The Sacrament-ality and Spirituality of Marriage

1

• The Sacrament-ality and Spirituality of Marriage

2

• "Notre-Dame de l'Alliance, Espérance de tous les
  foyers, garde sous ta protection ceux qui mettent
  en toi leur confiance !
• Our Lady of the Wedding Ring, Hope of all
  homes, keep under your protection those who place
  their trust in you.

3

• The Person of
• Jesus Christ
• and the
• Trinity

4
(No Transcript)
5
(No Transcript)
6
(No Transcript)
7
(No Transcript)
8
k

• Loved the wedding, invite me to the marriage.
• - God

9
k

• That Love Thy Neighbour Thing .. I meant it.
• - God

10
k

• I love you . I love you..
• I love you
• - God

11
k

• Will the road you are on get to my place?
• - God

12
k

• You think its hot here?
• - God

13
k

• Tell the kids I love them!
• - God

14
k

• Have you read my 1 best seller? (There will
  be a test)
• - God

15
k

• Do you have any idea where you are going?
• - God

16
k

• My way is the highway
• - God

17
k

• Godspeaks.com

18
What is a Sacrament?

• 1. A Sacred sign
• 2. Instituted by Christ (directly or indirectly)
• 3. To give grace
• 4. Entrusted to the Church (CCC 1131)

19
A Sacred Sign

• Most signs give directions. Point to
  something else
• Sacraments are signs that actually do
  what they indicate i.e.
• Efficacious signs
• which also instruct

20

• Baptism for example
• Water, the visible sign is poured.
• The Words N. I baptize you in the name of the
  Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
  Amen.
• The invisible reality that is taking place is
  that the Holy Spirit is being poured into the
  persons soul. The Trinity is taking up
  residence within the person being baptized in the
  person of Gods Love, The Holy Spirit.

21
Purpose of the Sacraments

• Purpose of all the Sacraments
• Preserve in our soul that moment of Baptismal
  purity when our souls are completely washed clean
  of any stain of original or personal sin.

22
Baptismal Liturgy

• Clothing with the White Garment.
• N., you have become a new creation, and have
  clothed yourself in Christ. See in this white
  garment the outward sign of your Christian
  dignity. With your family and friends to help
  you by word and example bring that dignity
  unstained into the everlasting life of heaven.
  Amen.

23
Baptismal Liturgy

• (Light Candle from the Paschal candle)
• Receive the light of Christ.
• Parents and godparents, this light is entrusted
  to you to be kept burning brightly. This child
  of yours has been enlightened by Christ. He/she
  is to walk always as a child of the light. Maay
  he/she keep the flame of faith alive in his/her
  heart. When the Lord comes, may he/she go out to
  meet him with all the saints in the heavenly
  kingdom.

24

• The other Sacraments either
• restore/heal (Reconciliation/ Confession and the
  Sacrament of the Sick),
• nourish (Eucharist/Holy Communion),
• strengthen (Confirmation) or
• give us the ability to live out our vocation, our
  state in life (Marriage and Holy
  Orders/Priesthood)

25

• Joe Christian

26
Marriage

• What is the visible sign?

27

• Does love lead to marriage?
• Or
• Does marriage lead to love?

28

• Ritual Sustains Prayer by Father Ron Rolheiser
• In a homily at a wedding Dietrich Bonhoeffer
  once gave this advice to a young couple Today
  you are young and very much in love and you think
  that your love can sustain your marriage. It
  cant. Let your marriage sustain your love.
• Love and prayer work the same The
  neophytes mistake is to think that they can be
  sustained simply through good feelings and good
  intention, without the help of ritual-container
  and a sustaining rhythm.
• Thats naïve, however sincere. Love and
  prayer can only be sustained through ritual,
  routine and rhythm. Why?
• What eventually makes us stop praying John
  of the Cross says is simple boredom, tiredness,
  lack of energy. Its hard, very hard,
  existentially impossible, to crank up the energy,
  day in and day out, to pray with real
  affectivity, real feeling and real heart. We
  simply cannot sustain that kind of energy and
  enthusiasm. Were human beings, limited in our
  energies. We need something else to help us.
  What?

29

• Ritual- a rhythm, a routine. Monks have secrets
  worth knowing and anyone who has ever been to a
  monastery knows that monks (who pray often and a
  lot) sustain themselves in prayer not through
  feeling, variety or creativity, but through
  ritual, rhythm and routine. Monastic prayer is
  simple, often rote, has a clear durational
  expectancy and is structured so as to allow each
  monk the freedom to invest himself or hold back,
  in terms of energy and heart, depending upon his
  disposition on a given day. That is wise
  anthropology.
• Prayer is like eating. There needs to be a
  good rhythm between big banquets (high
  celebration, lots of time, proper formality) and
  the everyday family supper (simple, no-frills,
  short, predictable). A family that tries to eat
  every meal as if it were a banquet soon finds
  that most of its members are looking for an
  excuse to be absent.
• With good reason. Everyone needs to eat
  every day, but nobody has energy for a banquet
  every day. The same holds true for prayer. One
  wonders whether the huge drop-off of people who
  used to attend church services daily isnt
  connected to this.

30

• People attended daily services more when those
  services were short, routine, predictable and
  gave them the freedom to be as present or absent
  (in terms of emotional investment) as their
  energy and heart allowed on that given day.
• Today, unfortunately, we are misled by a
  number of misconceptions about prayer and
  liturgy. Too commonly, we accept the following
  set of axioms as wise creativity and variety
  are always good. Every prayer-celebration should
  be one of high energy. Longer is better than
  shorter. Either you should pray with feeling or
  you shouldnt pray at al. Ritual is meaningless
  unless we are emotionally invested in it.
• Each of these axioms is overly romantic,
  ill thought out, anthropologically naïve and not
  helpful in sustaining a life of prayer.
• Prayer is a relationship, a one on one, and
  lives by those rules. Relating to anyone long
  term has its ups and downs. Nobody can be
  interesting all the time, sustain high energy all
  the time or fully invest himself or herself all
  the time. Really life doesnt work that way.
  Neither does prayer. What sustains a
  relationship long-term is ritual, routine, a
  regular rhythm that incarnates the commitment.

31

• Imagine you have an aged mother in a nursing
  home and youve committed yourself to visiting
  her twice a week. How do you sustain yourself
  in this. Not by feeling energy or emotion, but
  by commitment, routine and ritual. You go to
  visit her at a given time not because you feel
  like it but because its time. You go to visit
  her in spite of the fact that you sometimes cant
  give her the best of your heart and that often
  you are tired, distracted restless, over-burdened
  and are occasionally sneaking a glance at your
  watch and wondering how soon you can make a
  graceful exit.
• Moreover, your conversation with her will
  not always be deep or about meaningful things.
  Occasionally there will be emotional satisfaction
  and the sense that something important was
  shared, but many times, perhaps most times, there
  will only be the sense that it was good that you
  were there and that any important life-giving
  connection has been nurtured and sustained,
  despite what seemingly occurred at the surface.
  Youve been with your mother and thats more
  important than whatever feelings or conversation
  might have taken place. Prayer works the same
  way. Thats why the saints and great spiritual
  writers have always said there is only one,
  non-negotiable rule of prayer Show up! Show up
  regularly! The ups and downs of our minds and
  hearts are of secondary importance.

32
Instituted by Christ

• Genesis 224
• A man will leave his father and mother and be
  joined to his wife and they will become one
  flesh.
• Matthew 193-8
• And Pharisees came up to him and tested him
  asking, Is it lawful to divorce ones wife for
  any cause? He answered Have you not read
  that he who made them from the beginning made
  them male and female and said, For this reason a
  man shall leave his father and mother and be
  joined to his wife and the two shall become one.
  So they are no two but one. What therefore God
  has joined together, let no man put asunder.
  They said to him, Why them did Moses command one
  to give a certificate of divorce and put her
  away. He said to them, For your hardness of
  heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives,
  but from the beginning it was not so.

33

• Wedding at Cana John 21-11

34

• There was a wedding at Cana in Galilee. The
  mother of Jesus was there, and Jesus and his
  disciples had also been invited. When they ran
  out of wine, since the wine provided for the
  wedding was all finished, the mother of Jesus
  said to him, They have no wine.
• Jesus said, Woman, why turn to me? My hour has
  not come yet. His mother said to the servants,
  Do whatever he tells you.
• There were six stone water jars standing there,
  meant for the ablutions that are customary among
  the Jews each could hold twenty or thirty
  gallons. Jesus said to the servants, Fill the
  jars with water, and they filled them to the
  brim.

35
Draw some out now, he told them, and take it
to the steward. They did this the steward
tasted the water, and it had turned into wine.
Having no idea where it came from only the
servants who had drawn the water knew the
steward called the bridegroom and said, People
generally serve the best wine first, and keep the
cheaper sort till the guests have had plenty to
drink but you have kept the best wine till now.
This was the first of the signs given by Jesus
it was given at Cana in Galilee. He let his
glory be seen, and his disciples believed in him.
36
To Give Grace

• Two main goods of marriage
• 1) to bond the couple together in mutual
  commitment
• 2) to be open to life

37

• Complete gift of the self to the other.

38
(No Transcript)
39

• If we know our anthropology correctly then it is
  easy to understand why the Church teaches what
  she does.
• We always need to answer the question Who am
  I, as God has created me to be?

40

• Man only truly discovers himself by making a
  sincere gift of himself.
• Gaudium et Spes, 24, Second Vatican Council

41

• Live up to who God has created you to be!
  Pope John Paul II at World Youth Day

42

• We have to understand the nature
• of the
• Trinity to understand how we are made in his
  image.

43

• Metaphor of marriage is used throughout the Old
  Testament to reveal Gods relationship to the
  Hebrew people and in the New Testament to reveal
  Christs relationship with the Church.

44

• Ephesians 52,21-33
• A reading from the letter of Paul to the
  Ephesians.
• Live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself
  up for us.
• Be subject to one another out of reverence for
  Christ.
• Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to
  the Lord.
• For the husband is the head of the wife
• just as Christ is the head of the church,
• the body of which he is the Savior.
• Just as the church is subject to Christ,
• so also wives ought to be, in everything, to
  their husbands.
• Husbands, love your wives,
• just as Christ loved the church and gave himself
  up for her,
• in order to make her holy by cleansing her
• with the washing of water by the word,
• so as to present the church to himself in
  splendor,
• without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind
• -yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish.

45

• In the same way,
• husbands should love their wives
• as they do their own bodies
• He who loves his wife loves himself.
• For no one ever hates his own body,
• but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it,
• just as Christ does for the church,
• because we are members of his body.
• "For this reason a man will leave his father
• and mother and be joined to his wife,
• and the two will become one flesh."
• This is a great mystery,
• and I am applying it to Christ and the church.
• Each of you, however, should love his wife as
  himself,
• and a wife should respect her husband.
• The word of the Lord.

46
Braid

• Who really is involved in this marriage?

47

• Declaration of Consent from Form 1
• Marriage is an intimate communion of life and
  love between a man and a woman who wish to
  complement each other, give themselves to each
  other, and transmit human life. This communion
  is established on their mutual love, personal
  commitment and exclusive and irrevocable consent.
  This community of life must be lived according
  to the Gospel and rooted in ones faith in the
  Lord Jesus.

48
Preparing for the Ceremony

• Exchange of consent
• Exchange of rings
• Nuptial Blessing

49
Preparing for the Ceremony

• Sacrament of Reconciliation
• e.g. Joe Christian

50
Questions?