Each human being is created in the image and likeness of God, and thus each of us has the vocation to love as God loves. However, in creating us, God made us either male or female and asked us to "be fruitful and multiply." Through this invitation God confirmed the experiences of our first parents and invited them (and through them, all of us) to form a familial communion of persons. The familial communion of persons is a specification of the broader ecclesial (Church) communion of persons. As such, the familial communion of persons is an intensification of the baptismal love that two people should have for one another. As the ecclesial communion of persons is founded on the sacrament of Baptism, so the familial communion of persons is established by the sacrament of Matrimony.
The sensible signs of the sacrament of marriage are the physical presence of the bride and the groom (if married by proxy, the physical presence of the proxy substitutes for the physical presence of the bride or the groom) and the vows that the bride and the groom say to one another. In Christian marriage, both the bride and the groom are baptized, i.e., each has "put on Christ." Thus, as the bride and the groom stand in the presence of the Church's minister and two witnesses, as they face one another and with their right hands joined, each is Christ for the other. In other words, they confer the sacrament on one another. The Church's representative, usually a priest or a deacon, is simply a witness to the sacrament. Further, even though there is no explicit scriptural reference concerning Christ's institution of the sacrament, it is based on the words and actions of Christ. Traditionally, Christ's attendance at the marriage feast at Cana and His remarks to the Pharisees about marriage have been taken as Christ's institution of the sacrament of Matrimony.
Through the sacrament of Matrimony, Christ loves us and God utercifully. The bride and the groom love each other in spite of all failings, faults, foibles, and shortcomings. The spouse forgives or patiently endures these problems. Further, they are drawn as close as two people can be. In other words, they love each other mercifully. However, since they are Christs for one another, in and through their .mutual love, Christ loves each of them.
By loving us and God in Matrimony, Christ reveals how we are to love one another. In marriage, a man and a woman commit themselves to love each other as Christ loves us. Christ's love for us is total, i.e., permanent and limitless. Christ's love is permanent because there is never a moment when Christ does not love us. Christ's final words in Matthew's Gospel reveal the everlasting character of His love for us: "I am with you always." In addition, the love of Christ is without limit. There is nothing good that Christ does not do for human beings. For example, when John the Baptist sent his disciples to Christ to ask Him, "Are You He Who is to come, or shall we look for another?" Christ revealed the depth of His love for people in His answer to them. Christ said, "Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have the good news preached to them." Of course, always at the forefront of Christ's total love for us stands the cross. In Matrimony, spouses love each other totally, i.e., permanently and limitlessly. During the celebration of the sacrament, the couple says to one another, "I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life." Obviously, the marriage vows promise permanence because spouses give all the days of their lives to one another. Just as obvious is the limitless character of the marital self-gift, i.e., the spouses promise one another that there will be no circumstances (good times, bad times, sickness, or health) that will prevent them from loving one another. In addition, by promising to give themselves to one another limitlessly, the couple promises to give-to each other all that they are, including the possibility of life, i.e., children. So marital love involves a "totality, in which all the elements of the person enter." Marital love "aims at a deeply personal unity, the unity that, beyond union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul; it demands indissolubility and faithfulness in definitive mutual giving; and it is open to fertility."
The grace given in the sacrament of Matrimony empowers husbands and wives to love each other as Christ loves us. By loving us in the sacrament of Matrimony, Christ empowers men and women to form a familial communion of persons. In other words, He enables marriage to be "the one blessing that was not forfeited by original sin or washed away in the flood." Even wounded by sin, human beings are still called to imitate the trinitarian communion of Persons by forming a family. The sign of the sacrament signifies a union between husband and wife. Thus, the sacrament creates a union between the spouses in Christ: their two hearts are made one.
Marriage is a bodily reality. If one of the spouses dies, the surviving spouse may enter a new marriage. However, as long as both live, they are one, i.e., they are married and cannot validly enter a new marriage. (In the last decades, there have been large numbers of annulments granted by the Church. Annulments are not permissions granted to spouses to enter new marriages while their previous marriages still exist. Rather, annulments are declarations that presumed previous marriages were not in fact marriages because there were flaws or obstacles standing in the way of the marriage at the time the vows were said.)
