By Jenny Koch
Connecting Liturgy and Life
Editor’s note: For 2026, the weekly “Connecting Faith and Life” column has been renamed “Connecting Liturgy and Life.” The column consists of reflections on Part Two of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), which focuses on the Liturgy and the Sacraments.
cf. CCC 1601-1617
My grandparents’ wedding was simple and beautiful. I’ve heard stories of the spaghetti dinner after Mass and the barn dance that followed. My parents’ wedding was photographed in color, and the scrapbook is beautifully preserved, complete with a list of bridesmaids and groomsmen present. At our own wedding, we had a choice of decorations, and I asked for old pictures of these wedding celebrations. Thankfully, our family came through and filled a table with a beautiful collection of historic pictures. Reflecting today on that table of pictures, I now realize that the images reflect a rich history of love, but also our current, broken world. Not every marriage lasted. Some ended in divorce, death or disease. That table was full of lovely pictures, but it also reflected what the Catechism teaches us about marriage — though sin has entered the world, God has a plan.
Marriage is not purely a human activity. It is also a sacrament. Sometimes the best way to describe a sacrament is by using the definition used in the Eastern Orthodox Church. They are understood as seven “Holy Mysteries” or mysteria. Whether you have been married for five minutes or 50 years, you know that some days are a mystery! Marriage is also one of the two Sacraments of Service. Penance and Anointing of the Sick are Sacraments of Healing. Baptism, Confirmation and First Holy Communion are all Sacraments of Initiation. Marriage and Holy Orders are both sacraments of service because they call us to love — to will the good of the other — in our everyday actions.
This beautiful sacrament that brings families together was created by God, “who created man out of love also calls him to love the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being” (CCC 1604). Marriage is also always intended to be a covenant “by which a man and a woman establish themselves a partnership of the whole of life, by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring” (CCC 1601). The partnership is not immune to the world, however, and the Catechism is clear: “their union has always been threatened by discord, a spirit of domination, infidelity, jealousy and conflicts that can escalate into hatred and separation” (CCC 1606). The Catechism also teaches that “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.” (CCC 1607).
While Blessed Fulton J. Sheen did not write the book on marriage, his advice in “Three to Get Married” is still used in many marriage preparation classes, and he devoted much of his time to preaching on family matters. In one episode of “Life is Worth Living,” he took time to highlight tensions that exist in marriages. They all stem from our human nature. The first is the tension between unity and separateness: “It is the nature of all love to desire to become one with that which is loved.” This unity is a spiritual one; we are matter and spirit. While our spirits unite, our bodies are incapable. The second tension concerns the personal and social. “Love by its nature is personal. The ideal, in love, is where the ‘I’ and the ‘Thou’ approach one another as if there were no one else in all the world.” The reality of marriage is that personal time diminishes and must be protected in different seasons. Lastly, Sheen describes a tension between longing and satisfaction. “Human beings oscillate between being loved too little and being loved too much: they feel a tug of war between wanting human affections and not wanting it.” All of these tensions create misunderstandings. Our unique human nature is often incapable of managing these tensions: “We are not wrong in wanting perfect love. But it just so happens,” Sheen writes, “that our souls and our hearts are not big enough.” The Church, in her wisdom, recognizes this.
Whether you can relate to these tensions or not, Blessed Fulton J. Sheen and the Catholic Church offer the same advice — stick with it! How is this possible? Grace. “To heal the wounds of sin, man and woman need the help of the grace that God in his infinite mercy never refuses them” (CCC 1608). A woman was struggling in her marriage and considering divorce. She told Blessed Fulton J. Sheen, “I am going to stick it out; but I cannot do so without faith, and you must help me to get it.” Sheen counseled her and gave her instructions, but only God gave her the gift of faith. Years later, she returned with good news of a happy family. This gift of faith carries us in all the sacraments; faith takes us to places in our earthly pilgrimage that are impossible without God’s help. As we continue to discern our vocation, celebrate our anniversaries or perhaps look for healing in our past relationships, let us look to Sheen’s advice: “Let there be in the home a respect for the partner, not on the basis of whether the partner gives pleasure, but because the partner is a person, and a gift of God to be loved as one’s own flesh.” Blessed Fulton J. Sheen, pray for us!