Christian Marriage - Sign Of Love Between Christ And Church

May 4, 2008

I have the great pleasure of celebrating a Mass of Thanksgiving on Saturday evening with couples who are celebrating Silver Anniversaries of marriage, Golden Jubilees of marriage, and marriage anniversaries in excess of 50 years.  With them, I thank God for their vocation to married life.  I also thank these couples for their faithfulness to each other and for the sign they are to us of God's love which is enduring and never fails.

In God's plan, marriage is more than a civil contract.  It is a lifelong covenant of love between a man and a woman.  It is an intimate partnership in which husbands and wives learn to give and receive love unselfishly and teach their children to do the same.  Christian marriage is a sign of the love between Christ and His Church.

We speak of marriage as a covenant because marriage reminds us of the relationship we enjoy with God, a relationship He initiated and to which He is always faithful despite our human weakness.

The covenant love of marriage celebrates more than the commitment of two spouses to each other.  It also pledges the presence of God in their relationship as a third partner.  It is not just husband and wife loving each other, but God loving them in and through each other.  Marriage is a sacrament or a sign of Christ's abiding presence to them and through them to the world.

In the sacrament of marriage, the Spirit of Christ penetrates husband and wife as they fulfill their conjugal and family obligations.  The Holy Spirit suffuses their whole lives with faith, hope, and charity.  As the couple fulfills their obligations to each other and their children, they are mutually sanctified and contribute to the glory of God.

In the marriage covenant, husband and wife seal their love and commitment through their sexual union.  This marital union fully expresses what it means to become one body, one flesh.  The Church teaches that the sexual union of husband and wife is meant to express the full meaning of love:  its power to bind a couple together and its openness to new life.

Married love differs from any other love in the world.  The love of husband and wife is so complete, so ordered to a lifetime of communion with God and each other,  that it is open to creating a new human being whom they will love and care for together.

Thus, any artificial forms of contraception which block the potential for life is violation of the full meaning and purpose of sexual intimacy.  Authentic marital sexual union must always be open to the gift and possibility of life.  In Christian marriage, husband and wife are privileged to be "co-creators" with God in bringing life into the world - a great blessing and a sacred duty!

Our late Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, spoke of the family as 'the sanctuary of life," the place where the gift of God's life can be treasured and protected.  Because spouses and children sustain each other throughout the various stages of life, the family is the ideal model for every human society.  In fact, Cicero had called the family "the origin of the city and almost the seedbed of the state."

As we know, there are no utopian families.  There are challenges, sufferings, and crosses within every family.  But Christian families take to heart the words of Jesus:  "Where two or three are gathered in my name' - in my love - "I am there in the midst of them"  (Mt 18:20).  Families have the incredible opportunity to be the dwelling place of God's presence.

Igino Giordani in "The Family, Community of Love," expressed this very well:  "Life's difficulties do not crush a family anchored in God.  A couple's unity is its strength, but unity is the fruit of love.  It is in their best earthly and heavenly interests to love one another by making use of trials, sufferings, and disappointments in order to grow in holiness."

As I will congratulate and invoke God's blessings on those who will come together at the Cathedral for special anniversaries this Saturday, I thank all of you who are faithfully living out in joys and in sorrows your vocation to holy marriage.  I urge you to look to the future with confidence and hope because Jesus, who is Himself the fullest expression of the Father's love, will continue to sustain you and see you through to the journey's end.