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A strong case can be made for holding that Chapter Five of Lumen Gentium presents the most important and innovative, and even the most revolutionary doctrine of the Second Vatican Council.  Under the title of "The Universal Call to Holiness", a totally personalized message is presented to each member of the Church.  Each in effect, whatever his or her position in life, is called to sanctity, to the fullness of friendship and intimacy with God.  To help each one become truly aware of what this implies and to help each to see and use the ways and means of responding effectively to this personal call from God, remains a top priority in the ongoing work of ecclesial renewal.

     The call to holiness can appear discouraging, and an effective response to it impossible, if people measure the enterprise in terms of their own strength alone.  There must certainly be a personal response and effort on the part of each one; but it is God who gives the strength - the grace - to answer effectively and to achieve the goal.

     All of us need constant reminders of the generosity and power with which God meets our efforts not only to avoid sin but to persevere and grow in prayer and in all the virtues characteristic of christian life.  In particular we need to be reminded of the special power to be found in the sacraments - those "masterworks of God" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1116) - , where he communicates his grace in unique power and efficacy.

     It seems particularly important to relate this latter point to those sacraments which have a special "constitutional" value: i.e. which confer a character that configures the person to Christ in a unique and unrepeatable way, and thus give a permanent title to continuing graces necessary to live according to one's Christ-like configuration.  The life of each one in accordance with his or her state (lay person, religious or priest) should be marked by constant reference to these sacraments and reliance on the specific sacramental graces they offer.  In practice one sees a major pastoral problem in the fact that many Christians live their lives with little or no awareness of or reference to the graces accruing to them from the "constitutional" sacraments [1].

     As regards Baptism, for instance, insofar as many Christians think about their own Baptism at all, they often see it as something which involves them in obligations rather than as a source of strength.  I think it is true that they seldom note or recall the day they were baptized, and this is probably even truer of Confirmation.  Perhaps these remain as important moments of grace received in the past; but are seldom recalled as occasions when a source of grace for the present was opened in one's life.

     With regard to Ordination, it is no doubt easier for a priest to avoid this pitfall, and to recall that his whole activity is specified by a priestly mission and identity.  Paul's words to Timothy: Stir up the grace that is within you (cf. II Tim. 1, 6), are more likely to keep striking his consciousness and be a source of strength.  Should one not expect something similar in the case of the sacrament of Matrimony?  Does one often find it?  How is it that many married Christians, who perhaps celebrate their wedding anniversary in joy and gratitude, seldom seem to be motivated by a consciousness of sacramental graces once received and constantly operative?  If there appears to be something inadequate in the way they understand this sacrament, could it be because it has often been presented to them in a way that is not totally adequate either?  These are points which have prompted the considerations that follow.

I.   Matrimony: a "transient" or a "permanent" sacrament?

     All the sacraments, applying the merits of the Passion of Jesus, communicate or restore Christ's life to the soul, or increase this life in it.  One notes the differ­ence between the three sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and Order, which impress a permanent character - a special configuration to Christ's priesthood - , and the other four which do not.  A difference not be confused with that between sacraments which can be called "transient" (because their effect does not of itself go beyond the moment of their making or "confection"; it is there only "in usu") and those that have an aspect of "permanence" about them because, after the sacrament is made or confected (and not only "in usu"), a sacramental reality remains.  In the first case, the natural realities utilized are endowed with efficacy only in actual "use"; in the latter, they are substantially affected or changed, and the sacramental reality remains after the sacrament itself has been confected or conferred.

     Baptism, in this sense, is a "transient" sacrament; for, in its conferral, a particular use of natural realities - ablution by water - has the immediate effect of washing away Original Sin, and the permanent ontological effect of making a person into a child of God.  But once the sacrament is conferred, the natural reality used - the water - retains no supernatural virtue.

     The Eucharist is the most significant example of a "permanent" sacrament.  In its confection, natural realities - bread and wine - are used.  They are however not merely endowed with a supernatural efficacy just in the moment of use, they are substantially changed.  After the sacrament has been effected, the reality that remains is wholly supernatural, although it continues to be accompanied by the appearances - no more - of the natural realities that were used.  The natural realities are in fact no longer there.

     There has been a lot of theological discussion in the past on whether matrimony constitutes a "transient" or a "permanent" sacrament.  A line of thought going back to Scotus would see sacramentality as properly applying just to the moment of the actual celebration of marriage (matrimony "in fieri"); in consequence, only the moment of consent and perhaps that of consummation would confer grace "ex opere operato".  According to St. Thomas, not just matrimonial consent but the bond established by it, is the sacrament of matrimony, which thence becomes a continuing source of grace (he says that the bond is "dispositively ordained to grace" [2]).  Bellarmine expresses the same opinion: "The sacrament of matrimony can be regarded in two ways: first, in the making, and then in its permanent state.  For it is a sacrament like that of the Eucharist, which not only when it is being conferred, but also while it remains, is a sacrament; for as long as the married parties are alive, so long is their union a sacrament of Christ and the Church" [3].

     Pius XI, in Casti Connubii, quotes this passage from Bellarmine (AAS 22 (1930) 583).  John Paul II, in Familiaris Consortio, says: "The gift of Jesus Christ is not exhausted in the actual celebration of the sacrament of marriage, but rather accompanies the married couple throughout their lives.  This fact is explicitly recalled by the Second Vatican Council when it says that Jesus Christ 'abides with them so that, just as he loved the Church and handed himself over on her behalf, the spouses may love each other with perpetual fidelity through mutual self-bestowal'(Gaudium et Spes, no. 48.)..." (Familiaris Consortio, no. 56).

     Therefore, according to this opinion [4], it is not consent alone, not just the act of marrying, but the conjugal bond too - the married state - that is a sacrament, a sign and cause of grace.

     It may be objected that the term "permanent sacrament" is improperly applied to matrimony (As it is no doubt to Baptism, Confirmation or Order: cf. E. Boissard: Questions théologiques sur le mariage, Paris, 1948, p. 66).  More acceptably, one could place it among what may be called consecratory sacraments.  This thesis, already suggested by theologians such as Scheeben, Karl Adam or Dietrich von Hildebrand, was clearly, though qualifiedly, proposed in Casti connubii where Pius XI, having stated that spouses are "strengthened, sanctified and in a manner consecrated" by the sacrament of matrimony, went on to say that "as St. Augustine teaches, just as by Baptism and Holy Orders a man is set aside and assisted either for the duties of Christian life or for the priestly office and is never deprived of their sacramental aid, almost in the same way (although not by a sacramental character), the faithful once joined by marriage ties can never be deprived of the help and the binding force of the sacrament" [5].

     Recent magisterium strengthens this view.  The Second Vatican Council says: "Christian spouses have a special sacrament by which they are fortified and receive a kind of consecration in the duties and dignity of their state.  By virtue of this sacrament, as spouses fulfill their conjugal and family obligations, they are penetrated with the Spirit of Christ, who fills their whole lives with faith, hope and charity.  Thus they increasingly advance towards their own perfection, as well as towards their mutual sanctification, and hence contribute jointly to the glory of God" (Gaudium et Spes, no. 48).  The new Catechism of the Catholic Church quotes this passage in putting Matrimony alongside Order as involving a "particular consecration" (no. 1535).  Canon 1134 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law says: "in christian marriage the spouses are by a special sacrament strengthened and, as it were, consecrated for the duties and the dignity of their state".

     A "continuing" right to sacramental graces derives from certain sacraments whose effect is to constitute a person in a state of life: the state of a Christian, of a priest, of a married person.  Matrimony is like Order, in that by it a person enters on a new state.  Yet it is also singularly different, in that while there is no natural unsacramental priesthood to which the sacramental priesthood corresponds or on which it is based, there is a natural matrimonial covenant; and it is this precisely which is sacramentalized.  Matrimony is unique among the sacraments, in that only in it is a natural reality itself raised to the permanent dignity of a sacrament [6].  This natural reality, which is at the basis of the sacrament, is the covenant between the spouses; it is, in other words, the natural marital relationship which is sacramentalized.

     The "transient" concept, which would place the sacrament just in the exchange of consent, seems less than satisfactory.  The parallel with the Eucharist can help.  In the Eucharist, the words of consecration can be called "sacramental words" - in the sense that they give rise to the sacrament; but these words are not the Sacrament.  The Sacrament remains after the words by which it is effected have passed.  The words of matrimonial consent can similarly be described as sacramental words: by which the sacrament itself, which remains, is constituted (Both examples naturally presume that the words are accompanied by the necessary intention).  And this sacrament also remains even after the moment of consent has passed (and even if consent were subsequently withdrawn).

II.  Signification and efficacy

     There are good reasons today to consider that a re-focus and development of ideas about the working of sacramental grace in marriage are in order.  It is natural that liturgical reflection, while respecting the essential substance of each sacrament as instituted by Christ, should pay special attention to modes of perfecting the symbolic rites, so that they express and intensify faith-filled celebration by the worshipping people.  Theological and ascetical reflection, however, center more on the ultimate purpose of each sacrament, its sanctifying effect [7].  For sacramental theology what is most important is that a sacrament is an effective symbol even more than a symbolic action; it effects what it signifies.

     So, dogmatic treatises on the Eucharist reflect on its value - for the individual and the community - in bringing about a real participation in Christ's life and sacrifice; in effecting conformation to Christ.  This is generally true of theological reflection on the other sacraments; dwelling more on what each does and effects than on what it signifies.  But, peculiarly, this has not been the case with the sacrament of matrimony.

     Theological reflection on the sacramentality of marriage has centered almost exclusively on its sign-function - christian matrimony as a signifying a great supernatural reality (union of Christ and the Church) - and has largely neglected investigation of its effect on the recipients.

     If it is true then that theological reflection on the sacrament of matrimony has lagged behind consideration of its moral, canonical and pastoral aspects (Cf. Barberi, op. cit., pp. 6ss), a development would seem to be called for.  To my mind it should seek above all to correct the imbalance just noted: the much greater attention given to the signifying role of the sacrament than to its sanctifying effect; and the limited analysis in practice which has been made of the relation between the two.

     In the case of the other sacraments, the sign aspect is related very directly, though in clear subordination, to the sanctifying effect.  The 'res sacra' of which the sacrament is a sign, is not only contained in the sacrament, but is applied by it to the recipient, with sanctifying effect.  It is this effect above all which matters; the sign simply illustrates or clarifies the particular nature of the effect.  So, the sign of cleansing in Baptism, or that of nourishing or of a common meal in the reception of the Eucharist, serves to illustrate to the human understanding the mode of sanctification that takes place in the individual and among the community.

     With marriage, as we have said, it has been different.  The sign aspect - the union of husband and wife representing the union of Christ and his Church - has tended to occupy theological reflection, while the sanctifying effect has been given rather scant attention.  The mainstream of Catholic thought has always resisted theses (such as expounded by Durandus), holding that matrimony is different to the other sacraments, being a sign without sanctifying efficacy [8].  Nevertheless that same mainstream theology has made only very tentative approaches in suggesting in what way the 'res sacra' sanctifies the spouses.  Bellarmine, who severely criticizes Durandus's view, is one of those who pays most attention to the grace specifically contained in this sacrament.  He too however relates these graces to the objective (could we say "static"?) holiness of what is signified by married union, rather than to the subjective holiness progressively and dynamically achieved by the living out of married life itself.  With reference to Ephesians 5, he dwells on the demonstrative meaning and goes on: "Marriage could not signify that [the union of Christ and the Church], unless between husband and wife, over and beyond the civil contract, there were also a spiritual union of souls...  If God joins man and woman for this purpose, that by their spiritual union they should signify the spiritual union of Christ and the Church, he then doubtlessly gives them the grace without which they could not achieve that spiritual union" [9].

     It may well be that theologians, unaccustomed - at least until our days - to regard marriage as involving a specific call to holiness, have passed too lightly over matrimony as a sacrament of sanctification [10].  It does seem that there is an imbalance here calling for correction, above all in the light of the Vatican II teaching on the universal call to holiness, to the holiness of married people no less than of other Christians [11].

     If we turn to Scripture, I think we can find support for this view precisely in Ephesians 5:21-33.  The exegesis of this passage has tended to dwell on the pauline presentation of the sign aspect of matrimony - image of the loving relationship and union between Christ and his Church.  It has perhaps not given sufficient attention however to the fact that this truth is presented by Paul in a preeminently practical context, where his main concern is pastoral exhortation and catechesis.  Paul's teaching that marriage signifies the union of Christ and his Church appears as a consequence of his reflections on the conjugal call to mutual love, sacrifice and fidelity.  "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church...  Even so husbands should love their wives...  For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one.  This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband" (vv. 25; 31-33).

     In this passage, Paul clearly sees the husband as figuring Christ, and the wife, the Church.  Perhaps the subordination which this might be taken to imply has been overstressed, and insufficient attention given to the pauline comment about 'no one hating his own flesh' (cf. Eph 5:28-29), underlying which one can find the idea that marital love is intended to be in some way a purified form of self-love.  Christ is really the model for both spouses.  In quoting Ephesians 5:21 "Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ", the new Catechism (no. 1642) applies it to the married relationship without any distinction [12].

     Paul in any case is drawing attention not just to the significance of the sacrament of marriage, but also to its sanctifying power, to its efficacy.  It seems not only legitimate but obligatory to read into Paul's exhortations to married love and union, a promise that the conjugal covenant confers special graces, sacramental graces, for this end.  The balance of Paul's thought would seem to be:  a) the signifying aspect of matrimony as a sacrament is that conjugal union images Christ's love for his Church;  b) the sanctifying aspect is that, in loving one another with the help of sacramental grace, spouses become conformed to Christ in the generous dedication of his love.  Thus both aspects are stressed [13].  St. Thomas, it will be remembered, rejected the opinion of those who saw only the sign aspect of matrimony, and denied its efficacy in causing grace ("Quidam dixerunt quod matrimonium nullo modo est causa gratiae, sed est tantum signum.  Sed hoc non potest stare" Suppl., q. 42, art. 3).

     The particular suitability of marriage having been raised to the dignity of a sacrament is not so evident if one makes its «raison d'être» that of imaging Christ's sacrificial love for his Church; one could argue that this imaging is better done in the Eucharist.  It is more from the angle of its efficacy than of its signification that the unique importance of the sacramentality of marriage appears.  The special fittingness of marriage being a sacrament is seen in how it is directed to sanctifying the highest form of human community; conferring grace so that the fruitful union of the sexes, made in the trinitarian image of God, can infuse supernatural love into the conjugal and family relationship between Christians.

     Along the same lines we can note that while all the sacraments are sacraments of union, Eucharist and Matrimony are specially so.  The Eucharist makes each individual one with Christ; Matrimony makes two individuals one with one another, identifying them at same time with Christ.  The love and union of persons is the whole scope and purpose of existence; its paragon is in the Blessed Trinity.  Christ comes to incorporate all of us into this loving union.  But, for us, such a union can only be achieved through self-giving that entails generosity, i.e. through sacrifice.  So Christ unites himself to his Church.  While the priesthood also mirrors Christ's sacrificed love for his Church, Paul does not dwell on that but rather on Matrimony, the common way of Christians.  He knows that love and union between married persons, is difficult, but is also saving.  Surely his point is that, in the present state of mankind and in the plan of salvation, the love and union of persons must be sacrificial.

     A further consideration of a very practical nature can be made here.  Though the sign aspect of matrimony provides broad horizons for theological reflection, it offers little by way of motivating the majority of christian couples in the actual living of their married lives.  In these times when the renewal of married life is being so urgently sought, theology could render notable service if it dwelt more on that particular aspect of the sacrament of marriage that can easily inspire properly instructed spouses: i.e. its effect in communicating graces which enable them to live unitedly in faithful, fruitful and growing conjugal love, so as to beget Christ in each other [14] and to beget children in Christ.

     St. Thomas, as we have seen, clearly places the sacrament not in consent, but in the bond deriving from it; in other words, he places sacramentality mainly in the "in facto esse" aspect of matrimony.  After Casti connubii most theologians came to regard this as the common opinion [15].  It seems to me that the Vatican II presentation of marriage reinforces this view of the whole of the married covenant - marriage "in facto esse" as well as marriage "in fieri" - being sacramental.  It is not just a momentary meeting of wills which matrimony as a sacrament is designed to sanctify, but a relationship, a state.  The natural relationship acquires a continuing supernatural power.

III. Nature and Grace

     The sacrament of Matrimony is an outstanding example of "grace perfecting nature": ordinary realities being supernaturally transformed from within.  Christian marriage does not create new obligations substantially distinct from those characterizing non-christian marriage [16], but simply provides the spouses with help and strength, to fulfil their natural conjugal obligations and achieve their christian goal.  As Pius XI teaches in Casti connubii, spouses are "not fettered but adorned, not hampered but assisted by the bond of the sacrament" (AAS 22 (1930) 555).  If pastors were to dwell more on this truth, they might be better able to dispel the prejudices which some Christians have against "sacramental" marriage.  When marriage is considered as a means and source of grace, its demands are seen as positive, exhibiting such greatness of purpose as to appear worthwhile on a totally new level and in a totally new light.

     Our exposition here needs to maintain a proper balance.  If grace builds on nature, then we should not only stress the privilege and richness of the sacramental graces of christian marriage, but do so on the basis of a renewed appreciation of the natural goodness and attraction of marriage itself.  Only then can the undoubted demands of marriage - sacramental or non-sacramental - be faced up to with optimism and determination.

     Marriage is one of God's striking gifts to mankind.  Any particularised analysis of its goodness centers necessarily on three values: the exclusive character of the faithfulness which the spouses promise each other; the unbreakable nature of the bond they establish between themselves; their readiness to share together their procreative power, to beget children that will be the fruit of their union and love.  Here we have the three "bona", first enunciated by St. Augustine [17] in order to demonstrate the basic goodness of the institution of marriage.

     The current stress on a peculiarly christian personalist philosophy is specially helpful to our analysis.  The basic Gospel rule of "losing oneself so as to find oneself" is equivalently found in that axiom of Vatican II which expresses the essence of christian personalism: "man can fully discover his true self only in a sincere giving of himself" (GS, 24).  A main natural force drawing the human person out of self-centeredness and self-isolation is to be discovered in marriage and in what can rightly be called the conjugal instinct (An instinct that is super-added on the human level to the mere sexual instinct.  Animals seek a mate.  Man and woman, if they understand their own nature, seek a spouse).

     Conjugal love, as well as being natural to man and woman, is the most intimate form of human relationship, with its urges, satisfactions and difficulties.  Conjugal self-donation is therefore a great act of love - independently of the presence of feelings and sentiment or their absence.  But it demands self-giving, involving a commitment that draws the person out of solitude and isolation, setting his or her life on a course of concern for another and for others, wishing them well, desiring what is "good" for them: which, according to St. Thomas, is the very essence of love ("Amare est velle alicui bonum": I-II, q. 26, art. 4).

     It is natural for husband and wife to wish to deepen the love which first drew them to chose each other as spouse.  While perseverance and growth in that love demand a constant effort, it would be unnatural for couples to conclude that the first onset of difficulties marks the end of love, or that the effort to maintain and strengthen it is not worthwhile.  The more human sense of marriage has always seen it as involving a commitment for "better or for worse"...  In the worse moments, there is therefore a natural basis on which one can evoke a call to be faithful.  It is pastoral wisdom to remind people that such reactions of the "conjugal instinct" are no less natural and noble than the similar dispositions to be found in parental love or instinct.  There is something deeply unnatural, and even denaturalized, in the reaction of a father or mother who calmly loses love for his or her children, or does not care if he or she is no longer being loved by them.  It is equally unnatural, from the conjugal point of view, not to want to protect and revive love for one's partner, at the first sign that it may be running into danger.

     Christians, like non-Christians, marry because they are attracted by the good things it offers: love, companionship, support, a stable home, children...  These are great values, to be received and to be given.  But they are values that are always threatened by individual selfishness, and today in particular receive no support - rather the opposite - from the prevailing atmosphere in society.  Such a life-long intimate relationship is not possible without developing an open and generous heart, which is a condition of human and supernatural charity.  This, in our present state, can only be achieved with a particular help of God.  The divine logic of matrimony being raised to the level of a sacrament can be perceived in reflecting on this.  In marrying, Christians, perhaps without realizing it, receive graces - gifts [18] - to strengthen them to live marriage in the fullness of the conjugal commitment and so to achieve its true ends.

IV. The Specific Graces of Marriage

     Conjugal and family self-giving appear therefore as a way of achieving union with God.  In loving each other and their children, married people learn to love God.  Any genuine love - response to values - leads a person to God.  So the new Catechism says: "Charity upholds and purifies our human ability to love, and raises it to the supernatural perfection of divine love" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1827).

     In what follows we suggest some possible specifications of the graces that this sacrament offers, without wishing to set forth their content in any depth:

     - The first grace is naturally enough designed to reinforce the couple's love, so that it does not give way under the inevitable difficulties of a lifelong commitment, but is strengthened and grows with the passage of the years.  "This grace proper to the sacrament of Matrimony is intended to perfect the couple's love and to strengthen their indissoluble unity.  By this grace they help one another to attain holiness in their married life..." (Ib. 1641)

     - Love means loving the other as he or she is; i.e. as a real person with defects.  The hardest tests of married life come when romance wanes and couples begin to discover the extent of each other's defects.  The sacrament must offer special and particularly strong graces for living through such moments, learning to forgive, to ask for forgiveness, to develop the aptitude for dwelling on one's partner's positive characteristics and avoiding obsessions with those that appear negative: in a word, to keep loving one another in a truly self-sacrificial, Christ-like, way ("Learning to love each other with one's defects", was one of Blessed Escrivá's most constantly repeated advice to married couples; cf. C. Burke. Homiletic and Pastoral Review, op. cit. pp. 23-24).

     - One might legitimately suggest that matrimonial grace is further specified in the way it strengthens each spouse in sexual identity and donation: helping the man develop his distinctive spousal self-gift in a masculine mode and dedication, and the woman equally in feminine mode and dedication.  The unity of marriage after all is not just indissoluble, nor simply interpersonal; it is intersexual.  It calls for a growth in sexual identity, so threatened today by those who seem to belittle God's gift of sexual differences, character and function (Cf. the author's essay: "Sexual Identity in Marriage and Family Life": The Linacre Quarterly, vol. 61/3 (1994), pp. 75-86).

     - A particular task of married love - for which the sacrament provides grace - is to purify the sexual relationship between husband and wife of the elements of selfishness and of possible exploitation which, in the present state of human nature, can affect it.  The new Catechism is quite explicit about the dangers here: "This experience [of evil] makes itself felt in the relationships between man and woman.  Their union has always been threatened by discord, a spirit of domination, infidelity, jealousy and conflicts that can escalate into hatred and separation..." (no. 1606).  "According to faith the disorder we notice so painfully does not stem from the nature of man and woman, nor from the nature of their relations, but from sin.  As a break with God, the first sin had for its first consequence the rupture of the original communion between man and woman.  Their relations were distorted by mutual recriminations; their mutual attraction, the Creator's own gift, changed into a relationship of domination and lust... " (no. 1607).

     The effect of Original Sin is to make man and woman become too immediately absorbed with the exterior physical aspects and attraction of sex, preventing them from reaching, "seeing" and understanding the inner meaning and real substance and value of sexual differences and complementarity; and especially to share in the full meaning of conjugal-sexual self-giving.

     The sacrament of matrimony therefore provides special graces for living conjugal chastity.  This chastity calls for a certain strength and restraint as between husband and wife, born of their vigilance as regards the tendency not to honor the mystery of their reciprocal sexuality, and not to act according to the laws which their mind discovers in it: a tendency which is a temptation to use, and not to respect, the other.  It is natural to each person to be aware of the presence of a selfish element in the realm of sexuality, just as it is natural for a married couple to want to free and purify their mutual love from the self-seeking which can be present in their intimate relations.  Little is said today of conjugal chastity; and yet its absence leads to the undermining of the mutual respect which should characterize the love of the spouses, as well as of the true freedom with which their reciprocal spousal donation should be made [19].  Marital chastity is an essential safeguard for the strength and permanence of conjugal love.  But it is not likely to be attained without the help of special graces.  "To heal the wounds of sin, man and woman need the help of the grace that God in his infinite mercy never refuses them.  Without his help, man and woman cannot achieve the union of their lives for which God created them 'in the beginning'" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1608).

     The abundance of pleasure in marital intercourse is surely meant to correspond to the joyous sense of mutual spousal surrender and possession.  But if spouses allow pleasure to matter too much to them, if they act as if nothing in their mutual physical relationship calls for restraint, or as if their mutual love is in no way endangered by the element of selfishness which habitually threatens sexuality, then they are in danger of taking rather than of giving, and of so losing the sense and reality of mutual donation.  Conjugal chastity will help them keep the truly personalist values of physical sexuality paramount in their minds: i.e. the reaffirmation of their conjugal gift and acceptance of one another by means of sexual intercourse which, in its sharing of open-to-life procreativity, expresses the uniquenesss, totality and exclusiveness of their self-giving (Cf. the author's Covenanted Happiness, Ignatius Press, 1990, pp. 35-41).

     - The married couple usually and naturally become a family.  Spousal love is normally meant to become parental love, and the sacrament of marriage undoubtedly offers particular graces for the unfolding of personalities, redirection of affections and acquisition of new abilities involved in this gradual and vital process, so powerfully geared to the maturing of persons.

     - It is a particular mission of parents to mediate God's paternal and maternal love.  The sacrament of matrimony should therefore grant spouses special graces to grow in parental indentity and love; so that each learns to be a true father or mother, as the case may be.  A sanctified marriage means a marriage where the partners have learned to be holy spouses and holy parents.

     - From the purely natural viewpoint, the family, with its unique functions of humanizing and socializing, is rightly called the first vital cell of society.  From the christian point of view, married couples with their children are called also to be a gospel leaven in the world.  The sacramental graces peculiar to the married state must be designed to give powerful apostolic stimulus and strength.  If a couple are not aware of these graces - if they are not often reminded of them, in pre- and post-marriage preaching and catechesis - they may fail to activate them or rely on them, and so miss a large part of the christian evangelizing mission which is so peculiarly theirs.  Nothing can so contribute to bringing the world to God as the example of married couples who, in keen awareness of the graces coming to them from the specific sacrament they have received, are living their conjugal and family life in active reliance on these graces.

     These are some of the graces that the sacrament of marriage offers.  Theological reflection, and in particular preaching and pastoral attention, can help married couples understand the powerful way God wishes to work in their lives through this specific sacrament with its peculiar graces, in order to help them fulfill the aspirations of their natural conjugal love, being carried on by and through it both to personal growth and maturity in Christ, as well as to the realization of the evangelizing potential of their calling.

NOTES

[1] We regard matrimony as a "constitutional" sacrament; not of course in the sense of conferring sacramental character, but in that of constituting a person in a special state of life: a human state that by divine will is also a sacramental state.

[2] "Actus exteriores et verba exprimentia consensum directe faciunt nexum quendam, qui est sacramentum matrimonii; et huiusmodi nexus ex virtute divinae institutionis dispositive operatur ad gratiam" (Suppl. q. 42, art. 3 ad 2).

[3] De Sacramento Matrimonii, cap. 6; Thomas Sánchez holds the same: De sancto matrimonii sacramento, (Lugduni, 1739), lib. II, disp. V, p. 121, n. 7.

[4] one which Piero Barberi holds to be the common opinion today: cf. La celebrazione del matrimonio cristiano, Rome, 1982, pp. 26ss.

[5] AAS 22 (1930) 555; cf. G. Baldanza: "La grazia matrimoniale nell'Enciclica «Casti connubii»", Ephemerides Liturgicae, 99 (1985), pp. 43-46.

[6] "Marriage is the only one of the sacraments which transforms a human institution into an instrument of divine action": J. Leclercq: Le mariage Chrétien, Paris, 1950, p. 32.

[7] Cf. St. Thomas' dictum that a sacrament "est signum rei sacrae in quantum est sanctificans hominem" (III, q. 60, art. 2).

[8] e.g. "Quamvis aliter sit in hoc sacramento et in aliis sacramentis: nam in aliis res sacra cuius est signum non solum est significata, sed et contenta; in matrimonio autem res sacra cuius est signum est solum significata et non contenta": Durandus of Saint Pourçain (+ 1334); Super quattuor Sententiarum, lib. IV, q. III, art. 1.

[9] "Non potest autem coniugium id significare, nisi inter virum et uxorem praeter civilem contractum, sit etiam unio spiritualis animorum...  Quod si Deus virum et foeminam coniungit ad hunc finem, ut spirituali sua unione, unionem spiritualem Christi et Ecclesiae significent, sine dubio gratiam illis largitur, sine qua spiritualem illam unionem non haberent": De Matrimonio sacramento, cap. II, p. 500.

[10] St. Thomas, in affirming that matrimony "minimum habet de spiritualitate" (III, q. 65, art. 2 ad 1), is not denying its sanctifying effect (on the contrary), but simply giving a reason why it is generally listed last among the sacraments.

[11] Cf. along with Lumen Gentium, Ch. V, nos. 39-42; Gaudium et Spes, nos. 48ss.  Blessed Josemaría Escrivá, a precursor of Vatican II in so many ways, was particularly such in this point.  See his "Marriage, a Christian Vocation", in Christ is Passing By, pp. 43-53; cf. also references in: C. Burke: "Love and the Family in today's World": Homiletic and Pastoral Review, March 1995, pp. 26-28.

[12] One finds at times slight hints at this in scholastic writing: e.g. Gulliermus van der Linden (1525-1588): "Proinde illum in mutuam corporum copulationem consensus, qui et matrimonium efficit, et est sacramentum, ita semel divino constringit animorum nexu, ut se mutuam quasi suam quisque carnem amet, ut alter superstite altero, coniugem alium non desideret quod sane non naturali sed coelesti efficitur amore.  Neuter denique in universis matrimonii sive actibus sive officiis spectet aliud, quam Christum Dominum, quae copulatum ecclesiae, utque duo sint ipsi in carne una, sicuti Christus cum sua sponsa corpus facit unum" Panoplia Evangelica (Paris, 1564), lib. IV, cap. XCIV.

[13] It is not a question of ignoring the sign-value, nor of denying that it is the origin and key to the sanctifying effect, but of analysing the graces which this sign (and Paul's comments) indicate.

[14] St. Bonaventure makes the point that while Christians, through the Eucharist, are each first united more to Christ, and in consequence to one another, in Matrimony, the spouses are first united more to one another, and hence to Christ: cf. Sent. Lib. IV, d. 26, art. 2, q. 2 (Ed. Quaracchi, vol IV, p. 668).

[15] P. Palazzini, "Il Sacramento del Matrimonio", in I Sacramenti, Roma, 1959, pp. 755-756; cf. M. Schmaus: Katholische Dogmatik, München, 1957, § 289.

[16] The obligation of sanctity, common to all Christians (cf. Mt 5:48), derives from Baptism not from marriage.

[17] cf. De bono coniugali, c. 24, n. 32 (CSEL 41, 227); De nupt. et conc. I, c. 17, n. 19 (PL 44, 424); De Gen. ad litt., lib. IX, 7, (CSEL 28, 275), etc.

[18] "Sacraments are first and foremost Christ's free offer of grace.  As such, they are gifts before they are choices": Susan Wood: "The Marriage of Baptized Nonbelievers: Faith, Contract, and Sacrament" Theological Studies, 48 (1987), p. 292.

[19] "...that interior freedom of the gift, which of its nature is explicitly spiritual and depends on a person's interior maturity.  This freedom presupposes such a capacity of directing one's sensual and emotive reactions as to make self-donation to the other possible, on the basis of mature self-possession..." John Paul II, General Audience, November 7, 1984: Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II, VII, 2 (1984), p. 1174-1175.