Marriage and the Rite

A Liturgical Spirituality for Married Life

It is not in the desire for beautiful and finite ready-made things that love finds its proper meaning, but in the stimulus to participate in becoming these things. [1]

The recent rediscovery of the theology of marriage – and more generally of the married life – seems to have highlighted the dogmatic and moral dimensions of the seventh sacrament. Nevertheless, marriage’s liturgical and spiritual dimensions have not yet been explored fully enough. [2]

The ambition to construct a « liturgical spirituality of married life, » therefore, runs into a double difficulty at the outset : on the one hand an often merely extrinsic relationship is often proposed between marriage and liturgy ; on the other, all thought about a « non-individual spirituality » within the modern and contemporary Western ecclesial tradition is still in its embryonic stages.

However, it seems urgent to adequately develop a deeper enquiry into the relationship between marriage and spirituality, something that still cannot be promoted without a courageous rereading of the spiritual vocation of the Christian liturgical experience.

The scope of this contribution, therefore, is to enquire into the relationship between married life and rite in three different meanings of the term :

(1) the relationship between the rite of marriage and married life ;

(2) the relationship between everyday matrimonial rituality and the relevance of the Christian sacrament ;

(3) the relationship between Christian rite in general and marriage.

The three aspects of the question are profoundly interwoven and should thus be carefully disentangled and distinguished. I will therefore proceed in the following order :

• first I would like to briefly present the interconnection between the « liturgical question » and the « spiritual question » ( part 1),

• in light of which I will present the three relationships between rite and marriage that I just mentioned (parts 2-4),

• and then add (part 5) a few brief general conclusions. [3]

1. The Liturgical Question, the Spiritual Question, and Married Life

Above all, it should not be forgotten that « liturgy », understood in the modern sense, is born in the twentieth century as a question of liturgical spirituality (as piété liturgique, to use an expression dear to L. Beauduin, one of the undisputed fathers of the liturgical movement). It is interesting to note that the first positive appraisals of liturgy in the theological context are characterized by a strong – not to mention exclusive – attention to the (real or presumed) spiritual dimension. [4]

However, it is also necessary to admit that, with everything they have shown, it is precisely these movements of rediscovery of the spiritual potential in the Christian rite that have remained as a thorn in the side of the ecclesial body of the twentieth century, even after World War II and the Second Vatican Council and even after the liturgical reform. Perhaps, to already mention one of the conclusions we will arrive at only at the end of our presentation, the difficulties of putting the « new liturgies » into place and into effect – with all the inevitable temptations of rushing forward (liturgical progressivism) or of rushing backward (liturgical traditionalism) – depend on a certain forgetfulness of their originary spiritual claim and intention, without which liturgical updating can only be a very superficial and ultimately irrelevant (or even counterproductive) cosmetic change for ecclesial identity.

The young J. Ratzinger noted it almost 40 years ago at the conclusion of the Council, when he wrote about the need for the new liturgical sensibility to not forget the anthropological and spiritual questions which had arisen : « A liturgical renewal that does not put these fundamental questions to itself would remain superficial and could only escape the danger of being transformed into a merely aesthetic matter with difficulty. » [5]

Let us dwell a moment on this point : it is precisely this fact of the missing spiritual impact of the new liturgies that reveals a double question. On one hand, we have to recognize that part of the novelty of the liturgical movement is that of wanting to rediscover the spiritual value of the ritual celebration in history and theology (and repropose this value to pastoral praxis). This pretext, which today sounds so obvious and overlooked, seemed almost unthinkable, absurd, and scandalous at the beginning of the past century. Recalling this presumed absurdity and scandalousness today is important in order not to fall into the same errors of 100 years ago. On the other hand, and reciprocally, the « spiritual care » of self, of the other, of the Church, and of the world then proceeded along paths that did not minimally touch the Christian rite. The spiritual then was a-liturgical (when not anti-liturgical) and the liturgical was naturally a-spiritual. In a nutshell, the cultural and ecclesial horizon that gave birth to the liturgical movement knew – just as things that are never thought are known – that where there is rite there is no spirituality and where there is spirituality there is no rite. For spiritual experience to exist it was necessary to keep it far from Christian rite and, reciprocally, Christian rite in itself was located in a sphere that was far from spiritual experience.

Now our first (and final) task is not so much that of « understanding this thing »– actually we still know it well in the obvious sense that I spoke of before – as of becoming aware that we, as late-modern men and women, still always speak precisely with this anti-liturgical prejudice. Perhaps this is the most delicate level where we are put to the test and are called to change our « mentality. »

The history of the liturgical movement has been characterized, from its beginning – and perhaps we should say above all from its beginning – by a strong interest in the corporeal dimension of spirituality and consequently in the fundamental dimension of liturgy. This, however, also inevitably carries a critique of the traditional theological method with which the rite was « bypassed » (not forgotten, but presupposed) in the development of theological thought.

We can almost say that spirituality is the major point over which the entire ecclesial organization – beginning with the magisterium – put up resistance to liturgical changes. A case in point on this matter is the shift in approach witnessed from the promulgation of Mediator Dei (MD) in 1947 to that of Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC) in 1963. Without going into specific detail on the matter , [6] I will limit myself to mentioning the double level of difference that we can properly define as of major spiritual import :

On one hand, the style of the two documents presents the relationship between spirituality and liturgy in an essentially different manner. For MD it is still a problem of handling areas considered as different and, in some parts, parallel. Instead, SC introduces a substantial identification of one with the other although with distinctions and differentiations that remain in place. For example, in the treatment of Eucharist, for MD the framework is still that of a liturgical-sacramental knowledge that is far removed from spiritual preoccupations, where a dogmatic-disciplinary reading in terms of the « minimum necessary » prevails. In SC, rather, a reading of liturgy that we can call « spiritual » prevails. Many elements that dogmatic tradition considered « dispensable » are emphasized here (for example, biblical richness, the homily, universal prayer, communion under both species, etc.).

On the other hand, it is also the same theory of participation in the liturgy that changes. It moves from the idea (very clear in MD) that participation is essentially a « harmony of the soul » between the faithful and Christ, to an understanding of participation in which the body that acts ritually and that prays becomes fundamental. The ritual mediation (per ritus et preces) is not just an accessory and possible instrument but the unavoidable context and experience of the Christian communal identity. Active participation is not the introduction of a « sociological activism » into the great Western liturgical tradition – as some interpreters, even authoritative ones, continue to repeat ad nauseam – but the recovery of a common form of ritual participation in the unique act that constitutes the source and summit of all action in the Church.

2. The Rite of Marriage and Married Life

It is proper to begin this first passage by considering a small theoretical assumption that, even though often underestimated or handled in an offhand manner, nevertheless truly seems to be decisively important for understanding the most profound meaning of the sacrament of the couple. The Catechism of the Catholic Church suggests it, when with piercing brevity it affirms in n° 1534 that the two sacraments of service (that is, holy orders and marriage) « are directed towards the salvation of others. »

This idea, which is not new to the theological or catechumenate tradition, today seems to be capable of taking on an important role – and even one of absolute pre-eminence – on the condition that it be understood according to a perspective of a « first symbolic-ritual announcement of the faith », rather than in its (although possible and necessary) merely juridical-moral reading. The fact that marriage is « directed towards the salvation of others » in effect constitutes the declaration of a Christian vision of history, which opens itself to paschal logic and witnesses to it in the everyday lives of the two, even in its most hidden and apparently secondary details.

This particular hermeneutic of « marriage » as a « powerful form of desire, of daily effective practice and eloquent testimony of the salvation of the other » seems to me a beautiful perspective which harmonizes in a single point five dimensions of the new celebrational and theological possibilities offered by the new Rite of Marriage of the Italian Church and by a reflection on the entire ecclesial reality involved.

2.1. The Strength of Desire, the Duty of Nature, and the Gift of Grace

Marriage – even in the postmodern culture of the « transformation of intimacy » (Giddens) and of « liquid love » (Bauman) – maintains the characteristic of being, at the same time, the first and the last of the sacraments. It is the primary place of evangelization and proclamation, by the anthropological force of the officium naturale, sometimes even at a certain distance from its power as a christological and ecclesial sign. However, it evokes – underwritten in the very flesh of the couple – a « primacy of otherness » that is not only « more external than my exteriority », but also intimior intimo meo, « more intimate than my interiority. » (Augustine)

The gift that the other is for me and that I am for the other becomes flesh and blood in the daily spousal life of the couple-family. It thus can open itself to novelty, to the child as to a stranger, to the neighbor as to the passerby. Even more, we can say that sacramental marriage holds an almost unequaled power within the entire ecclesial experience in making the particular uniqueness of all the sacraments shine through, showing them to be constitutional « places of origin » for the Church and not simply places of exercise or administration on the part of an already existent Church. [7]

In effect, the Church is born precisely from this surprising consensus between God’s design/desire and humans’ desire/design that is shown in the purification of a new birth, in the perfume of a new completed identity, recognized and recognizable in the common meal that associates all in the offering of self to the Father and then also in the pact of reciprocal faithful love and fertile communion between male and female.

The faithfulness of love, the holiness of the bond, and the fertility of the relationship, scrutinized from this perspective, appear given over to the couple’s « yes » from a « yes » that precedes it and institutes it, that instructs and promotes it, that consoles it and that « speaks » above all in the unforgettable solemnity of a ritual symbol. It is their consensual « yes » that allows, almost in second place, the great yes with which God first faithfully shows, indissolubly and in a happily fertile way, his gratuitous love for humans, male and female, in the New Adam who takes care of the Church, his Bride.

2.2. The Ecclesial Context of the Sacrament

On this basis, as will appear evident, the environment in which the sacrament is celebrated can no longer be expressed with simply « occasional » indications – « during Mass » or « outside Mass », as was written in Sacrosanctum Concilium itself, with a terminology that was still too timid in respect to the new content – but rather a symbolically and ritually qualified environment must always be evoked. The new expressions of the ritual (« within the Celebration of the Word » or « within the Eucharistic Celebration ») explicitly indicate, celebrationally and ecclesially, a context of listening, of prayer, of praise, of thanksgiving, within which the celebration of marriage finds « its » word.

For the couple it is a « christological-ecclesial otherness » that precedes them, that gathers them in and welcomes them, almost in conformity and solidarity in respect to their path that begins and that will develop in deeper dialogue with that interlocutor. Or rather, it is an otherness in which they will be able to recognize themselves as recognized only in the relationship that the couple and the family will write – from now on – in their very hearts and on their very faces, in their very interiority and exteriority. Having another (and then even more others in the consequent maternal/paternal generation) to structurally correspond to, to wait for and to rein in, to listen to and awaken, to put to sleep and to wash, to watch over and to forgive, constitutes the theological horizon of the matrimonial-familial experience and the anthropological horizon of a deep ecclesial experience. [8]

2.3. The Richness and Vitality of the Ecclesial Experience

This is why, then, the most sacred words of the consent are now articulated in a more open and free form, connecting them to a richer spectrum of solemn biblical hearings and more intimately connecting them to the other holy words of the blessing (these also have been rethought and greatly amplified). The consent – from this point of view – cannot not be sustained, inspired, oriented, and guided by « the grace of Christ. » Such an unheard of declaration, which introduces a clear Christian note into the « aseptic » formula used up until now, already recalls the consent to the blessing, the response of human freedom to divine grace : one could almost say that it harmoniously synthesizes and matches familial ministry and ecclesial ministry, and this is a fundamental novelty of this rite in respect to the preceding one. [9]

The other main differences also appear as substantial ones long before being merely formal ones :

• (a) the verb in the formula of consent changes from « taking » to « accepting », moving the aspect of the « gift » of the sacrament into primary focus while not diminishing the aspect of the « task » ;

• (b) the « dialogue » form of the consent, with which both bride and groom put an initial question to one another, then formulate the solemn promise together with one voice, in a type of « dual » expression of desire and reciprocal recognition, constitutes a singularly effective expression of conjugal ministry.

2.4. A Differentiated, not Univocal, Ministry

Apart from the formula of consent in the strict sense, the logic of the consent/blessing relationship and the « lay » subjectivity of marriage go hand in hand and even here, behind small changes that could pass unobserved, we can discover vast theological and pastoral perspectives that are anything but dismissible.

Actually no one is unaware that consent and blessing indicate not only two centres of the sacrament (of which the western and eastern tradition have almost shared the development) but also two different visions of the ministry proper to this sacrament. Such recollection also speaks to the overcoming of a more restrictive ecclesial vision such that the truth of lay communion could be understood only in relationship to a non-derivative ecclesial ministry. This new vision recognizes hierarchical truth only in the service of a real and possible communion of baptized lay members. It is thus absolutely necessary to speak here of the « celebrating assembly », whose presence and avowedly distinct sacramental ministry organically contributes to the unique celebration.

2.5. Christian Initiation and the Celebratory « Form »

Finally, we have to give a certain emphasis to the pastoral description of the « forms » that intend to address Christian « initiates » and Christians « on the path of (renewed) initiation » in different manners. If what we have said up to here is true, then it is clear that the diversification between the two great « celebratory forms » (within the celebration of the Eucharist and within the celebration of the Word) also constitutes the adjustment of the celebratory act to the concrete conditions of Christian initiation and of the couple’s ecclesial insertion.

This has the function of remedying the two excesses that often infiltrate pastoral action – despite the laudable preparation courses – between a type of « acquired universal right to marry in the Church », guaranteed by a Church understood as an « agency of grace » on the one hand, and a type of selective limited contest, in which sacramental marriage can only be the fruit of a difficult, specific formation related to, and perhaps more difficult than, that reserved to candidates for the deaconate/presbyterate on the other. This parallel triumph of a dangerous indifference (with indiscriminate admission) or of a selective difference/distrust (with difficult admission barriers) can find careful pastoral remedy in the path laid out by the new Italian Rite of Marriage and in its wise description of the diverse celebratory forms.

3. Everyday Rites of Marriage and the Meaning of Christian Life

A second level of the question is located in the relationship between Christian life and the rituality that marriage itself – understood here as natural institution – brings to the relationship between the couple and their children.

Here it is vital to find, within marriage itself, a rituality in the specific way of life it represents. It is not a matter of finding rituals for marriage ; this – speaking very frankly – seems to me to a way of proceeding that is too clerical. We should not find forms of prayer or devotion to give to couples for specific acts of married life. We should instead discover in the acts of matrimony themselves a dimension of prayer, of life in Christ, of following, and of hospitality that are entirely surprising.

Another consideration has to be added at this point. The fact that marriage is directed « towards the salvation of others » does not just mean a particular form of « self-denial » that the Church has sacramentalized and that it thus applies to demands of Christians. It is rather the concrete, testimonial, historical, and visible incarnation of the « great mystery » of the relationship between Christ and the Church in this particular couple. It is the experience that the Church has of itself that assumes here a particular eloquence and efficacy of sign. The sacrament is, in this sense, an event that recognizes that grace is present, which it makes manifest and carries out as a welcoming, here and now, of the rebirth of man/woman in his-her/their « dual » relationship to God.

This is a rather strong and powerful way to assume – on the part of the baptized – the identity of alter Christus in a, perhaps unexpected, context and to live its surprising logic, which baptism and the Eucharist have already solemnly inaugurated. In fact, as baptism, confirmation, and the Eucharist already inaugurate an experience of communion for each one – while reconciliation and anointing recuperate and heal that communion when it has been lost – so does marriage, moving from a powerful context on the natural level as that of feeling-desire-generation, discover the « taking » as welcoming and living together as a gift. And yet, with its harmonia discors in relation to the officium naturale, the sacrament of marriage truly has a reconstructive power of identity in relationship and of existence lived in the grace of the other, by a gift of self, which is capable of sustaining and enduring the Gospel in everyday work, among the little things of great savour that it is studded with. [10]

This is precisely the reason why marriage is not just a document or just a moment, but is rather a testament. In effect, marriage is not just information or just admonishment but is the testimony of life for the other instead of for self. It is « no longer living for oneself » as S^t. Paul repeats so many times. In this lies the power of announcement that marriage brings to life with a strength and an eloquence that has brought it to be judged the « first » among all the other sacraments. In marriage, the Gospel of Christ, God for the Other, is announced not only with concepts and precepts but – if it is permissible to express it so freely – with « contacts » and « confections » ; not mainly through ideas and visions but through caresses and care, wasted time and spaces of communion, rhythms and styles that are patient through the wait, far from pretense, slow to contention and quick to yield.

3.1. Familial and Pastoral Sacramental Space-Time

A characteristic of the family that the sacrament re-launches onto the level of the entire realm of Christian spirituality is thus the difference between familial space-time and ecclesial space-time. This does not at all mean a distinction between the lay dimension and the clerical dimension. Rather, it is properly the overcoming of the identification of ecclesial space with the « priest’s space-time » (above all on the liturgical level), which has created that clerical halo that some even today perceive as the sole salvation of the Church. In reality, the sole salvation of the Church is to return to perceiving « ecclesial » space-time as not contrary to (even if not identical to) familial space-time.

It is thus necessary to better identify this familial space-time with which we can then compare the pastoral and spiritual proposition that the Church can reasonably offer for locating it truly « within the houses of the city » even through the « Gospel of marriage. »

3.2. The Family Meal as Communitas Victus/Vitae

Families cannot exist without a common meal. And yet today the crisis of familial identity is closely linked to the breakdown (often imposed by merciless working and living rhythms) of this elementary communion around the table and food. This place needs, in an elementary manner, its own space-time. Without an examined processing of this localization, the family cannot find itself and can no longer recognize itself.

Pastoral and sacramental correspondence either knows how to meet the family on this level or fails at every step. It is thus necessary to accept that the apex of Christian initiation is found precisely in this habit of the common meal in which the self-giving of Christ is recalled and which is mysteriously and effectively associated with a Church that properly here and properly in this way and with this method learns what the communion that God mercifully reserves for it is. The Church opens itself to sacrifice if it knows how to let itself be invited to the table of the Risen Lord and to experience communion with him in sharing, together the Word, the bread of life and the cup of alliance. The family must become participant in this truth in the elementary mode of its shared meal.

3.3. Work/Rest Rhythm as Calmed Finitude

Work space/time and rest space/time constitute an area of continuous « reconciled crises » for the family : answers to needs and the suspension of answers, made under and in resistance to fatigue together with the difficult recognition of the primacy of an unproductive yielding. This informed back and forth, in its regulated cadence, is capable of rejecting a life entirely devoted to work that childishly praises the fact of going many years without a vacation and at the same time shows the risky pointlessness of always finding work as a pitiful interlude between one vacation and the next.

A family’s maturity often lies in the possibility of sovereignly balancing work and rest without falling into uselessly productive hyperactivism or into the depressed dispersion of inactivity. The model of ora et labora emerges from monastic history to helpfully illuminate the reality of home and church, showing the proper rhythms of domestic life and the proper understanding of ecclesial celebrations. [11]

3.4. Argument and Reconciliation as Patient Awaiting in Gratuitous Credit

If the family (still) exists, it is often because the love that trusts and hopes has known how to suggest and then nourish a wise experience of healed wounds, of words let go, and of gestures repressed and sent back, of silences capable of pacifying the killing logic of harsh words and sweet words capable of relighting cold silences and exasperating muteness. Every family is also a knowing initiation into the techniques of reciprocal sustenance, of promoting and motivating the other. Like great laboratories of the experience of change, conversion, and repentance, families have something to say and to do in the faith crises that pass through the life of the Church.

For example, the family does not forget that, in the incomprehension to overcome, the way in which the spaces and times of the meal and the work/rest rhythm are cared for and marked, symbolized and presented, awaited and promised is important. The credit of the existence nourished by these elementary places of reconciliation, which the ecclesial experience of communion in Christ has primary need of, should not be marginalized.

3.5. Enjoyment and Vigil as Meaningful Excess

Hedonism is false because it does not take the hedonist seriously : pleasure is too serious to be relegated to the superficial fruition of excess. There is, for example, the seriousness of the pleasure of interrupting the balance between wakefulness and sleep, keeping vigil when one should be asleep, or there is the logic of fasting when the meal is not eaten when it should be or is moved to the time when one should be sleeping.

Such a « subversion » of the most elementary rules is also elementary, and every family knows this reserve of wisdom well. Small and large fasting, short and long wakefulness intervene to redefine tasks and needs, reopening time for play and liberating us from dangerous automatic reactions. Today, perhaps, it is mainly the young ones who remind us how wakefulness speaks the truth of time more than any old « ordinary » rhythm. And is it not precisely this « form of life », which the family knows so well, an ancient wisdom of the Church, which is expert in vigils and fasting in awaiting the return of the Lord ?

Would it truly be so extravagant to think that these « common places » (syntheses of space-time) might be and often are in fact today already actual places of prayer, or relationship with God, of praise and thanksgiving, in a word, of « spirituality » ? What church today could disregard even these elemental dynamics as a precious principle of its « pastoral conversion » ? And what Christian family could not find, precisely here, the places of an almost unhoped for recovery of the very touching « ritual beginning » ?

4. The Christian Rite of Initiation and Marriage

In light of what we have seen up to this point, we can recuperate the typical profile of a « liturgical spirituality » that has for its object – let us not forget it – service of the faith act here and now. If the family, with this wisdom of space and time, can enter for all intents and purposes into the spiritual experience of the Church, then it is through the family that the Church should reread and reinterpret the spaces and times of life in order to, carefully and personally, learnedly and pastorally, assert the family’s particular spatial and temporal competency, which in reality is an illuminating test of our « common experience. »

We can already imagine – and in part we already perceive close up – an articulation of Christian initiation, of crisis therapy, and of service to communion modeled on this matrimonial and familial wisdom.

4.1. Initiation in the Faith

Baptism, confirmation, and the Eucharist, joyously assumed in their exceptional and unique aspect then become, in the weekly eucharistic repetition, a surprising habit in the common experience of communion. The path that new members follow in entering into the fullness of ecclesial life must flow from the community’s habitual experience of baptism and confirmation in and through the Eucharist, Sunday after Sunday. It is formed by the common meal and the informed, festive interplay between work and rest that paces, in an elementary way, the experience of the Church and the path of the neophytes in the confession of being a community of graced sinners.

4.2. Reconciliation of Faith Crises

Guilt and sickness are the dynamics through which the ecclesial community, like the family, experiences its crises. The elementary rule that the familial experience should reintroduce into ecclesial vitality is, above all, that of « time to waste » for reconciliation and healing, to help the penitent and the sick one, and for the careful and caring company that these conditions structurally need. A Church that is hasty in confessions and anointings, unkempt in its gestures, and distracted when listening has forgotten to be the place of bodily and spatial-temporal communion. Indeed, when family members are reduced to mere holders of rights and duties, they have already lost their dignity of all-accomplished men and women, both within and outside of the Church.

4.3. Vocation in Service of the Faith

The beautiful paths that lead to ecclesial service in marriage and in the ordained ministry can only be born of the comprehensive experience of the sacraments of initiation and healing. But how can we think of opening paths toward these « answers » if we no longer have « common places » of a communal experience of lived and recovered grace in human and ecclesial situations ? The same formative paths, to marriage and holy orders, should present a lived example that is no longer one-directional but reciprocal, no longer just short seminars for those who are getting married – from a perspective inevitably marked by excessive clerical preference – but also itineraries of familial communion for those who intend on responding to their vocation of ecclesial ministry.

5. Conclusions and Perspectives

Let us draw some brief conclusions, basing them on the new Italian rite, in light of these comparisons between familial life and sacramental pastoral life and with the perspective of using an adequate « liturgical spirituality for married life » that is valid for every church. [12]

5.1. The Consent between the Memory of Baptism and the Blessing of the Couple

The couple’s « yes » finds its beginning and its sustenance prior to its utterance, almost finding itself « initiated » by God’s « yes » that precedes their consent in the form of the recollection of baptism and that follows the consent in the form of the nuptial blessing.

On the one hand, then, God’s « yes » precedes and founds the consent of the couple in their priestly dignity as baptized believers that, as such, are ministers of the sacrament.

On the other, the couple’s « yes » comes from and rests upon God’s « yes » that starts again an original initiation into the here and now of the life of this concrete couple. The relation to the celebration thus becomes the unsurpassable beginning of the connection between faith and life.

5.2. Building the Church through the Sacrament of Marriage

The celebration of the sacrament of marriage, in the welcome of the assembly that actively participates – through the explicit references to Christian initiation in the recollection of Baptism, in the recitation of the words of consent, and in the proximity of the nuptial blessing – not only confirms but, we can almost say, institutes an original ecclesial experience with the consecration of the couple into a specific ecclesial ministry, which is precious and, today, impossible to renounce.

5.3. « Complex » Ministry and actuosa participatio

It is evident, precisely in light of the preceding two points, that the example of the Italian church’s new Rite of Marriage, in its balance between ritual structure and prayer content, leads to a rethinking of the ministry of the sacrament, which must not be read in an exclusive way (the couple and not the priest ; the priest and not the couple). Instead, it is precisely a « complex ministry » that is capable of embracing all the sides of this « sacramental organism », which is represented by the couple of baptized believers who marry in the Lord, together. From this can be derived, not secondarily, a rethinking of the meaning of « active participation » as the exercise, in all liturgical-sacramental experience, of a ministry that goes beyond the merely juridical-disciplinary evidence of the scholastic triad (form-matter-ministry).

5.4. A Formal Ritual for Expressing the « Desire for Eucharist »

Further, above all on the pastoral level, the choice of transforming a « negative » element into a « positive » element, or rather, the choice of binding more tightly the hypothesis of a celebration « outside of the Mass » to a positive formulation of the sacrament « within the celebration of the Word » merit mention. This option of the new rite must also be read in the light of the primacy of Christian initiation. This means, in other words, that where it is opportune that the Eucharist – for reasons of difference in the path of faith – is not celebrated, the context is not defined by a mere subtraction, but the context itself contributes to nourishing a relationship with baptism that can trigger a more intense « desire for Eucharist. »

The sacramental experience of marriage, therefore, is that of a rite that enables and aids the couple to recognize themselves as given to themselves from above/from the other. It is a pledge that leads them to discover themselves as enabled – by grace – to recognize themselves as capable of « being always faithful. » Receiving all of one’s rights and duties from above and from the other gives the power of mercy and grace : this is the ecclesial transfiguration of an anthropological and civil dynamic that is already relevant in itself. Herein lies precisely the value of this difference – which is not opposition but distinction and discretion – to take the word and make it a gesture in the sacramental rite of marriage in Christ. In conclusion, I would like to ask : what is this common experience of endowed and blessed faithfulness/fertility if not that which the Church lives primarily ?