{UAH} Homosexuality is Against Marriage and Eucharist Sacraments - Part 1 By Jonn Martignoni

With same sex "marriage" in the news these days in a big way, I thought I would share with you guys a series of articles I wrote for our diocesan newspaper on Marriage and the Eucharist.  It's basically the written version of my audio on the same topic, with a few modifications.  I draw parallels between the two sacraments and then use those parallels to explain some of the Church's teachings that many folks have trouble with.  One of those teachings is the Church's stance on same-sex "marriage".  I'm going to reprint the articles exactly as they appeared in the newspaper, so if you think your diocesan paper might be interested in printing them, you can just copy them as is.  I'll put three of the articles in this issue, and the remaining four in the next one.

Apologetics 101

by John Martignoni  

What I want to do over the next few weeks, is to draw some parallels between the Sacrament of the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Marriage, and to show how the two, become one, in both Sacraments.  I hope by doing so that this will possibly broaden your understanding of both of these sacraments - giving you a better understanding of the Eucharist, in marital terms; and a better understanding of marriage, in Eucharistic terms.  Then, I want to look at some of the Church's teachings in certain areas, using these parallels.  First, though, I want to establish this parallel between the Sacrament of the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Matrimony.

And I want to do that by starting where you should always start - "In the beginning..."  The Book of Genesis.  Genesis, chapter 2, verses 21-24: "So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; and the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man He made into a woman and brought her to the man.  Then the man said, 'This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.'  Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh."

What do we have here?  We have woman being made from man, and from the very moment of this creation, we see the Word of God putting the relationship between Adam and Eve, the first man and the first woman, into a marital context.  "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh."  

God, put Adam into a deep sleep, then, in some mysterious way, created Eve from Adam's flesh - exactly what God did and how He did it, we don't know.  Was it a rib, or is the rib just the best way the ancient writer could understand and describe what happened?  Again, we don't know for sure.  But, we know that Eve was created in some manner from Adam.  One flesh became two, but then God joined the two back into one.  Through marriage...the two become one.

And here in Genesis 2, we are given the correct sequence of events leading up to the two becoming one.  There is a 3-step process here: Step 1) The man leaves his father and mother.  In other words, he makes a decision to leave the home of his youth and to establish his own household.  He has made a commitment.  He's not leaving his father and mother for some trial period of time; or to make a test run.  He has made a commitment.  Without a commitment, there is no marriage.

 

Step 2) The man cleaves to his wife.  The Catechism describes the marriage ceremony in this way: "...the spouses...seal their consent to give themselves to each other through the offering of their own lives," (Paragraph 1621).  The man cleaves to his wife.  He gives himself totally and completely to his wife.  All that he is and all that he has he gives to her.  He gives his very life to her...and she does likewise with her husband.  This is what happens during the marriage ceremony.  Husband and wife cleave to each other.  And, as the Catechism states in paragraph 1623, "...the spouses, as ministers of Christ's grace, mutually confer upon each other the sacrament of Matrimony by expressing their consent before the Church."  Again, through mutual consent - and mutual commitment - husband and wife confer upon each other the sacrament of Matrimony.

Step 3) And they become one flesh.  Husband and wife join together in the marital embrace, and the two become one flesh.  Remember how Adam described the woman?  As "flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone," because she was taken from man.  What had originally been one flesh - man, was made into two - man and woman, and now it is one again, through the Sacrament of Matrimony. 

The Sacrament of Matrimony is a process...a process that is extended over a certain length of time.  It begins during the marriage ceremony, where husband and wife cleave to one another - they declare their mutual consent and commitment to each other before God and before man - but it is not until the first time husband and wife come together physically, in the marital embrace, that the sacrament is completed or finished.  It is not until the first time husband and wife come together physically, in the marital embrace, that the sacrament is said to be "consummated".

It is consummated.  The two have become one.  Husband and wife have been joined together by the power of God.  The physical joining between husband and wife is the sign and the seal of the mystical joining between husband and wife that is done by God. This joining by God is, again, said to be consummated the first time husband and wife join together physically and intimately.  And, every time after that, when husband and wife join again in the marital embrace, it is the sign of the mystical joining done by God.  Every time husband and wife join again in the marital embrace, they are, essentially, renewing their wedding vows...committing themselves, totally and completely, all over again.  They are giving their lives, completely and totally, just as they did on the day of their wedding.

 

Next week: It is consummated...

Paul Mugerwa
mugerwas5@aol.com