Sacraments- Marriage and Holy Orders

Sacraments at the Service of Communion

references/sources

• CCC Part Two, Chapter Three 1533 - 1666
• Gaudium et Spes Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World # 47
• The Essential Catholic Handbook of the Sacraments

Content

The Sacraments at the Service of Communion

• 1522 Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist are sacraments of Christian initiation. They ground the common vocation of all Christ's disciples, a vocation to holiness and to the mission of evangelizing the world. They confer the graces needed for the life according to the Spirit during this life as pilgrims on the march towards the homeland.

• 1534 Two other sacraments, Holy Orders and Matrimony, are directed towards the salvation of others; if they contribute as well to personal salvation, it is through service to others that they do so. They confer a particular mission in the Church and serve to build up the People of God.
• 1535 Through these sacraments those already consecrated by Baptism and Confirmation1 for the common priesthood of all the faithful can receive particular consecrations. Those who receive the sacrament of Holy Orders are consecrated in Christ's name "to feed the Church by the word and grace of God."2 On their part, "Christian spouses are fortified and, as it were, consecrated for the duties and dignity of their state by a special sacrament."3

The Sacrament of Matrimony

1601 "The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament."84

Marriage in God's plan

• 1602 Sacred Scripture begins with the creation of man and woman in the image and likeness of God and concludes with a vision of "the wedding-feast of the Lamb."85 Scripture speaks throughout of marriage and its "mystery," its institution and the meaning God has given it, its origin and its end, its various realizations throughout the history of salvation, the difficulties arising from sin and its renewal "in the Lord" in the New Covenant of Christ and the Church
• God himself is the author of Marriage (GS 47). The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator.
• God blessed them and God said to them: "be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it." (Gen. 1:28)

Marriage under the regime of sin

• polygamy, the plague of divorce, so-called free love and other disfigurements... (GS 47)
• Artificial methods of inception
• Same sex marriage

Marriage under the pedagogy of the Law

• 1609 In his mercy God has not forsaken sinful man. The punishments consequent upon sin, "pain in childbearing" and toil "in the sweat of your brow,"100 also embody remedies that limit the damaging effects of sin. After the fall, marriage helps to overcome self-absorption, egoism, pursuit of one's own pleasure, and to open oneself to the other, to mutual aid and to self-giving.

The Effects of the Sacrament of Matrimony

• 1638 "From a valid marriage arises a bond between the spouses which by its very nature is perpetual and exclusive; furthermore, in a Christian marriage the spouses are strengthened and, as it were, consecrated for the duties and the dignity of their state by a special sacrament."142

The openness to fertility

• 1664 Unity, indissolubility, and openness to fertility are essential to marriage. Polygamy is incompatible with the unity of marriage; divorce separates what God has joined together; the refusal of fertility turns married life away from its "supreme gift," the child (GS 50 §1).

History of the sacrament

In the very early church, marriage was a social or a family matter rather than a religious. It was not until the fourth century with the teaching of Saint Augustine that the expectations and viewpoints of the Church about marriage began to be clarified, and a rudimentary theology of the sacrament of matrimony began to emerge with a focus on something other than divorce.

• St. Augustine building his reasoning on St. Paul's understanding of marriage as a sign of the love that Christ has for his church argued that just as the love of Christ is permanent, the love of a husband and a wife should also be permanent.

Terms

• XX