Marriage as a Covenant
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”[1] In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul speaks beautifully on the power of love, a passage many have read at their weddings. Yet shortly before this, in 1 Corinthians 7, Paul subordinates marriage to the celibate life: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman … Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do.”[2] St. Augustine furthered this argument: “it is better not to marry.”[3] St. Jerome agreed: “I have called virginity gold, I have spoken of marriage as silver.”[4] These saints leave many couples wondering: is there any sanctity in marriage? Thus, Pope John Paul II’s writings on the holiness of marriage are revolutionary. Both Paul and John Paul II understood marriage to be reflection of God's union with the Church, but with respect to co-creation and co-redemption with God, John Paul II argued that the early Church Fathers did not give marriage enough praise.
Paul subordinated marriage to the celibate life because married men no longer seemed to centralize God, but their wives and children. Thus, in the eyes of Paul, marriage dwindled holiness. In addition, Paul believed the Second Coming was near (a common belief for many after the Resurrection). In preparation for the end of the world, Paul encouraged celibacy for the Kingdom. Given the temptation of lust, virginity seemed a logical solution to keep one's soul pure and mind on God. Yet what if the spousal union was not opposed to God’s love, but exemplified it?
The primordial image of God’s love for His people is the marital covenant. This covenant was established in Genesis, first between God with humanity, and second, between Adam and Eve who, in their marital union, reflect the first. In the creation of Adam and Eve, God made man and woman equal in dignity, but distinct and unique in sex, “It is only through the duality of the "masculine" and the "feminine" that the "human" finds full realization.”[5] Adam was given a job, to till the garden and to name the living things within it, but his potential was not fully realized. Thus, “God intervenes in order to help him escape from this situation of solitude: ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’ (Gen 2:18). The creation of woman is thus marked from the outset by the principle of help: a help which is not one-sided but mutual.’ And when Adam first laid eyes upon Eve, he rejoiced, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.’”[6] Eve is a mirror to Adam. His toil and existence does not make sense without her. With one glance, Adam knows he is complete and longs for the woman. Eve, created from Adam’s rib and seeing him before any other, longs to unite herself with him not merely in the flesh, but in relationship. Thus, the complementarity between men and women is more than just sexual: “Woman complements man, just as man complements woman. Womanhood expresses the "human" as much as manhood does.”[7] Man and woman compliment eachother best in relationship, in love: “God created man in His own image and likeness: calling him to existence through love, He called him at the same time for love.”[8] Love is thus the innate vocation of every human being. Love was at the core of Adam and Eve’s relationship. Christ built the Sacrament of Marriage upon this same love.
To mirror Christ’s marital covenant, God sought to give man an example of a holy family. Yet Adam disobeyed God, Noah got drunk, Abraham took a concubine, Moses struck a rock, and David murdered and had an affair, but finally, at the turn of the New Testament, comes Joseph, Son of David, and Mary. All of creation was leading to the example of the family.
Thus, it is essential to understand the Sacrament of Marriage. Marriage is not a contract (this is yours, this is mine), but a covenant (I am yours, you are mine) and an oath (God has brought us together). A covenantal oath is a sacrament, which is the reason Catholic men and women must marry in a Catholic church. Before a witness of the Church, husbands and wives become ministers of their own sacrament in the sanctification of their love. Although one may find themself attracted to another who is not their spouse, love is more than just attraction. Love is a commitment and a choice made easier through the sacramental graces. Paul taught, “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.”[9] For a wife, that entails imaging Mary in her perfect submission to God, and her loving submission to St. Joseph. Yet Paul does not end there: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church.”[10] Husbands, as Christ did, must be willing to lay down their lives for their bride, honor her purity, and encourage her holiness. How can men and women image Christ, St. Joseph, and Mary like this? They are mirrored through sacramental grace. Thus, full of this grace, married couples do not simply receive a Sacrament. They become it!
When a man and woman place a wedding ring upon the hand of the other, they make the promise that they will love each other until death do them part. The wedding rings symbolize precisely this: united, continual love: “I have taken you in my arms, and I love you, and I prefer you to my life itself. For the present life is nothing, and my most ardent dream is to spend it with you in such a way that we may be assured of not being separated in the life reserved for us... I place your love above all things, and nothing would be more bitter or painful to me than to be of a different mind than you.”[11] The husband, like Christ, dedicates the rest of his life to the union of himself with his bride. He approaches her as a sanctuary, understanding that she is never truly his, but always a gift. And he longs not only for physical intimacy, but her very person. Inspired by Christ’s love, the husband brings his bride closer to God than to himself. This is the love for which the Sacrament of Marriage strives.
Through this great love grows the desire for the beloved’s beauty to last forever, a glimpse of the eternal beauty of the Church and her fruits. The one flesh union so pivotal in Scripture – is one that is either consummated on the altar or in the marriage bed: “This is my body which is given up for you.”[12] In either the Eucharist or sex, it is the bridegroom who gives up his body for his bride. This conjugal union is not just biological, but liturgical.
In John Paul II’s Love and Responsibility, he addresses the importance of a proper understanding of the holiness of sex. This is where many Church Fathers disregarded marriage given the immense power of lust. However, the Catholic Church teaches that a marriage is not valid until consummation because sex is central to spousal love: the gift of oneself fully, faithfully, freely, and fruitfully. Sex cannot be separated from its spiritual ramifications. From the beginning, Adam was made for Eve and Eve for Adam. While their complementarity is not reduced to the physical, the physical is certainly relevant. Sex “is by no means something purely biological, but concerns the innermost being of the human person as such. It is realized in a truly human way only if it is an integral part of the love by which a man and a woman commit themselves totally to one another until death. The total physical self-giving would be a lie if it were not the sign and fruit of a total personal self-giving, in which the whole person, including the temporal dimension, is present: if the person were to withhold something or reserve the possibility of deciding otherwise in the future, by this very fact he or she would not be giving totally.”[13] Sex within the Sacrment of Marriage requires the total self gift of the beloved for the other. Such is why the Catholic Church and John Paul II speak ill of contraception: “Treating a person as a means to an end, and an end moreover which in this case is pleasure, the maximization of pleasure, will always stand in the way of love.”[14] This mirrors the original vocation tasked to Adam and Eve which was to love fully and in a unified totality (body and soul, heart and mind).[15]
In the marital act, the lover affirms the value of the beloved by his total gift and humble reception of her. Through this giving and receiving, man and woman image God’s love: “Love is the fullest realization of the possibilities that dwell in man … the person finds in love the greatest fullness of his being, of his objective existence… true love perfects the being of the person.”[16] Through this perfecting love, and with the power to co-create eternal beings with Christ, the beauty of sex defends itself.
St. John Chrysostom taught that the sacredness of the marital act is gifted from virginity: "Whoever denigrates marriage also diminishes the glory of virginity. Whoever praises it makes virginity more admirable and resplendent.”[17] John Paul II furthered this point: “Marriage and virginity or celibacy are two ways of expressing and living the one mystery of the covenant of God with His people. When marriage is not esteemed, neither can consecrated virginity or celibacy exist; when human sexuality is not regarded as a great value given by the Creator, the renunciation of it for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven loses its meaning.”[18] Without knowledge about the holiness of virginity, sex loses its sanctity. Just the same, in the failure to understand the beauty of sex, virginity loses its sacrifice.
There would be few religious vocations if there were no holy marriages, because it is within the home that a child first learns to love God: “The family is the original cell of social life. It is the natural society in which husband and wife are called to give themselves in love and in the gift of life. Authority, stability, and a life of relationships within the family constitute the foundations for freedom, security, and fraternity within society. The family is the community in which, from childhood, one can learn moral values, begin to honor God, and make good use of freedom. Family life is an initiation into life in society.”[20] The first church for a child is the family, which is modeled by the parents, exemplifying the importance of holy fathers and mothers. A child will learn to love by watching his parents. How can children become moral, if men and women are not living out their vocations as moral fathers and mothers? There is a great responsibility tasked to husbands and wives and they should rely on the sacramental graces to purify their family. If they do, children will be free to fulfill their personal vocations and sanctify their souls. Without the role of holy parents in a marriage, the holiness of children, and thus a society, is unlikely.
In light of this, John Paul II taught the lay faithful of their role to co-redeem the universe with Christ: “For the Kingdom of heaven is like a householder who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the labourers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard.”[21] John Paul II thus tasked the laity “to keep a watchful eye on this our world, with its problems and values, its unrest and hopes, its defeats and triumphs: a world whose economic, social, political and cultural affairs pose problems and grave difficulties…This, then, is the vineyard; this is the field in which the faithful are called to fulfill their mission. Jesus wants them, as he wants all his disciples, to be the ‘salt of the earth" and the "light of the world" (cf. Mt 5:13-14). But what is the actual state of affairs of the "earth" and the "world", for which Christians ought to be "salt" and "light"?’”[22] It is precisely the laity that must sanctify a society because they are the witnesses of Christ living among the world in an ordinary way, with “the specific role of interpreting the history of the world in the light of Christ, in as much as they are called to illuminate and organize temporal realities according to the plan of God, Creator and Redeemer.”[23] The practicality of this is no accident. Holy marriages and families are the humble witness a culture needs if it is to become virtuous.
Our Lady of Fatima predicted that the final battle between Christ and Satan will be over marriage and the family. Given that a society is built upon the family, holy marriages are the witness of Christ, of sacrifice, and of authentic self-giving love that the world needs. The Sacrament of Marriage, first observed physically between Adam and Eve, and modeled by the Holy Family, is a “school of love.”[24] It teaches the world not just of Christ’s heart, but the spouse of the beloved’s. Through the vows of marriage and the marital act, man and woman participate in the reality of liturgical love. Although Paul, St. Augustine, and St. Jerome were wary about the power of physical intimacy, John Paul II understood that its power inspires reverence, not fear. In reverencing marriage as it was intended, the vineyard becomes a place of great fruit, a harvest for vocations, and a foretaste of Heaven.
As Christ entered the world through His Nativity, He will co-redeem it with the same simplicity, the simplicity found in a loving marriage and an ordinary family.
[1] 1 Corinthians 13:13.
[2] 1 Corinthians 7:8-10.
[3] Augustine, Of the Good of Marriage, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1309.htm.
[4] Jerome, Letter 48 to Pammachius, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001048.htm.
[5] Pope John Paul II, Letter to Women, https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/ en/ letters/ 1995/ documents/hf_jp-ii_let_29061995_women.html, para 7.4.
[6] Genesis 2:24.
[7] John Paul II, Letter to Women, para 7.3.
[8] John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/ apost_ exhortations/ documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_19811122_familiaris-consortio.html, para 11.1.
[9] Ephesians 5:22.
[10] Ephesians 5:25.
[11] John Chrysostom, trans by Catherine Roth and David Anderson, On Marriage and Family Life (New York: St Vladimir's Press, 2003).
[12]1 Corinthians 11:24.
[13] John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, para 11.5.
[14] John Paul II. Trans by H.T. Willetts, Love and Responsibility (San Francisco: Ignatious Press, 1981).
[15] John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, para 11.3.
[16] John Paul II in Michael Waldstein, Man and Woman He created Them (Alexandria, Virginia: Pauline Books and Media, 2006).
[17] John Chrysostom, Virginity, X: PG 48: 540.
[18] John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, para 16.1.
[19] Jerome, Letter 48 to Pammachius.
[20] Catechism of the Catholic Church (US: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1994), para 2207.
[21] Matthew 20:1-2.
[22] John Paul II, Christifedeles Laici, https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_
exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_30121988_christifideles-laici.html, para 3.6.
[23] John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, para 5.2.
[24] John Paul II, Love and Responsibility.
