Holy Matrimony as a Sacrament of Healing
Having received permission from the Archbishop of New York to do so, this couple lies prostrate during the Litany of the Saints at their wedding Mass at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in New York City. Learn more about this image here.
Image used with permission of the couple via the author.
Healing is an increasingly trendy topic these days, and not just for Catholics. We spend a lot of time, energy, and money seeking to resolve our personal and interpersonal sources of suffering. We feel the weight of unwanted behaviors, thoughts, feelings, and relationship patterns. But while these trends are generally positive, we tend to avoid the suffering that true healing often involves, and we hold out for that one secret path to healing that will be quick, easy, and painless.
For those who are married, you may have learned that the brokenness you and your spouse brought to the altar on your wedding day was not left at the altar like you hoped. Alternatively, maybe you have discovered deeper brokenness you did not recognize before. For those not married who believe they are called to marriage, you may know quite well the brokenness that keeps you in patterns that delay your readiness for the type of relationship that would lead into marriage. In whichever category you find yourself, I submit that marriage has the potential to offer you significant healing. For those who are married, when your marriage becomes difficult, and it will, the key is to turn toward – not from – your spouse. The more you turn toward your spouse, with Christ, the more healing you will find. This is because holy matrimony is a sacrament that heals, and it heals through the communion and sacrificial suffering modeled after Christ’s own sacrificial suffering to restore communion between us and God.
Healing through Sacrament
When we first began to learn about the seven sacraments of the Church, we heard them categorized as either being sacraments of initiation, healing, or service. Baptism, Eucharist, and confirmation are sacraments of initiation; reconciliation and anointing of the sick are sacraments of healing; and holy orders and matrimony are sacraments at the service of communion. These categories are not necessarily exclusive, but they help us understand each sacrament’s activity and purpose.
Now if it has been a while, let’s review what we mean by sacrament. The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us:
“The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us. The visible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and make present the graces proper to each sacrament. They bear fruit in those who receive them with the required dispositions.”
In marriage, grace is communicated to the spouses through their very union. The more they dispose themselves to this grace at work in that union, the more fruitful their marriage becomes. As a sacrament in service of communion, grace works to keep the spouses united. The degree of their unity becomes the measure of the fruitfulness of their relationship.
Healing through Communion
As sacraments at the service of communion, the Catechism teaches that holy orders and matrimony are “directed towards the salvation of others” (CCC 1534). We also read, “If they contribute as well to personal salvation, it is through service to others that they do so.” Jesus Christ wins our salvation through the sacrifice of Himself. I would like to expand this concept of personal salvation beyond its primary meaning as saving from sin for eternal life toward a secondary meaning as the healing of the entire person.
By the grace at work through their sacramental union, spouses not only lead each other to heaven, but they also accompany one another toward healing and wholeness in spirit, soul, and body (1 Thess. 5:23). This communion is not just between the two of them; it is with Christ Himself. We may be familiar with Fulton Sheen’s book on marriage called Three to Get Married on this same idea. My wife once joked that the book should have been called Three to Stay Married! John Cardinal O’Connor, the late archbishop of New York and founder of the Sisters of Life, wrote in his book Covenant of Love, “A couple are not simply fused into the one being of husband and wife, they are fused into Christ himself” (p. 27).
The more we are united to Christ, the more we experience the effects of the salvation won for us by his sacrificial suffering. In a like manner, the more spouses are united to one another, with Christ, the more they find personal healing through the suffering in their marriage.
Healing through Sacrificial Suffering
Similarly to how Christ wins our salvation through the sacrificial gift of Himself for us (cf. CCC 614), healing in marriage occurs through the sacrificial gift of the spouses to one another. We see this again in the Catechism:
“Our Savior encounters Christian spouses through the sacrament of Matrimony. Christ dwells with them, gives them the strength to take up their crosses and so follow Him, to rise again after they have fallen, to forgive one another, to bear one another’s burdens, to be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ, and to love one another with supernatural, tender, and fruitful love.”
The spouses become like Christ for one another, and, as with Christ, this sacrifice – empowered by love – entails suffering. There is no way around it, folks! If you are married, I need not say more. If you are not married, anyone who is married will tell you that what makes marriage hard can range from the unavoidably mundane to the extraordinarily painful: from dishes, laundry, hospitality, socialization, and travel to poor communication, selfishness, childhood trauma, infidelity, addictive behaviors, and contempt. In all of these, the more the spouses turn toward one another in love, with Christ, the more readily they will find healing. Not only healing, but happiness and joy as well.
Before we get more in depth on this dynamic relevant to our own lives, let’s look at one way the Church views this dynamic of mutual self-sacrifice and suffering by exploring the rite of matrimony itself. In the pre-Vatican II celebration of the sacramental rite, there was an option for the “Exhortation Before Marriage” that the priest offered the couple. Here are a few popular excerpts relevant to our discussion:
“Because God himself is thus its author, marriage is of its very nature a holy institution, requiring of those who enter into it a complete and unreserved giving of self.”
“It is most fitting that you rest the security of your wedded life upon the great principle of self-sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice is usually difficult and irksome. Only love can make it easy, and perfect love can make it a joy. We are willing to give in proportion as we love. And when love is perfect, the sacrifice is complete.”
“And if true love and the unselfish spirit of perfect sacrifice guide your every action, you can expect the greatest measure of earthly happiness that may be allotted to man in this vale of tears.”
Can I invite you to read those lines again? Look at these winners:
“complete and unreserved giving of self”
“security of your wedded life upon the great principle of self-sacrifice”
“sacrifice is usually difficult and irksome”
This exhortation promises that, when “true love and the unselfish spirit of perfect sacrifice” guide the action of the spouses, spouses can “expect the greatest measure of earthly happiness” this side of heaven!
Returning to the Catechism, we read that “It is by following Christ, renouncing themselves, and taking up their crosses that spouses will be able to ‘receive’ the original meaning of marriage and live it with the help of Christ” (CCC 1615). The healing in marriage is found through the suffering that begets communion – alike to how Christ’s own suffering restores our communion with the Father. The restoration of the meaning of marriage as intended “from the beginning” (Matthew 19:8) occurs through the sacrificial offering of one another.
We hear more of this from Pope St. John Paul II’s Familiaris Consortio in which he quotes the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes, writing:
“By virtue of the mystery of the death and Resurrection of Christ, of which the spouses are made part in a new way by marriage, conjugal love is purified and made holy: “This love the Lord has judged worthy of special gifts, healing, perfecting and exalting gifts of grace and of charity.” ”
Now if it is through their sacrifice that the spouses find healing, happiness, and holiness proper to this sacrament, then suffering becomes an expression of the unique communion that begets the healing we are talking about here. This suffering and communion that brings healing, happiness, and holiness does not just happen on the wedding day. This happens every day. The measure of the spouses’ sacrifice becomes the mark of their communion. This communion, though, requires conversion.
Healing through Conversion
As I suggested earlier, the sacrifice is not complete if both spouses are not united in their attempts to offer themselves. Their mutual healing occurs through their unity. Just as spouses lead each other toward heaven through the grace at work in their sacramental union, they also accompany one another toward holiness and wholeness on earth. They do this together, as this is the benefit of their communion. Attempts to find healing elsewhere may betray that communion, thereby detracting from their happiness.
The word conversion comes from the Latin meaning “to turn with or toward.” I have mentioned before this concept of turning toward one another. The offering of self in marriage is not just one of service and sacrifice, but of turning toward one another with openness, vulnerability, transparency, and humility. We trust that it is within our marriage that we will find the secret to happiness through communion with our spouse. However, marriage is difficult. It is like a mirror, megaphone, and microscope for our brokenness. The pain of marriage often brings to the surface the reality of our hurts and wounds and how they impact our freedom to give of ourselves in marriage as we intended the day we married. We, all of us, need healing.
As marriage brings to the surface those areas that need to be healed—to facilitate our pursuit of greater happiness within our marriage—seeking help from friends, spiritual directors, and mental health professionals can be very beneficial. Recourse to these relationships can enhance our marriage as they help us grow and change. But, when we turn from our marriage to avoid the suffering that marriage often involves, we risk diminishing the healing that this sacrament at the service of communion offers us. As our brokenness emerges more clearly in marriage, we need to turn toward our spouse to find support, and yet, rather than turn toward our spouses, we turn away – often toward something or someone else that offers comfort rather than happiness. Sometimes we are driven less by the pursuit of happiness, and more by a desire for comfort. Marriage is a sacrament that heals. Comfort and healing are not the same: comfort is temporary relief while healing is restoration. We will not find healing and happiness in our marriage if we continue to rely on the pathetic substitute of external comforts.
I suggest that these are just a few questions that, when answered honestly, become like a social media “call to action” not to increase one’s reach and following, but to make changes or convert that make healing in marriage possible and effective.
What are those areas I hold back from my spouse?
What’s uncomfortable in your marriage?
Where do you turn for comfort?
When do you feel inadequate, inferior, not good enough?
Where do you turn to relieve the discomfort those feelings create?
What occupies your time and why?
What do you fear you’ll lose through greater communion with your spouse?
Your answers to these questions will invite you to experience the sacrifice and suffering that form the foundation of the communion that the sacrament of holy matrimony serves. Your answers are invitations to conversion; to turn toward your spouse. My hope is that these questions reveal areas where greater healing waits for you within your marriage because holy matrimony is a sacrament that heals.
Prayer for Married Couples
O God, who in creating the human race
willed that man and wife should be one,
keep, we pray, in a bond of inseparable love
those who are united in the covenant of Marriage,
so that, as you make their love fruitful,
they may become, by your grace, witnesses to charity itself.
Through Christ our Lord
Amen.
(This prayer was found on the USCCB website here.)
About the Author
Jeff Mazzone is a resident in counseling at a private practice in Fredericksburg, VA. He is married with four children. He was a college seminarian for the Archdiocese of Washington and a temporarily professed friar with the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal (CFR). Jeff earned a master’s in theology from St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, NY and a master’s in clinical mental health counseling from Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA. He is a casual fan of high fantasy, some sci-fi, and pre-Disney Star Wars. Connect with Jeff on Instagram at @discalced_counselor.
Reflection Questions for Small Groups or Individuals
For those who are married, what are those areas I hold back from my spouse? For those who are single, what are some areas that I may hold back from my spouse? For those in religious life, what are some areas that I hold back from my superiors, or others in my community?
Where, or to whom, do you turn for comfort?
When do you feel inadequate, inferior, not good enough? Where do you turn to relieve the discomfort those feelings create?
For those who are married, what do you fear you will lose through greater communion with your spouse? For those in religious life, what do you fear you will lose through greater communion with your superiors, or others in your community?