Day 219: Marriage in God’s Plan (1601-1608)

• It’s Day 219!!

• ARTICLE 7: THE SACRAMENT OF MATRIMONY

• MARRIAGE IN GOD’S PLAN

• MARRIAGE IN THE ORDER OF CREATION

• What was God’s intention?

• What was God’s vision for marriage?

• What is our experience?

• MARRIAGE UNDER THE REGIME OF SIN

• How do we experience this great gift that has been distorted

• It is not lost, but it has been broken in some ways

• How do we experience marriage now that we live in a broken world?

• We have Original Sin and we have our own actual sins that we tend to choose in our daily lives

• The word that comes to mind is ROBUST

• God’s plan is full 

• God’s plan is dynamic

• God’s plan is active

• God’s plan is alive

• Because God’s plan is rightful

• Marriage in God’s plan is going to be a great gift

• Let’s pray!!

Prayer by Fr. Mike: “Father in Heaven, in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, we ask you to please receive our prayer this morning. Through the Power of your Holy Spirit dwelling inside of us, that you give to us freely and give to us for our sanctification, for our salvation, for our growth, and becoming more and more like you. We ask you to please teach us today. We ask you to please help us to be docile to your movement, to your Word, to your vision for what marriage is supposed to be, what marriage is meant to be, and also how you can even work in our brokenness, and you can still bring beauty out of ashes. So Lord God, we ask you to please meet us in our need, especially those of us who have had difficult experiences when it comes to the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony. Those who have experienced brokenness, those who have experienced betrayal, those who have experienced hopes that have been crushed, we ask you to please be with all of us who have experienced that brokenness. And please be with those who are preparing for the great gift of Matrimony and those who are living in the great Sacrament of Matrimony. Basically, Lord, be with all of us as we take these first steps in learning about your plan for marriage. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen”

• So there we have it!!

• We have a picture of marriage that is so clear

• We live in a culture right now that what we are talking about has been muddled and muddied

• There seems to be a lot of confusion

• Holy Orders and Holy Matrimony are oriented toward service

• They are not oriented for the individual necessarily but for others

• This is the way we live our discipleship in Jesus

• Paragraph 1601 says, “‘The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring.”

• Marriage is a covenant

• Marriage is an exchange of persons, not of goods or services

• Marriage is between ONE MAN AND ONE WOMAN

• Marriage is not with a bunch of people

• Marriage is between themselves and it is a partnership of their entire lives

• Marriage is permanent for their whole lives

• Marriage is faithful for their whole lives

• Marriage is oriented towards freedom for their whole lives

• This is the point of marriage

• You can get married out of love and that is great and wonderful

• The mystery of the marriage covenant is that it is an image of the Trinity

• God, who is love, creates us out of love and calls us to love

• THIS IS SO CRITICAL!!

• Even in the midst of the fact that marriage is a place that men and women are called to live out the image of the Trinity, what is marriage oriented towards?

• Marriage is oriented towards the good of the spouses

• A man lays down his life for his bride, for her good

• A bride lays down her life for her husband, for his good

• This is a vocation of service

• A man does not get ordained to the priesthood so that he can be happy and fulfill all his dreams

• Hopefully he is saying yes to a call to take him out of himself

• So that’s the good of the spouses here, a vocation of service

• That you say YES because I want your good

• What is love?

• Love is willing the good of the other

• THAT IS CRITICAL!!

• The second part is oriented toward the procreation and education of children

• THIS IS SO IMPORTANT!!

• It is a vocation to marriage and family because in our culture right now, it seems like the FAMILY PART has become OPTIONAL

• AND YET…

• At the very heart of marriage, it is oriented towards the procreation and education of offspring

• We know that not all couples can have children naturally

• That is a difficult and painful cross for so many people to carry

• AND YET…

• The very nature of the relationship is oriented towards the procreation and education of children

• Procreation because this is where the sexual act happens in the context of marriage

• Education because it’s not just have as many children biologically as you possibly can

• The stable relationship between husband and wife that provides the context for the education of offspring

• That they can be raised in a stable environment

• THAT IS THE WHOLE POINT!!

• Our culture has lost a sense of the true purpose of marriage

• Scripture talks all about marriage

• It starts with Adam and Eve, the marriage of the first man and first woman

• It ends with the marriage feast of the Lamb

• All throughout Scripture, marriage and family is a critical image

• Especially the relationship of the Bridegroom, Jesus, to the Bride, the Church

• MARRIAGE IN THE ORDER OF CREATION

• Marriage is not purely a human institution

• God Himself is the author of marriage

• Marriage predates every culture 

• Marriage is the fundamental building block of society

• Paragraph 1603 says, “‘The well-being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal and family life.’”

• THIS IS SO IMPORTANT!!

• When marriages and families are healthy, cultures are healthy

• Our secular culture is healthy

• Our Christian culture is healthy

• When you have the breakdown of marriage and family, what is that a sign of?

• That is a sign of a lack of health in our secular culture

• That is a sign of a lack of health in our Catholic culture, our Christian family

• By His very nature, God calls us to love because He made us in His image and likeness

• Not everyone has the opportunity or is called to Holy Matrimony

• BUT…

• Marriage is very good in the Creator’s eyes

• This is the love that God blesses and has intended to be fruitful and to be realized

• What happens in the common work of Creation?

• In Genesis Ch 1, God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.”

• THIS IS SO IMPORTANT!!

• When we did Bible in a Year we read the first chapters of Genesis and we talked about the Creation of Eve from Adam’s side and how God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I should make a helpmate.”

• That term “helpmate” can seem demeaning to some people

• AND YET…

• Paragraph 1605 says, “Holy Scripture affirms that man and woman were created for one another: ‘It is not good that man should be alone.’ The woman, ‘flesh of his flesh,’ his equal, his nearest in all things, is given to him by God as a ‘helpmate’; she thus represents God from whom comes our help.”

• “Helpmate” is not demeaning and does not mean maid or butler

• That word “helpmate”, which is “ezer kenegdo” in Hebrew, is often used FOR THE LORD

• This is not meant to be demeaning

• AND YET…

• MARRIAGE UNDER THE REGIME OF SIN

• Because of brokenness, we do not experience this wholeness

• We don’t always experience happiness or healthiness when it comes to our relationships and when it comes to marriage

• Paragraph 1606 says, “Every man experiences evil around him and within himself. This experience makes itself felt in the relationships between man and woman. Their union has always been threatened by discord, a spirit of domination, infidelity, jealousy, and conflicts that can escalate into hatred and separation.”

• Even though marriage is given to us as a great and incredible gift, so many of us have experienced have experienced the brokenness and pain of that gift

• This is the painful reality of living in this broken world

• Paragraph 1607 says, “According to faith the disorder we notice so painfully does not stem from the nature of man and woman, nor from the nature of their relations, but from sin. As a break with God, the first sin had for its consequence the rupture of the original communion between man and woman. Their relations were distorted by mutual recriminations; their mutual attraction, the Creator’s own gift, changed into a relationship of domination and lust; and the beautiful vocation of man and woman to be fruitful, multiply, and subdue the earth was burdened by the pain of childbirth and the toil of work.”

• WHEN WE BREAK WITH GOD, WE BREAK WITH EACH OTHER!!

• THAT IS WHAT SIN DOES!!

• SIN EVEN BREAKS OUR OWN HEARTS!!

•  Nevertheless, God’s grace comes to us

• God, in His infinite mercy, never refuses to help us

• Without God’s help, we cannot achieve the union of our lives

• Without God’s help, we could never live out the beauty of this high call

• Because marriage is a high call

• Matrimony is also a great gift

• For so many of us listening, that is our gift and our call

• It is our gift and our cross

• It is our gift and our burden

• Say YES to this gift

• Say YES to the burden

• Say YES to this cross

• Say YES to this blessing

• Fr. Mike is praying FOR YOU!!

• Please pray for Fr. Mike and for each other!!

• I cannot WAIT to see you tomorrow!!