Marriage in the light of
Creation, Fall and Redemption
The whole notion of marriage is
so confused in our time, even among Catholics, that we desperately need to
recover some basic and foundational truths. The mini-catechesis on the
sacrament of marriage in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (¶1601-1617) proceeds in light of Creation, Fall, and Redemption.
Marriage, it states, belongs to the order of redemption, is under the regime of
sin, but is grounded in the order of creation.
John Paul II wrote regarding marriage: “Willed by God in the very
act of creation, marriage and the family are interiorly ordained to fulfillment
in Christ and have need of His graces in order to be healed from the wounds of
sin and restored to their ‘beginning’ [back to creation], that is, to full
understanding and the full realization of God’s plan.” (Familiaris consortio 3) This major claim, along with its undergirding theology of
nature and grace, is developed throughout John Paul II’s Man
and Woman He Created Them.
The Word of God teaches that
the redemptive work of Christ reaffirms and simultaneously renews the goodness
of creation – and hence of marriage, of the human body sharing in the dignity
of the image of God, of the complimentary sexual differentiation of man and
woman, and of a faithful, reciprocal, and fruitful love. Yes, in light of the
redemptive work of Christ, the Catholic sacramental tradition teaches that the
sacrament of marriage renews and restores the reality of marriage – given that
it is savagely wounded by the fall and our own personal sin – from within its
order.
Thus, the grace of marriage communicated by the sacrament has two
main ends: first, that of healing, i.e., of repairing the consequences of sin in
the individual and in society; and second – and above all – that of perfecting
and raising persons and the conjugal institution. “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 first consequence the rupture of the original communion
between man and woman.” (CCC 1607)
Gaudium et spes summarizes all of this: “This [marital] love God has judged worthy
of special gifts, healing, perfecting and exalting gifts of grace and of
charity.” (49)
This two-fold effect means that
the grace of the “marital sacrament is not a ‘thing’ added to the reality of
the couple from the outside; rather, the couple itself is and must become the
living sign of an invisible reality of grace,” as Canadian Cardinal Marc
Ouellet puts it. There is an intrinsic relationship between the natural order
and the order of Christ’s grace such that grace renews the fallen order of
marriage from within, orienting it to its proper ends.
Grace penetrating fallen nature
and renewing it from within (“gratia intra naturam”) means there is an essential
continuity in man and a link between creation and redemption. “Endowment with
grace is in some sense a ‘new creation’,” says John Paul.
“New creation” does not, however, mean that grace is a
plus-factor, a superadded gift, to the order of creation. Rather, nature and
grace, creation and re-creation, the sacrament of creation and redemption are
united such that God’s grace affirms and simultaneously renews the fallen
creation from within its own internal order. As the Catechism puts it, “Jesus came to restore creation to the purity of its
origins.” (2336)
Elsewhere, the Catechism explains, “In his preaching Jesus unequivocally taught the
original meaning of the union of man and woman as the Creator willed it from
the beginning. . . . By coming to restore the original order of creation
disturbed by sin, [Jesus] himself gives the strength and grace to live marriage
in the new dimension of the Reign of God. ” (1614-1615)
This sacrament not only
recovers the order of creation but also, while reaffirming this ordinance
of creation, it simultaneously deepens, indeed, fulfills the reality of
marriage in a reciprocal self-giving, a joining of two in a one-flesh union
that is a visible sign of the mystery of the union of Christ with the Church.
(Eph 5:31-32)
The unity attained in becoming
“two-in-one-flesh” (Gen 2:24) in marriage is grounded in the order of creation,
and it is affirmed and simultaneously renewed and restored in redemption. Since
continuity exists between creation and redemption, we can understand why John
Paul II sees marriage as “the primordial sacrament.”
When we look at the visible
sign of marriage (“the two shall be one flesh”) in the order of creation from
the perspective of the visible sign of Christ and the Church, which is defined
in Ephesians as the fulfillment and realization of God’s eternal plan of
salvation, we can see John Paul’s point. He says, “In this way, the sacrament
of redemption clothes itself, so to speak, in the figure and form of the
primordial sacrament. . . . Man’s new supernatural endowment with the gift of
grace in the ‘sacrament of redemption’ is also a new realization of the Mystery
hidden from eternity in God, new in comparison with the sacrament of creation.
At this moment, endowment with grace is in some sense a ‘new creation’.”
Let’s be clear that he calls it
a “new creation” in the specific sense that “Redemption means. . . taking up
all that is created [in order] to express in creation the fullness of justice,
equity, and holiness planned for it by God and to express that fullness above
all in man, created male and female ‘in the image of God’.”
Thus, nature and grace, creation and re-creation, the sacrament of
creation and redemption are united such that God’s grace affirms and
simultaneously renews the fallen creation from within its own internal order.
For JPII and the main Catholic tradition: “Marriage is organically inscribed in
this new sacrament of redemption, just as it was inscribed in the original
sacrament of creation.”
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