What is Marriage, also called Matrimony?
Holy Matrimony is the Mystery (Sacrament) in which the conjugal union of a man and a woman is blessed to be an image of Christ’s union with the Church, and grace is asked for them to live according to this divine image, in godly love and faithfulness, unto the procreation and Christian upbringing of children.
The first marital union was blessed by God himself, as the Lord bears witness:
“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 flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder” (Mat 19:4–6; Gen 2:24).
Holy Matrimony unites believers to the Mystery of Christ, who is called the Bridegroom (Joh 3:29; see Q287, Q368). Indeed, the Mystery of Baptism itself resembles a wedding, in which those who are united to Christ are led in a triple procession. As the Apostle writes: “I feel a divine jealousy for you, for I betrothed you to Christ, to present you as a pure bride to her one Husband” (2Co 11:2–3; see Q300).
Christians who enter into marriage must do so “in Christ” and in imitation of his self-emptying love:
Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ… For the husband is head of the wife as Christ is head of the Church, his Body, and is himself its Savior… Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her… Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies: he who loves his wife loves himself. (Eph 5:21–28)
That Holy Matrimony is a Mystery is directly taught by the Apostle: “‘A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery (mysterion; Latin sacramentum) is great, and I am speaking of Christ and the Church” (Eph 5:31–32; see Q252, Q542).
Not all Christians are called or able to marry. The ancient Christian teaching has always been that consecrated virginity is a higher calling than wedlock, for those who can understand and preserve this gift, as the Lord taught: “there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it” (Mat 19:12; see the Study: Clerical Celibacy; see Q359).
Likewise, the Apostle Paul teaches:
To the unmarried and the widows, I say that it is good for them to remain even as I am; but if they cannot exercise self-control, let them marry… The unmarried man cares for the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but the married man cares for the things of the world, how he may please his wife. (1Co 7:8–9, 32–33)
Writing in the middle of the second century, the apologist Athenagoras could therefore say: “You would find many among us, both men and women, growing old unmarried, in the hope of living in closer communion with God” (Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians 33).
Christians in Holy Matrimony are called to live their union as a path of salvation: in mutual love and mutual submission “out of reverence for Christ” (Eph 5:21); in unbroken faithfulness of body and heart (Heb 13:4; see Q359); in shared prayer, fasting, and almsgiving; in the patient bearing of one another’s burdens (Gal 6:2); and in raising their children “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph 6:4; see Q568). The Christian household is thus, in the words of St John Chrysostom, “a little church” (ekklesia mikra): husband, wife, and children forming a domestic image of the great Mystery of Christ and the Church (St John Chrysostom, Homily 20 on Ephesians; see Q011, Q017).
