LIFE, MARRIAGE & FAMILY: Strengthening marriage through God’s grace
By Mark Griffin, Director of the Office of Life, Marriage and Family
Strong marriages are at the heart of strong families, which are the bedrock of society. How do we know what it means to have a strong marriage? We turn to God.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that, “God himself is the author of marriage”. (CCC, 1603). It goes on to say, “God who created man out of love also calls him to love… For man is created in the image and likeness of God who is himself love” (CCC, 1604).
Right from the first marriage between Adam and Eve, the evil one has been on the attack against marriage and the family. His deception of our first parents, leading to the original sin, was a direct attack on this pinnacle of God’s creation—male and female, made in God’s image and likeness.
This is no surprise, as it stands to reason that an institution authored by God and formed out of Love would be a target for the evil one.
When we see the state of the world around us today, this battle is still raging. Pope Pius XII spoke to this issue when he once said, “When the family is debased, remote from God and therefore deprived of divine blessings without which nothing can prosper, it is shaken to its very foundations and sooner or later is in danger of plunging to destruction and ruin”.
When couples enter into marriage according to God’s plan for them, they will flourish, allowing their families to flourish, positively impacting the wider society around them. For this flourishing to take place, God must be at the heart of the union. As Archbishop Fulton Sheen famously taught, “It takes three to get married”.
There will be times when the going gets tough. This is the inevitable result of the fall of our first parents. This is precisely why marriage was “raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament” (CCC, 1601).
The sacramental graces received through marriage are a gift from God, through His Church, that will enable a couple to navigate difficulties in their marriage. These graces don’t necessarily make marriage according to God’s plan easy, they just make it possible.
When Catholics choose to enter into unions away from the Church, they are, possibly inadvertently, blocking the sacramental graces from flowing into and strengthening their marriage.
The good news is that the Church has a process for those couples to repair this situation. Through ‘convalidation’, couples are invited to welcome God into their union, correcting this essential step that was previously overlooked.
Through this process, a couple demonstrate to the Church their eligibility for marriage and, if all is determined to be in order, they renew their consent before the Church. There need not be another big ceremony.
So long as the necessary elements of a Catholic marriage are present and the convalidation process is followed in accordance with the Church’s directions, the floodgates can be opened, allowing sacramental grace to flow into the marriage, as Our Lord intended.