Marriage

Christian marriage is a conjugal covenant animated by the redeeming power of Christ, the Saviour, initiated by the saving ministry of the Church. A comprehensive understanding of Christian marriage is provided in the Second Vatican Council's Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, # 47-52. Regarding the role and goal of marriage, there is a shift from the biological and juridical (legal) factors to its interpersonal, existential, and spiritual factors.

Interpersonal life: Marriage is a living together, a covenantal life, in which faithfulness, sharing, and mutual support between man and woman plays the central role. Man and woman should become dynamic equivalent to each other. This is not something static, but ever dynamic in such a way that both should be always attentive to each other and perform complementary to each other. This becomes possible only through an ever-increasing communion between them. Earlier, indissolubility was stressed. Now-a-days, beyond indissolubility, communion is emphasized. Mutual acceptance and forgiveness are the ways to keep up the relationship. Marital partners have to cultivate an ever-exclusive pre-eminence for each other; it is an ever-deeper sense of solidarity. Faithfulness and forgiving love are the key virtues that make Christian marriage a sacrament.

Existential focus: Marriage has and should have an existential development. It starts from the intention of the partners and moves to the accomplishment. In pure faithful love, partners have to create and develop relationship in mutual acceptance at all levels. Mutually accepting relationship is an indicator of the actualization of marriage. In mutual acceptance, mutual revelation and building up in a developmental basis should go forward.

Spiritual thrust: Marital spirituality is a relational spirituality. Husband and wife travel together on their way to God realization. Situations and the arena of marital life provide the canvas on which the partners draw their saving life. The effectiveness of their saving life depends on their pure communion. Road of marital communion should lead to their communion with God. Such a communion is the communion in the diversity of man and woman, for which the best ideal model is that of the Trinitarian model. Such deeper marital communion in the family is the living block of the Church.

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