Getting married - what does it add to our lives?

Life as a couple - does it have anything to do with society and with the Church? Some people say: It has nothing to do with anyone but me, no one has any right to say anything about my marriage... There is some truth in this, at least in part. Marriage is first and essentially the union of a man and a woman who say yes to one another, who build a covenant together. Christ meant just this when he said: Man leaves his father and his mother and attaches himself to his wife. And they become one body.

But it is also true that all marriages have social consequences. They need to be acknowledged by society in order to function better: it is society which gives their surname to the children, and which, in certain circumstances, has the right to raise them.

In most cases, it is impossible for a couple and for a family not to have this social status, that assures its legal recognition, protects its rights and facilitates its relations with the rest of society. Besides, are not the couple and the family the basic unit of society?

It is, therefore, necessary to find a balance between the proper autonomy of the couple in the midst of all the social pressures working against their intimacy, happines and fidelity, and the necessity of social and legal recognition, which entails certain obligations.

Civil Marriage

Couples have, therefore, a true right to a social status that is not always what the state imposes at any given moment in history. There are numerous countries where marriage in church is legally valid. On the contrary, in France, for instance, the law does not regard religious marriage as legally binding. Furthermore, a religious marriage is against the law if it is not first preceded by a civil marriage before the mayor of the city or town or by his assistant.

Despite these limits, civil marriage (without a religious marriage) brings something to the couple, insofar as it is a commitment made not only by the couple themselves, but also with respect to others.

Marriage in the Church

Following Christ’s command, the Church asks baptized Catholics to marry in the Church, to say yes to each other freely and definitively. Religious marriage is called a sacrament. This means that by their yes, the man and the woman receive a special gift of God (a grace received in faith) that changes their hearts and gives them a greater capacity to love each other: the capacity to receive the other every day like a gift and to love each other faithfully beyond their individual limits. It is thus that, day after day, a community of life and love can be built.

The gift of God, in this sacrament, is a real hope for the couple. The first miracle that Jesus performed at Cana, as we are told in the Gospel (John 2:1-11), at Cana, was to renew joy in marriage. Just when the shortage of wine threatened to end the celebration too soon, Jesus changed the water into wine. This is what he proposes to us in the Sacrament of Marriage: to transform the water of our human marriage - with all its realities - into wine, the wine of the Wedding of the Lamb, so that our love endures to eternity.