The Sacramentality of Marriage

Use of the term “Sacrament”

            It is important to understand how the Holy Father makes use of the term sacrament in order to understand his exposition. Sacrament is used in two ways, in a more general and wider sense and in a more specific and traditional sense. In the more general sense sacrament means “a visible sign of an invisible reality; that is of the spiritual, transcendent, divine reality.”[1] “Here sacrament signifies the very mystery of God, which is hidden from eternity.”[2] This hiddenness does not mean that it is unknown but rather that in as much as it is unveiled in its actualization, it remains essentially a mystery by virtue of the object it reveals itself to, the finite human mind and heart. John Paul II uses this sense of sacrament in reference to the body, the Church, the sacrament of creation and the sacrament of redemption. Regards the sacrament of creation he specifically refers to the sacramentality of marriage which is known as the primordial sacrament. This latter reference is the foundation for understanding the sacrament of redemption in as much as it refers to Christ and the Church presented in Ephesians with nuptial language and the analogy of husband and wife closely reflected.[3]

            This more complex use of the more ancient form of “sacrament” is complimented by the more traditional or contemporary use of sacrament. The Thomistic hylomorphic understanding of sacrament as form and matter refers to the sacramental life of the Church understood specifically as the celebration of the seven sacraments. St. Thomas’ classic definition of a sacrament refers precisely to the seven sacraments of the Church.[4] In this more restricted sense and use of the term sacrament, the Holy Father sees the fulfillment of the broader concept of the sacrament of redemption. In effect, the letter to the Ephesians authorizes the connection between the wider sense of sacrament with the specific sense of sacrament, bringing them together in what could be called a re-creation of the original primordial sacrament. God in the person of Jesus Christ re-creates and renews the old man Adam and his wife Eve through his Paschal Mystery by entering into a covenantal bond with the Church which is presented in the form of a sacrament—marriage. Contained within this analogy is the real re-creation of the world and establishment of a definitive economy of salvation which is the sacramental life of the Church. Hence, marriage as the primordial sacrament of creation is revealed as the foundation of the economy of salvation.[5] The words of Lumen Gentium, which liken the Church to a sacrament (using the wider sense), receive clarification in light of this understanding of sacrament in the wider and restricted sense and their relationship to one another.[6]

Relational Model and its Paranetic Character

            Ephesians 5:21-33 has often been a lightening rod for critics, exegetes, scholars, and students. Its language can lead to a misinterpretation of the message which the author is relaying. The foundation of a proper and legitimate understanding of the text comes with the understanding of the communitarian and reciprocal dimensions.[7] How a husband and wife relate to one another must have its paradigm in how Christ relates to the Church. This relationship should always be reciprocal and communitarian. Any departure from such relational dimensions signals a departure from the true nature of the relationship. For the man and woman, who are the very actors in the nuptial relationship, their paradigm follows Paul’s “reverence for Christ.” Reverence here means respect in holiness, understanding holiness as “the bases for reciprocal relations between husband and wives.”[8] Therefore, in order for husband and wife to truly love one another they must have reverence for Christ first.

            This relational model has a “parenetic” character.[9] The spouses must act according to the paradigm of marriage. Marriage is an imitation of Christ and his love for the Church. “This mystery should be spiritually present in the mutual relationship of spouses . . . penetrating their hearts, engendering in them that holy ‘reverence for Christ’ should lead them to be subject to one another.”[10] That penetration does not come automatically, magically, or mechanically. Only when the mystery of Christ, that is, the Paschal Mystery of His redemption of man, penetrates the heart of husbands and wives, can they understand and actuate the words of Ephesians. Those words could be perceived as allusions to domination of the wife by the husband but in fact are read and understood properly to be a mutual subjectivity and subordination founded on their respective reverence for Christ which has its perfect expression in love.[11]

            Love is the operative term here. Love by its very nature cannot dominate. “Love excludes every kind of subjection whereby the wife might become a servant or a slave to the husband, an object of unilateral domination.”[12] Husband and wife must be in a reciprocal relationship wherein there is a mutual self-donation. What we see here is the actualization of the nuptial meaning of the body in the nuptial mystery of marriage. Just as Adam and Eve in their original innocence experienced original unity and happiness without being subject to the consequences of sin, concupiscence and lust, so does the letter to the Ephesians envision the new covenantal relationship of marriage to be likewise one of mutual subjection in love without appropriation or domination. This alone produces true communion of persons which is the very foundation of the family “from the beginning.”  

            Once again, the paradigm for this relational model is Christ and the Church. Christian marriage must reflect the love that Christ has for his Church. That love is perfect unto death—that is sacrificial.[13] That love must always be reciprocal. Just as Christ loves the Church and the Church loves Christ, so too are husband and wife called to imitate that level of love. The Holy Father calls such love “redeeming love, love as salvation, the love which man from eternity has been loved by God in Christ.”[14] The standards are very high, for what is at stake is the integrity of God’s love and the role that the spouses play as a prophetic announcement of that love.

            Moreover, the standard of love which Christ sets is one of nuptial love, for in giving himself in absolute obedience to the Father, Christ, according to the letter to the Ephesians, also gives himself up for the Church not as a single event, but as the culmination of the perpetual disposition of love. Hans Urs von Balthasar states that “the whole life of Jesus should be conceived as a going to the Cross,”[15] and it must also be said that the journey has as its purpose the heart of the nuptial mystery, to give himself as an oblation to the Father for the life of the world. So too does the husband and the wife reproduce in themselves respectively this disposition of openness to one another in imitation of Christ, a going to the Cross in the sacrifices made for each other in nuptial love. The saints also testify to this level of love, especially the martyrs who highlight the eschatological dimension of absolute self-giving.  

The Purpose of the Body in Nuptial Love

            From what has been said, it is clear that the love of Christ for the Church is a model and paradigm for marriage. It is also a love that has a purpose in mind, to sanctify the Church.[16] This sanctification comes about through baptism, alluded to in the text, “through water and the word.”[17] Naturally, that also applies to the husband and wife. Through baptism they too are sanctified.[18] The emphasis of the body in these verses concerning sanctification illustrates the sacredness of the human body and its role in realizing the nuptial mystery itself. Christ assures us that the Church will remain pure on account of his love and sacrifice for her.[19] He also intends for the persons who enter into the covenant of marriage to uphold and realize that same level of purity. This purity is moral. Here we return to the parenetic scope of the text. Their union is a communion in truth and love, the truth of the nuptial meaning of the body which they are seeking to realize in their union. The body is the means through which this union takes place.[20] That union of love expressed in perfect reciprocity between husband and wife within conjugal love.

            However, recall that while the sanctification that comes through baptism is real, it remains subject to corruption by the effects of original sin and its effects—concupiscence. Concupiscence wounds the ability of man and woman to express love in the body which constitutes this moral union. Therefore, it becomes a question of showing love through the body in purity and not as the man of lust. The difference is communion verses appropriation, love verses lust, reciprocity verses selfish use and defamation. The reference to nourishment of the flesh[21] has been interpreted by some scripture scholars to have cryptic allusions to the Eucharist. The union between Christ and His Church is renewed liturgically in the Sacrifice of the Mass, the Church’s perennial celebration of the “Great Mystery.”[22] It also makes reference to the husband and wife, who must nourish their love at the source of love and the fountain of grace, the Eucharist, which is the greatest gift of the Sacred Heart.[23] Moreover, they as the germ of the cell of the family, will afford their children the benefit and nourishment from this same fountain of love and grace.       

            If the purpose of the love of Christ for His Church is to sanctify her by the giving of Himself in the body,[24] then likewise spouses are called to sanctify one another through their love for one another precisely through the giving of themselves in conjugal love.

            Moreover, sanctification is always a preparation for salvation. Christ sanctifies the Church to save the Church. The Holy Father writes that this “analogy . . . has its ultimate basis in God’s salvific plan.”[25] That plan is the mystery which the letter to the Ephesians refers to, “a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.”[26] However, the letter also refers to the “Great Mystery” which is at least an indirect reference to the sacramental life of the Church and marriage in particular.[27] Sacrament, in the widest sense of the term refers to “the accomplishment of God’s eternal plan in regard to the salvation of mankind,”[28] which is intimately tied to the Eucharistic Sacrifice. The sacraments as “mystery” and the “Great Mystery” have one common thread, the sanctification of humanity in order to prepare humanity for full communion with God.[29] The Church and her entire sacramental life are at the heart of the mystery of God’s salvific plan. This is what the Second Vatican Council teaches when it says: “The Church is in Christ like a sacrament or as a sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race.”[30] It is precisely through the sacramental life of the Church that man and woman, husband and wife and their children are being sanctified. Therefore, the sacramentality of the body reveals the plan of God to redeem man through man, in the person of Jesus Christ. All is directed towards salvation and redemption of the body.

Article by Fr. Alejandro Valladres, Archdiocese of Mobile