enduring. No one ever said, I will love you for two years and six months. That is why all the love songs have the ring of eternity about them, such as till the sands of the desert grow cold. Why is there jealousy in the human heart, if jealousy be not the safeguard of monogamy and an enduring marriage? Consider a little more closely the nature of love, even in the human order. There are actually three terms. There is the lover, there is the beloved, and there is love. And the love is something distinct from both, man and woman, and yet in both. Suppose love had only two terms, my love and thy love. There would be separateness, impenetrability. There has to be a third acting element, just as two vines, if they are to be one, must be united in the soil. And so too, two hearts are united because of the love that is outside both. Then the impotence of the I to completely possess the thou is overcome by the realization that there is something outside of both, hovering over, turning the I and the thou into our love. And that is why people who are in love always speak of our love. Though they may not put their love in these words, this is practically what they are saying one to another, thou art more than thou alone, and my love no longer founders on thee because it reaches out beyond thee to all that is worth loving. When we embrace, we embrace more than one another. In embracing one another, we give testimony of that by which we are embraced. Not only by the love of God. God gave to man a helpmate. As the book of Genesis put it, man and woman both be created then. Now notice how he made them to complement one another, never once admitting any such thing as a separation. Man is made by God, and woman is made by God from man. As God is present at the creation of the world, so man is present, though in ecstasy or sleep, at the creation of a woman. Because man comes directly from God, he has more initiative, power, and creativeness. Woman however, coming from God through the ecstasy of man, has intuition, response, acceptance, submission, cooperation. Man lives more in the external world because he was made from dust. He is close to nature. It is man's mission to rule over it and subject it. And a woman lives more in the internal order because she was created from an inner human life. Man is more interested in the outer world and woman in the inner world. That is why man talks more about business and woman talks more about personhood. They complement one another in a divine way. So when God made them, the book of Genesis puts it, it is not well that man should be without companionship. I will give him a mate of his own kind. The divine creation therefore of the two sexes is suggested as essential from the point of view of fellowship. A helpmate does not mean inferiority, but differences that complement one another, like a bow and a violin. Therefore you see, marriage is not just a contract, it is a union, and a union that has been made by God, and a union that endures until death. But here we are limiting ourselves to the human order. But you know very well from this encyclopedia of Catholic knowledge so far that there is not only a natural order, there is also a supernatural order. We live not only in the order of the human, but we can also live in the order of the divine. In addition to physical life, there is biological, or rather supernatural life, which is grace. And grace is that participation in the divine nature by which our intellects are illumined with faith and our wills are strengthened with power. Our blessed Lord, in coming to this earth, bringing divine life, being the source of grace through his passion, death, resurrection, and ascension, makes marriage a sacrament. That is to say now, to those who are united in his church, he gives them the grace, the strength, the power to live out their mutual existences. Being a sacrament, it has two elements, just like every other sacrament. One is very visible and evident. It is the exchange of consent, which is signified not only by the joining of hands, but also by the words of consent. And this is witnessed by a priest. There is the invisible grace, also, which is communicated for their married faith. And because this grace symbolizes another marriage, the marriage of Christ and his church, that is the meaning of sacramental marriage, a considerable explanation. You'll find it written all through the epistles of St. Paul. For example, here we quote Paul, It is unheard of that a man should bear ill will to his own flesh and blood. No, he keeps it said and warned. So it is with Christ and his church. The two will become one flesh. Yes, these words are a high mystery. I am applying them here to Christ and the church. And he says in another place, Husbands, love your wives. Now how? As Christ loves the church. We come here to a very profound reason, as St. Paul calls it, as you see, a high mystery. The reason why the marriage of baptized persons in the church signifies another marriage. Well, all through the Old Testament and in the New, God expresses his relationship with man in terms of nuptials. In the Old Testament, God always spoke of himself as the bridegroom, as the husband of Israel, which was the Cahal. So Israel, or the chosen people, or the Cahal, was considered by God in the Old Testament as the bride of God. If we had time, we would give you many, many passages in the Old Testament to show how God could find no other symbol of his love for the Cahal and for Israel and for the vehicle of his revelation than the symbolism of married love. In the due course of time, God becomes man. The bridegroom becomes man. But did our Lord ever call himself the bridegroom? Yes, he did. And he did it in such a very natural way that the people were not at all astounded when they heard him, because they knew the background of God being related to their people as the bridegroom. One of the occasions in which our blessed Lord spoke of himself that way was when a question was hurled at him as to why his disciples did not fast, whereas the disciples of John the Baptist did fast. The answer of our Lord was, Can you expect the men of the bridegroom's company to go fasting when the bridegroom is still with them? Then he went on to say that the bridegroom would be taken away. John the Baptist called himself the friend of the bridegroom, in other words, the kind of blessed man. I think there's beautiful mystery hidden somewhere in the marriage feast of Cana. Our Lord began his public life by assisting in that marriage feast to typify that his relationship with his Church would be exactly like the relationship unfolded in the Old Testament. And when, therefore, the old Cahal of Israel became the new Cahal, or the Church, or the new Israel through redemption and Pentecost, we had the continuation of this symbolism. He was the continuation of the body of man, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. What is the Church? The Church in the New Testament is described as the new Eve, because the continuation of the new Adam, Christ. Everywhere there's the idea of espousals, body, oneness. We must get first things first. Remember that the union of our Lord and the Church is not like a human marriage, rather a human marriage is like the union of our Lord and the Church. And therefore the bridegroom and bride stand at the altar, and we read to them the marriage ceremony. We are informing them, you, the bridegroom, stand for Christ, and you, the bride, stand for the Church. That is the mysterious grace that is conferred upon you. How beautiful marriage becomes! Scripture also goes on to tell us that just as Christ is the head of the Church, so man is the head of a woman. Perhaps I should have put that the other way around. Suppose I just said that man is the head of woman. Very often when women read that passage in Scripture they do not like it, but they should read what follows, that man is the head of a woman in exactly the same way that Christ is the head of the Church. Now how is our Lord the head of the Church, the head of his bride, if he was the head by dying and sacrificing himself and pouring out his blood? The headship was based upon self-forgetfulness for the sake of the beloved. Now how is the wife related to the husband? Well she is related to the husband in the same way that the Church is related to our blessed Lord. And if the husband is to sacrifice himself for the wife, so too the wife, like the Church, is to be related to her husband, just as the Church to our Lord through love, service, devotion, and striving for perfection. Perhaps one of the reasons why a woman's head must always be covered in Church is to signify that man is the head of the woman as Christ is the head of the Church. In other words, there is something over the head of a woman, namely her husband, as there is something over the Church, the head of the Church, namely Christ himself, that is not superiority, that is sacrifice. There is another conclusion to be drawn, too, and here we come to the supernatural divine reason why the marriage of baptized persons is unbreakable. It is because they symbolize the unbreakable eternal union of our Lord and the Church. When the Son of God came to this earth and took upon himself a human nature, disflowered into his mystical body, the Church, he did not take it for three years, for thirty-three, but for all eternity. So too, when a husband takes a wife, he takes that wife as Christ took the Church. He takes that wife until death does him part. And in order to symbolize that enduring union of the espousals of Christ and his Church, they are to love one another until death separate them. Hidden in this very lovely description of the symbolism of marriage is also the fact that there can be only one Church. Remember that in the Scripture, the Church is the bride of Christ. Do you think our Lord could have many brides, many spouses? That would be spiritual adultery, would it not? He does not have two hundred varieties of spouses or churches. There is one spouse, there is one Church, and that union continues forever. That then is the reason why the marriage of husband and wife is unbreakable in the sacramental order. Here is a little theoretical problem, sometimes not so theoretical, which helps bring out this proof. Just suppose that John and Mary were married at an actual Mass, and they went to the Church door, and when they got there, they separated, and they never saw one another again. Could that marriage be dissolved? Yes, under certain conditions it could be dissolved. That is called a marriage ratum non consummatum, that is to say, it is a marriage that was ratified in the Church, but it was never consummated by union of two in one flesh. Now why could that be dissolved under certain conditions? Maybe because the union of a husband and wife in a marriage that is only ratified but not consummated is something like the union of the individual soul and Christ by grace. The individual soul very often is separated from Christ through sin. There can be a falling out of that union, but where you have a marriage that is not only ratified but also consummated, there the symbolism is not the union of the individual soul and Christ, but the symbolism of the union of Christ and his spouse, the Church, and those two can never be separated, and therefore their marriage is absolutely unbreakable. How beautiful marriage is in the Church. Fidelity is an engagement with the future, and when that future is eternity, when the soul knows that it cannot be saved unless it is faithful to the spouse, it remains faithful in the midst of trial. If God's love is never withdrawn from his Church, so too the love of husband and wife are never withdrawn one from another. It is made in the full consciousness that their love is a proclamation to the world of another marriage, the marriage that gives us joy and happiness, the beautiful union of Christ and his bride, the Church. God love you. This has been Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen. For more information about this series, contact St. Joseph Communications at 1-800-526-2151. Outside the U.S., call 818-331-3549, and please join us again next time for Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen on EWTN Global Catholic Radio. Thank you for listening to Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen on EWTN Global Catholic Radio. Thank you for listening to Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen on EWTN Global