Matrimonial Consent

Since my childhood I have participated in many marriage ceremonies, in which a man and woman mutually express, in words, their will to live together. When I came to know the fact that this mutual exchange of words constitutes an irrevocable and enduring married life, the resulted amusement led me to many questions. How can these mere human words be an efficient cause of marriage? Does it have any difference from the natural contracts between people? or is it just a contingent articulation by the church? In this article I would like to expound the theological significance of matrimonial consent in the catholic church.

St. Thomas made it clear that the words of consent were necessary in Marriage because “there can be no material contract unless it is at the same time accompanied by words which express the will of those who are contracting”. At the same time it is not a mere material contract, rather it is the mutual exchange of the gift of the self, the rights of the body of one another and the acceptance of the obligations. It is a “contract” between a man and a woman, created in the image of God, no one can substitute their act of will for them. They are part of the whole creation which is the work of the Trinity, yet a creation made through the Word. Through the Incarnation and Redemption, the healing of what the fall impaired in Marriage, the human words of consent elevated to become the efficient cause of a sacrament. Now in human words, a man and a woman give consent as the new Adam and new Eve, baptized to become the new creation, espoused already by God, in Christ. Thus their words are raised to participate in the recreating Word himself, and become the efficient cause of their marriage. The man and woman , in marriage, thus act as the «image and likeness» of God in their words, in consent itself they become co-creators with God. He has supremacy on it and the object of consent is depend on His will.

According to the witness of the fathers and teaching of the church, Marriage has always been recognised as a sacrament. But the sacramentality of ‘this sign’ is not from the will of the spouses, it is the will of Christ the Lord elevate the natural consent to the dignity of a sacrament. By virtue of Baptism, the spouses are being capable to the valid ministers of the sacrament of Matrimony and their natural consent is transformed to sacramental word of the matrimony, which is in union with the Word-enfleshed, Such sacramental consent, as act of faith, is graced by God, a consent seeking divine help in the risk of believing in the unknown future of two lives surrendered to one another. They are all spoken as consent to the divine Will, that God effect what he wills in the sacrament. Thus they surrender their will and intellect to God in order to bring into being the ‘three goods’ of marriage, fidelity, procreation and indissoluble bond. Hence they fulfil the divine prophecy, “so they are no longer two but one. What therefore God joined together, let no man put asunder” (Matt 19:6).

In their consent Christian spouses are called to recapitulate the acceptance of the Heart of Christ, welcoming sinners with all their faults, weakness and blemishes. It is a love beyond themselves to seek the fullness of love expressed in the sacrifice of Christ. Hence the consent to marriage is a consent to become a “new creation”, by participating in the grace received through redemption. Thus they make the mystery of creation visible today, new actuation of the mystery in God from all eternity.