Matrimony

The Catholic Church teaches that the Sacrament of Matrimony is an indissoluble sacrament.  Why?  Because marriage is a covenant, not a contract.  And Jesus taught that the Sacrament of Marriage was indissoluble.  In Matthew 19: 3-6 we read, “Some Pharisees approached him, and tested him, saying, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause whatever?’  He said in reply, ‘ Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator made them male and female and said, for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?  So they are no longer two, but one flesh.  Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate.’ ”

We can even look at the vows.  When we say “…for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse as long as we both shall live,” this is not a contract, but a convent.  We don’t exchange goods and services or pleasures and pleasantries, we are exchanging persons!  I am yours and now you are mine.  God stands between us to bind us together in this covenant of matrimony.  And He stands in between the two, not just to hold them together, but to be an endless source of grace and power and forgiving love so that they can work out whatever problems they face.

God is the one who unites the two in marriage and makes them one.  It isn’t government.  It isn’t the Church.  It isn’t even the two individuals themselves.  God is the bonding agent in the sacrament.