After watching a program on EWTN, I decided to rewatch and take some notes to share:
Symbolon: Living the Faith
Holy Matrimony
In the Rite of Marriage, the priest asks the couple three
questions that shed much light on what marriage is really all about…
1.
Have you come here freely? And without reservation to give yourselves in
marriage?
2.
Will honor each other as man and wife for the
rest of your lives?
3.
Will you accept children lovingly from God and
bring them up according to the law of Christ and His Church?
Marriage is meant to be a free choice of each person. It is meant to be a total giving of ones
self, holding nothing back. Love which
is meant to be faithful all throughout ones life. And, it is meant to be a love which is
fruitful, goes outward and willingly accepts children as a blessing from
God. But to live a marriage that is
free, total and faithful is not easy; we need God’s help, we need His Grace in
the Sacrament of Matrimony.
Marriage is a Sacrament
Marriage
is a great mystery, a sacrament or sign of Christ’s love. Eph. 5:32
Christ’s love, as well as “Married Love” is Free, Total, Faithful and
Fruitful. We can see these for signs in
the marriage ceremony itself. The priest
asks the three questions of consent (see above) and these questions are not
only present on the wedding day, be every day of married life.
Why do
we number marriage among the seven sacraments of the Church? Whenever we take upon an office, and marriage
is an office of a kind of service in the Church, God gives us a special grace
in order to take on that office well and in this case it is to offer to love
one other person in the same way that Christ loves His Church. Each one is Christ to the other in the
Sacrament of Matrimony. It is extremely
difficult, especially in this day and age, to live the life of matrimony – and Christ
understands that and gives to us this special grace to live not in just a
natural mode, but a supernatural mode which really makes us capable of loving
others as Christ loves us. Like in the
Wedding at Cana, that couple did everything they thought was necessary – and
still came up short, but Christ was there!
Jesus did not just give them the bare minimum to get by, but gave to
them gallons and gallons of the best wine possible. God does not give just enough to get by, but
enough to make your marriage rich and powerful.
Marriage should reflect Christ’s union with the Church
The
first grace of matrimony is what we call the bond and this comes to be from the
sacred promises the spouses make to one another. As the word “bond” suggests, it binds the two
together in a permanent relationship, like Christ to His Church. So, strictly speaking, it isn’t that the
Church doesn’t allow for divorce, but that the Church believes that divorce is
impossible. This bond that is put
together by God cannot be broken by any human power and that is why we say when
we marry, “till death do us part.”
Marriage is indissoluble – it’s a life-long commitment.
Why can’t
marriage just be a contract between a man and woman? What would that promise sound like? “I promise to stay with you in good times, in
health and in wealth – until something better comes along.” There would be nobody crying, there’s nothing
beautiful about that, this isn’t what our hearts long for. You would not be marrying a person, you would
be marrying your own selfishness, you’re just marrying your own desires. Instead of being a true covenant – it’s just
an exchange of goods and services and you can just imagine the insecurity that
would build in a relationship. “Is my
husband going to stay with me?” “Do I
need to stay thin enough for him to stay around?” Then there’s the insecurity this would breed
in the hearts of the children, “I don’t know if Dad is in this for the long run
or not.” In the end, it’s not a total
gift of one’s self, it’s just a partial loan.
If marriage is supposed to be, as St. Paul said, a great sign of Christ’s
love for the Church, then what does this say of Christ’s love for the
Church? You know, “I will be with you
until the end of the age, or maybe I’ll stick around or maybe I won’t?” This isn’t really the Vatican imposing her
doctrines upon us, it is it is the longing of the human heart; every love longs
to be eternal. “I will love you, and no
other,” this is what the human heart longs for, a love which reflects the
divine.
Annulments
You may
have heard the term “annulments” in the Church, and it is a term which is
greatly misunderstood. It sounds as if
the Church is making null that which would have otherwise been a valid
marriage. The proper term is “a
declaration of nullity.” This comes at
the end of a long process in a court called a tribunal in which those engaged
in the process of inquiry find that no marriage ever took place. So, an annulment is not a Catholic divorce,
it is a finding that no marriage ever took place in the first place and so
there is nothing to divorce.
Divorce
is a legal term whereby a state or the government is dissolving a legitimate,
valid, legal marriage. An annulment is
something completely different, it is saying that would appear to be a valid
sacramental union between two people was not valid and there never was a real
union to begin with. How can that
be? How can two people walk into a
church as singles, perform the ceremony and walk out as singles? What could invalidate that union? Well, let’s say the man is forcing the woman
to marry him, or let’s say the woman is being significantly deceitful – like saying
“I have a huge credit card debt” or “I have a boyfriend, and I don’t want to
tell my potential husband because that could really ruin the wedding day.” Obviously, these are going to be impediments
to a valid sacramental union and so upon deep investigation and prayerful
consideration, the Church will look back at that wedding day and if it was a
valid marriage. If it was, then the
Church will say “What God has put together, let no man separate.” These are the words of Christ, it is not the
imposition of the Vatican upon us. When
Christ told the Apostles, “When you marry a wife, divorce her and marry someone
else, you commit adultery.” The
disciples had a hard time with this!
They said, “If that’s the case, then it’s better not to get married. If I can’t get divorced, then what’s the
point of getting married in the first place?”
It speaks to the hardness of heart that Christ was trying to redeem in
the first place.
For
making a marriage, consent is required.
One has to be free, not forced (feel fear) whether internally or
externally. Externally, one may desire
to marry another person but if he or she is married to someone else, that is an
external impediment to making that choice with this person. The free choice to marry also has to be an
informed choice. Recall that marriage is
to be free, total, faithful and fruitful.
So if, for some reason, one directly wills against what marriage is –
perhaps one decides “I am not going to permit fruitfulness, that I don’t want
to have children,” or perhaps one directly wills against the permanence of marriage
in that “I’ll marry for a while, divorce and then marry someone else later,” in
that case, you’re not really consenting to what marriage is and if you’re not
consenting to what marriage really is – then you’re not really marrying.
Who can enter into a Sacramental Marriage?
Two
people who are:
- Baptised
- Opposite sex
- Free internally (they really choose this person to be their spouse)
- Free externally (not finding themselves in circumstances which make them unable to marry this particular person).
Full episodes available at:
http://www.symboloncatholic.org
– though I did not find this one. I
watched this one on EWTN.
Another video, this one from Ascension Press:
