Questioned for the married among us

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

I know how the Church defines marriage as a sacrament, but I don't know how actual married Catholics define their marriage. What makes your marriage sacramental or special?

[hedgehog]

1. That's an excellent question that has me thinking a lot. It would make an excellent

sermon just to ask that question and then sit down!

[Beer Snob-50]

2. well this may be simplistic but...

i think that by having a priest officiate the ceremony, the holy spirit blesses the couple and imparts his gifts upon them. this is what is missing in a civil ceremony.

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

3. I understand the "mechanics" of it, so to speak.

What I'm trying to figure out is what is it that occurs or exists between a man and a woman that validates it and makes it special.

[hedgehog]

4. By definition, a sacrament is a sign of God's love. What makes a marriage

sacramental is if the love between the couple is a sign of God's love for the world. Do the persons involved love the other the way God loves the other? The sacramental nature doesn't come from having a Church wedding, it's from how the marriage is lived day by day, year by year.

[47of74]

5. Something I just thought of

I'm not married myself, but this thread made me remember something. My maternal grandma - a Catholic her whole life - was married twice in her life. Her first marriage, which produced her oldest daughter, was for a while in the early 40s. This first marriage was to another Catholic and didn't work out too well. He wanted to go out west, she didn't - and the west won out. Her second marriage in 1943 was to grandpa, who was a member of the United Church of Christ. The Catholic Church was none to pleased about that or it being her second marriage, so the marriage was in the rectory. That second marriage produced mom and all the other children. That marriage lasted until grandpa's death in 1980.

[hedgehog]

6. Your story raises a question about the Church's attitude toward divorce .

If the marriage doesn't work, is it a sacramental marriage? If it's not sacramental, why not allow people to admit to having made a mistake?

On the other hand, were Jesus's comments on marriage directed at men who would divorce their wives if someone with a better dowry came along? Was he using exaggeration as in ""If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it from you"? I don't see many 1 eyed Catholics around.

[Joe Chi Minh]

7. Pirate is right. A sacrament is a (direct or immediate) channel to the supernatural, to God, in fact

according, I believe, to Roman Catholic usage of the word. Evidently, this means in a special ecclesial way, since the Holy Spirit lives in us by virtue of our Baptism, inspires and co-ordinates the strands of our intelligence and understanding, and prompts us to pray. So, in that sense, a sacrament is much, much more than a sign of God's love.

Of course, like Baptism, itself, the Holy Spirit's effect's can be effectively rejected by serious sin, as you imply in your last sentence. For a marriage to be valid and real, sacramentally, there has to be a "one to one" commitment between the partners. Immaturity on the part of just one partner, resulting in the absence of a "one to one" commitment renders the sacrament null, from the sacramental standpoint (although not secular law, which remains valid). It was meaningless and constitutes grounds for a formal Church annulment.

An odd thing about the marriage of a Christian couple, as a sacrament, is as follows:
"The Ministers of the Sacrament:
How can a marriage between two non-Catholic but baptized Christians be a sacrament, if a Catholic priest does not perform the marriage? Most people, including most Roman Catholics, do not realize that the ministers of the sacrament are the spouses themselves. While the Church strongly encourages Catholics to marry in the presence of a priest (and to have a wedding Mass, if both prospective spouses are Catholic), strictly speaking, a priest is not needed.

The Mark and Effect of the Sacrament:
The spouses are the ministers of the sacrament of marriage because the mark—the external sign—of the sacrament is not the wedding Mass or anything the priest might do but the marriage contract itself. This does not mean the wedding license that the couple receives from the state, but the vows that each spouse makes to the other. As long as each spouse intends to contract a true marriage, the sacrament is performed.

The effect of the sacrament is an increase in sanctifying grace for the spouses, a participation in the divine life of God Himself."

This is an excerpt from the following website:

http://catholicism.about.com/od/beliefsteachings/p/Sac_Marriage.htm

Baptism, is also an odd sacrament in that, in an emergency, it may also be administered by a lay-person.