Holy Matrimony
Congratulations, if you have recently gotten engaged!
Three initial steps:
It is the norm at Our Family of Parishes for students to make their first Reconciliation in the 2nd grade, after having received the Sacrament of Baptism as an infant.
2.Call: Our Family of Parishes’ office to schedule initial meeting.
Marriage Preparation Classes are required in order to be married in the Catholic Church. Please call the parish office to schedule your first meeting with Fr. McCarthy. It will be at this meeting that you will discuss the marriage preparation process, set the date for the wedding, and fill out the necessary paperwork.
3.Watch and Discuss: Mentoring Sessions and Videos
Marriage is a Covenant
The Sacrament of Marriage is a covenantal union in the image of the covenants between God and his people with Abraham and later with Moses at Mt. Sinai. This divine covenant can never be broken. In this way, marriage is a union that bonds spouses together during their entire lifetime.
The sacrament of Matrimony signifies the union of Christ and the Church. It gives spouses the grace to love each other with the love with which Christ has loved his Church; the grace of the sacrament thus perfects the human love of the spouses, strengthens their indissoluble unity, and sanctifies them on the way to eternal life (CCC 1661).
The love in a married relationship is exemplified in the total gift of oneself to another. It’s this self-giving and self-sacrificing love that we see in our other model of marriage, the relationship between Christ and the Church. Marriage is based on the consent of the contracting parties, that is, on their will to give themselves, each to the other, mutually, and definitively, in order to live a covenant of faithful and fruitful love (CCC 1662).
The Church takes the lifelong nature of the Sacrament of Marriage seriously. The Church teaches that a break in this covenant teaches goes against the natural law of God: The remarriage of persons divorced from a living, lawful spouse contravenes the plan and law of God as taught by Christ. They are not separated from the Church, but they cannot receive Eucharistic communion. They will lead Christian lives especially by educating their children in the faith (CCC 1665).
Marriage Reflects the Holy Trinity
We believe that God exists in eternal communion. Together, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are united in one being with no beginning and no end. Human beings, likewise, were created by God in God’s image for the purpose of communion with another human being.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “The Christian family is a communion of persons, a sign and image of the communion of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit” (CCC 2205). The Sacrament of Marriage is “unitive, indissoluble and calls us to be completely open to fertility.” Christian marriage at its finest is a reflection of God’s self-giving love expressed between the love of two people.
“God created man and woman out of love and commanded them to imitate his love in their relations with each other. Man and woman were created for each other…Woman and man are equal in human dignity, and in marriage both are united in an unbreakable bond” (United States Catholic Catechism for Adults, Ch. 21, p. 279).
