Love and Marriage

Marriage is a Sacrament

Christian  marriage  shall  reflect  the  love and  trust of Christ for His Church. He loves His Church despite all her faults and imperfections, and He does not leave her. The prototype of  this link between Christ and His Church is  already  shown in  the  love  of  God  for  His people, Israel, in  the  Old Testament.  He  faithfully accompanied  them  through  all  times. This "covenant of God with  His  people" is mentioned repeatedly in the Bible in terms of the image of a marriage. (Isaiah 50,1; Jeremiah 2,2; 5,7).

The unconditional faithfulness of God and Jesus Christ to humanity and the Church should be mirrored in the love of the spouses.  This love can correspond so closely  to  Christ's  relationship  with  the Church that it is not only an image of His love,  but  that  His love itself is becoming present through the love of the married couple.  For this reason,  Paul calls matrimony a "profound mystery".

What happens between two people on a minor scale takes place between Christ and the Church on a large scale.  Thus,  God  can be experienced in the love of the spouses.  Therefore, the Christian marriage is a Sacrament, a sign, a place and  means  for  divine  action.  It is not  merely a  community for the purposes of financial convenience or an institutionalized form of procreation and child raising.

Church wedding

A church wedding is more than just an  extra  blessing compared to a civil ceremony. A man and a woman commit themselves to each other before a priest or deacon  and  at  least  two  witnesses,  but  usually  a  larger  community,  and thereby administer to each other the Sacrament of Matrimony.  The validity of a marriage of Catholics is tied to this rite of the Church, which, like every other Sacrament, has its own distinct form.

The community participates in this celebration and learns that God becomes present in a special way in the  Sacrament of Matrimony not only to the spouses, but also to the members of the community. However, the Sacrament is not limited to the Church wedding but is very closely connected to the couple's history, beginning  long before the wedding and ending with their death.

Although  marriage,  especially  the  Christian  marriage,  is   today  being  called into  question,  the majority of couples opt for a Church wedding. This does not seem  to  jibe with  the  generally  suspected  decrease of the Church's credibility and  the distancing of people from the Church.  For this reason we  often hear that for  many  people  the  ceremony at the Church is just a solemn setting for the wedding. However, in  many  cases,  this is not so. Most brides and bridegrooms,  even  those  who seem little engaged in the Church, feel that marriage is an  important point of their  lives  and that the success of their common plans does not depend solely on themselves.