What does it mean to call marriage a vocation? A vocation is a calling from God, and before discussing any particular vocation, it’s good to keep in mind our universal vocation, which is the call to holiness (“Lumen Gentium,” 39-42). To be holy means to be like God. And God is love (1 Jn 4:8).
Our universal vocation, therefore, is a call to love and be loved. Each of us must find a way to live out the vocation to love in our own lives if we are to be fulfilled. Particular vocations, including matrimony, provide a particular context in which the universal vocation is lived out.
Marriage is a vocation, but it is also a sacrament. A sacrament is an efficacious sign of God’s grace. This means that through the shared life of husband and wife, God is made present in the world in a very real way. St. Paul ends his reflection on married life in his letter to the Ephesians by saying, “This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the Church” (Eph 5:32). It is worth noting that in the Eastern Churches, the sacraments are referred to as “mysteries.”
Eastern Christianity provides us with another term to help us understand marriage: icon. Icons have been described as windows into heaven. Marriage is meant to be a living icon of the love God has for us in Christ. God wedded Himself to us at the Incarnation because by taking human nature to Himself, the two of us became one flesh. We call the Church both the Body of Christ and the Bride of Christ because by making the Church His Bride, Christ also makes the Church His Body. When he describes marriage, St. Paul can’t help but describe Christ and the Church because the more we understand the meaning of marriage, the more we understand God’s love for us. Likewise, the more faithfully we live out the vocation of marriage, the more fully we manifest God’s love in our lives and in the world.
Like all sacraments, God uses the physical elements of creation as channels for His grace: water for baptism, bread and wine for the Eucharist. In the sacrament of matrimony, the physical matter is the husband and the wife. The matter for the sacraments is treated with great care because it has been designated for a divine purpose.
Before a baptism, the water is first blessed. Before he celebrates the Eucharist, the priest blesses the bread and offers thanks. So married couples ought to bless and give thanks for one another.
Christian marriage should be Eucharistic. We celebrate weddings in church so that the couple may stand before the altar of God and say to one another, “This is my body, given for you.” This is the key difference between love and lust. Lust seeks to take, but love can only be given. Tellingly, St. Paul begins his passage on marriage by instructing husband and wife to “be subordinate to one another” (Eph 5:21). This mutual giving of self in love is precisely how God loves us in Christ – He came not to be served, but to serve and give His life for us (Mk 10:45). If husband and wife love the image of Christ in each other, then as they grow in love for one another, they grow in the love of God.
Consider how often God takes the ordinary and elevates it to the extraordinary. He transforms ordinary water into wine, and ordinary wine into His own Precious Blood. What could be more ordinary than a boy and girl falling in love? Marriage is the sacrament through which the natural vocation of family life is transformed into a supernatural sign of God’s love for us.
In the scriptures, God most often speaks of His relationship with Israel as a marriage covenant, so it should come as no surprise that the scriptures describe heaven as a wedding banquet. At the heavenly banquet, the marriage between God and man is brought to consummation and Christ will be all in all. Marriage is meant to be an image of that heavenly reality, a witness in the world of God’s love for us. This means Christian marriage must be faithful and fruitful, as God’s love is faithful and fruitful. And just as God’s love for us led Him to the cross, marriage likewise involves sacrifice and self-offering, death and resurrection, the leaving behind of an old way of life and the start of something new.
When Christian couples live their vocations well, they make God’s love incarnate in a particular way only that couple can. Christian marriage is a blessing not only for the spouses and their children, but for their extended family, friends, for the Church and indeed for the entire world. The world desperately needs holy marriages because the world needs to know God’s love.
Deacon Matthew Newsome is the Catholic campus minister at Western Carolina University and the regional faith formation coordinator for the Smoky Mountain Vicariate.