Marriage and Sanctity

Marriage is a sacrament. God offers and imparts grace to you and your spouse so that you will be able to live the life of fidelity, fruitfulness and unity as you bring each other to God. Your wife is a means for your sanctification and you are a means for her sanctification, but sanctity requires that you open yourself up to God. Can your marriage survive if one of you refuses to attend Mass and practice your faith? Yes, it will survive. But ask yourself, is it enough to survive or would you rather thrive; to be the best you can be? Do you want to survive the cut and be the last person on the football team or do you want to be the star, someone who is integral to the victory week in and week out? Do you want to watch the quarterback win the game or do you want to be the quarterback who wins the game? The church wants to not only help your marriage to survive, but she gives you the opportunities to have a relationship that thrives so that you and your spouse may live a life of complete and utter joy, even in the midst of the trials and sufferings that go with being human. A happy, healthy and holy marriage is one that helps you to love as Christ loves, to overcome self-absorption, egoism and the pursuit of one’s own pleasure and to open yourself up to the other for her pleasure, her sanctity and mutual aid and self-giving. In effect, it is to die to self and to live for the other in every area of your life, whether the other spouse deserves it or not.