Wednesday, April 16, 2025

Day 220: Marriage in the New Covenant

Seeing God's covenant with Israel in the image of exclusive and faithful married love, the prophets prepared the Chosen People's conscience for a deepened understanding of the unity and indissolubility of marriage. The books of Ruth and Tobit bear moving witness to an elevated sense of marriage and to the fidelity and tenderness of spouses. Tradition has always seen in the Song of Solomon a unique expression of human love, a pure reflection of God's love - a love "strong as death" that "many waters cannot quench." CCC 1611


Today's reading from the Catechism is about marriage in the New Covenant, that is, marriage as Christ taught us. We see in the Gospel of Matthew Jesus teaching that marriage joins together man and woman, and is indissoluble because "what God has joined together, let no man put asunder" (Matt 19:4-6). When challenged that Moses permitted divorce, Christ explained that their "hardness of heart" is why and that "from the beginning it was not so" (Matt 19:7-9). In this, Christ restored the original teaching on marriage.

The Catechism Compendium notes:
Christ not only restored the original order of matrimony but raised it to the dignity of a sacrament, giving spouses a special grace to live out their marriage as a symbol of Christ’s love for his bride, the Church: “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loves the Church” (Ephesians 5:25). (#341)

The Catechism Companion, Vol II has some good commentary on this:

Even in the brokenness of our hearts and relationships since the Fall, the hope is that we will still learn how to love. But in our broken world after original sin, love alway demands sacrifice... Jesus' teachings are not more of a load in their strictness than those of Moses. Instead, they help to renew the way man and woman were created to live, which sin distorted.  Jesus "himself gives the strength and grace to live marriage in the new dimension of the Reign of God," giving us not just new rules but rather new hearts (CCC 1615). Grace changes hearts, but we have to cooperate with that grace by carrying our crosses with Jesus. (p. 204)

Pictured here is the wedding feast at Cana, where Jesus miraculously changed water to wine. This miracle showed the importance of marriage, which Jesus made a sacrament (see CCC 1613). (p. 205)

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