We’ve covered a lot of ground so far in this exploration of married love. We talked about God’s original plan for man and woman, their solitude, their unity, and their complete vulnerability with each other. Their bodies revealed their personhood, God’s love for them, and their capacity to give themselves to the other. That relationship of free, full, faithful, and fruitful love was shattered through original sin. Adam and Eve began to view each other with suspicion and lust, unable to control their desire to possess instead of respect the other. Much of history is an often sad story of unrequited love, domination, abuse, and tragedy.

   Into the midst of this darkness entered the God-Man Jesus Christ with a mission to redeem humanity in all dimensions. Moving beyond external commands to speak to our hearts, he calls us to integrate desire (eros) with self-gift (agape) and cultivate the virtue of purity, that ability to see the divine mystery revealed in the human body. He calls humanity to eternal life with resurrected bodies that experience no unwanted or harmful lust, and he gives his Church the vocation of priesthood and religious life as celibate vocations that anticipate this resurrected life.

   What role does the Sacrament of Marriage play in this plan of redemption? The integration of desire and self-gift and the cultivation of purity aren’t Gospel values exclusive to married life, but they are incarnated in an intimate and personal way through the marriage bond. The goal of marriage simply stated: to get your spouse and children to Heaven. All of the other responsibilities that come with this vocation flow from this main thing. Fortunately, the Lord Jesus instituted this natural human ritual as a Sacrament (a visible sign of an invisible reality that gives grace) during his earthly life at the wedding of Cana. This first sign of his divinity, turning water into wine, shows his love and care for the couple personally and his esteem for the institution of marriage more generally. As the Marriage Ritual states, “Through a special Sacrament, he enriches and strengthens those he has already consecrated by Holy Baptism, that they may be faithful to each other for ever and assume all the responsibilities of married life.” Marriage is the vocation in which this sexual integration and cultivation of purity can flourish through the union of the spouses and the procreation and formation of children. Family life is the ordinary path of holiness for the vast majority of Catholics, and so Christ does not deprive his faithful of the specific sacramental graces needed to live out this vocation excellently. We’ll explore more what this vocation entails especially through the vows made on one’s wedding day!

   -Fr. Stephen