The
Holy Eucharist, Vatican II tells us, is "the source and summit of the
Christian life" (Lumen Gentium, no.11). Since sacramental marriage is
essentially a spiritual life, it can be said that the Eucharist is the
source and summit of Christian marriage as well. For those spouses who
imbibe the Magisterium's teaching on the true nature of marriage, who
embrace sacramental marriage as a divine vocation from God, who understand
that the married life means using every means available to grow closer to
Christ, and that Christ Himself is fully present in the Eucharist, it makes
sense that the Eucharist should be central to the married life of a
Catholic. All too often, however, Catholic spouses are unaware of or
deliberately ignore the Church's teaching on conjugal morality. Polls have
shown that approximately 50 percent of all marriages end in divorce and this
number is the same among Catholics who practice contraception,
sterilization, and selective abortion (Janet Smith 1993, 526-527). It is my
contention that spouses who fail to recognize the received Tradition on
sacramental marriage also fail to nurture a deep love for Christ in the Holy
Eucharist, and by reflecting on the Church's Eucharistic doctrine as it
pertains to the marriage covenant, Catholic marriages can be strengthened
and deepened. The better spouses understand the Eucharist's role in
Christian marriage, the more they will be able to love Christ both present
in the Eucharist and in one another throughout their married lives.
We are by nature relational beings because we
are made in the image and likeness of God, who reveals Himself for the
purpose of establishing a relationship of life-giving love. It is the
relational nature of God, revealed to us most fully in Jesus Christ, who
reveals our own nature to ourselves "and restore(s) the unity of all in one
people and one body" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.813). This unity
is expressed in a special way through the family, who forms a community of
persons and "is thus the first human 'society.' It arises whenever there
comes into being the conjugal covenant of marriage, which opens the spouses
to a lasting communion of love and of life, and it is brought to completion
in a full and specific way with the procreation of children: the 'communion'
of the spouses gives rise to the 'community' of the family. The 'community
of the family is completely pervaded by the very essence of 'communion'"
(Letter to Families, no.7).
The Eucharist is the essential dynamic of
communion, relationship, and integration that binds individual Christians to
each other and to Christ. The Eucharist is also the requisite component of
faith, because in the Eucharist all of the impetus and impulses of faith
reach their right and proper expression. It is the source of faith because
it is the most profound encounter with God possible to a Christian and it is
the summit of faith because it is the most supreme experience of God
possible in this world. The sacrament of marriage, rooted in the Eucharist,
concretizes this essential truth of communion in an absolutely tangible and
truly meaningful way in the conjugal act between husband and wife:
Since the Christian family united in Christ is a
reflection of the Trinitarian communion of Persons, the conjugal union is a
sign or sacrament of the love of the Trinity. It is therefore a holy and
blessed act similar to the priest's consecration of the Eucharist at Mass.
When a couple engages in this holy act while, at the same time, not giving
themselves in love, the conjugal embrace is no longer a reflection of the
love of the Trinity. A holy, sacred sign is desecrated. Such desecration, if
knowingly and willingly done, is a sacrilege. It is comparable to a priest's
desecration of the Holy Eucharist (Hogan and LeVoir 1992, 256).
In the conjugal act, the spouses image the
life-giving power of Eucharist as a loving response to God's design "by
means of the reciprocal personal gift which is proper and exclusive to them.
[The] husband and wife tend toward that communion of their beings whereby
they help each other toward personal perfection in order to collaborate with
God in the begetting and rearing of new lives" (Humane Vitae, no.8). In the
breaking and eating of the Eucharist, the spouses enter into profound and
intimate relationship and communion with Christ and with one another through
the gift of sacramental grace. This total gift of self by the Eucharistic
Christ to his Church is mirrored in the cardinal act of worship between
husband and wife, namely, the conjugal act:
This "worship" signifies the self-surrender of
spouses. Thus spousal "worship" is taken up into the sublime action of
worship, Christ the Bridegroom immolating himself for his spouse, the
Church. A Eucharistic quality may be discerned in the loving awe with which
spouses ought to offer such "worship" to one another. Thus the redemptive
and Eucharistic "giving thanks" dimensions of the Sacrifice of the Mass are
reflected in two members of the worshipping Mystical Body, made "one flesh"
in this sacrament (Peter J. Elliott 1990, 158).
The married couple, as living witnesses to the
reality of Christ's real presence in the unity and communion of their
persons, is transformed into Christ by the Eucharist. Through the eating of
the Body and Blood of the Lord, they become what they are already through
baptism: the Body of Christ. Together, the married couple forms a lifelong,
self-donating, and indissoluble union of love: a "communion of persons
intended to bear witness on earth and to image the intimate communion of
persons within the Trinity" (William E. May 1995, 65).
Through the power of Christ's redemptive death,
which is both actualized in the Eucharist and symbolized in the marriage
covenant, the husband and wife--as the Domestic Church, as an intimate
community of conjugal life and love, and as the quintessential incarnation
of the larger Church--"are elevated and assumed into the spousal charity of
Christ, sustained and enriched by His redeeming power" (May, 106).
In the sacramental encounters of Eucharist and
marriage, the spouses are brought closer to that oneness and communion with
God and each other that they were destined for before the Fall. Jesus
himself, by coming to restore our broken relationship with the Father, gives
spouses the strength and grace to live their marriage vocation. Christ, in a
deeply personal way, gives himself to spouses through the Eucharist to which
Christian marriage is intimately connected. The gift of the Eucharist
intensifies the graces given to the couple both in their baptisms and in the
marriage covenant:
The Eucharist is the very source of Christian
marriage. The Eucharistic sacrifice, in fact, represents Christ's covenant
of love with the Church, sealed with his blood on the Cross. In this
sacrifice of the New and Eternal covenant, Christian spouses encounter the
source from which their own marriage covenant flows, is interiorly
structured and continuously renewed. As a representation of Christ's
sacrifice of love for the Church, the Eucharist is a fountain of charity. In
the Eucharistic gift of charity the Christian family finds the foundation
and soul of its "communion" and "mission": By partaking in the Eucharistic
bread, the different members of the Christian family become one body, which
reveals and shares in the wider unity of the Church. Their sharing in the
Body of Christ that is "given up" and in His blood that is "shed" becomes a
never-ending source of missionary and apostolic dynamism for the Christian
family (Familiaris Consortio, no.57).
Eucharist, then, assists spouses in living out
their marriage covenant. The Eucharist strengthens the couple's faith and
opens their hearts to the life-giving power of God's love, which enriches
and deepens their conjugal communion. "It is in the Eucharist that the
couple is strengthened to continue their struggle for holiness and to
sanctify their family" (Hogan and LeVoir, 276). The man and the woman, who
by their marriage covenant are no longer two but one flesh, are renewed and
fortified by the Eucharist and are better equipped to live out their
sacramental marriage in loving solidarity where they "render mutual help and
service to each other through an intimate union of their persons . . .
[and], through this union, they experience the meaning of their oneness and
attain to it with growing perfection day by day" (Gaudium et Spes, no.48).
The family which results from this union "draws its inner solidity from the
covenant between the spouses, which Christ raised to a sacrament. The family
draws its proper character as a community . . . from that fundamental
communion of the spouses which is prolonged in their children" (Letter
to Families, no.8).
In the marriage covenant, the spouses share in
the priestly mission of Jesus Christ by offering up their lives and labors
to God through and with Jesus at every Eucharist: their entire married and
family life, sincerely offered up in and through the Eucharistic heart of
Jesus, becomes a priestly sacrifice acceptable to the Father by the merits
of Jesus Christ. On Calvary, blood and water flowed from the pierced heart
of Jesus, which is the fount of sanctity and the symbol of all the
superabundant merits and veritable graces that are available, in a special
way, to married couples who are open to receive our Eucharistic Lord. Just
as Christ opened his arms on the cross in complete and loving surrender to
the Father's will, husbands and wives, in sacramental Communion, open
themselves up to a total self-giving of one to the other through mutual
consent and through self-surrender in the conjugal act.
There are several major texts in Scripture from
which one can draw parallels between sacramental marriage and the Eucharist.
Pope John Paul II notes that in Ephesians 5:21-33, the Eucharist "draws its
essential significance and its sacramental power from that spousal love of
the Redeemer, by means of which the sacramentality of the Church itself is
constituted above all" (Pope John Paul II 1997, 142). The Eucharistic gift
images the goods of the marriage covenant in that it embodies unconditional,
self-giving love which is to be mutual, exclusive and fruitful. St. Paul
reminds us of this fact when he describes the use of the sexual union and
the "one flesh" of marriage as a warning against fornication (1 Corinthians
6:13-20). As we have seen, by their married union spouses become "one body,"
just as we become one in the communion of the Eucharist (1 Corinthians
10:17).
The Eucharistic words of Jesus at the Last
Supper may also be seen in their nuptial meaning, which anticipate the
"self-immolation" of the Bridegroom, freely giving up his Body and Blood for
his beloved spouse (Elliott, 24). This theme is easily connected back to
Genesis, where Adam gave his own body for his spouse, Eve (Genesis 2:21-22).
"Adam's cry is echoed, as it were, on the Cross: 'This is at last bone of my
bone and flesh of my flesh' (Genesis 2:23). In the Paschal Mystery, the
Redemption is at once Christ's work for us and his extension of himself in
his Mystical Body which is his beloved bride" (Elliott, 29). St. Paul, then,
in the Ephesians 5 text, combines Adam's joyful proclamation in Genesis with
the "great mystery" of the Bridegroom on the cross, to show both the
redemptive and Eucharistic nature of the marriage covenant (Ephesians
5:28-30). Pope John Paul II addresses this same theme from a
phenomenological perspective, that is, from a theology of the body:
We find ourselves at the very heart of the
Paschal Mystery, which completely reveals the spousal love of God. Christ is
the Bridegroom because "he has given himself": his body has been "given,"
his blood has been "poured out" (cf. Luke 22:19-22). In this way "he loved
them to the end" (John 13:1). The "sincere gift" contained in the sacrifice
of the cross gives definitive prominence to the spousal meaning of God's
love. As the Redeemer of the world, Christ is the Bridegroom of the Church.
The Eucharist is the Sacrament of our redemption. It is the Sacrament of the
Bridegroom and of the Bride. The Eucharist makes present and realizes anew
in a sacramental manner the redemptive act of Christ, who "creates" the
Church, his body. Christ is united with this "body" as the bridegroom with
the bride. All this is contained in the Letter to the Ephesians. The
perennial "unity of the two" that exists between man and woman from the very
"beginning" [marriage as the primordial sacrament] is introduced into this
"great mystery" of Christ and of the Church. It is the Eucharist above all
that expresses the redemptive act of Christ the Bridegroom toward the Church
the Bride (Pope John Paul II 1997, 481, my emphasis).
The Eucharist is the New Covenant in the Blood
of Christ. St. Paul draws a parallel between God's covenant with his people
and the marriage covenant, which he sees as a sign of the love of Christ for
his Church (see Ephesians 5:28-32). The Church is the Body of Christ and
just as Christ loves the Church, so husbands and wives must love each other
as they do their own bodies. This communion of persons is a sacred sign, a
mystery, a living sacrament of Christ's love for his Church. The Domestic
Church, the family, exemplifies the Church, so the love of spouses
incarnates the love of Christ for his Church. This reality is not possible
without the Eucharist, which "makes the Church" and, within the indissoluble
bond of sacramental marriage and expressed in the total giving of self in
the conjugal act, celebrates the spouses' presence, renews their strength,
and makes their communion deeper and more real.
The family needs the
nourishment of the Eucharist to survive; it needs the frequent experience of
the death and rising of Jesus Christ to share in its own paschal mystery.
The Eucharist, as the source of Christian family life, constantly renews the
marriage covenant. The Eucharist is the source of Christian marriage because
the Eucharist is Christ himself; it is the fountain where spouses and
families receive the strength, power, and grace to seek the Lord through
spiritual perfection and charity.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers is a permanent deacon
in the Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon and is the Director of Public Safety
for the University of Portland. He is the founder of Aurem Cordis, a
Christian evangelization and apologetics organization dedicated to
disseminating and promoting Catholic values, principles, and teaching in
complete faithfulness and total submission to Holy Scripture, Sacred
Tradition, and the Magisterium. He has been a guest on "EWTN Live", "Life on
the Rock", "Catholic Answers Live" and hosts a weekly radio program on KBVM,
the Catholic radio station in Portland. Deacon Harold is currently writing a
book on Catholic spirituality for men. He, his wife Colleen, and their four
children reside in Portland.
