The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 220: Marriage in the New Covenant (2024)

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

How is the meaning of marriage different in the New Covenant? The Catechism teaches us today that Christ elevates the gift of marriage to a sacrament and restores the original order of this powerful union between man and woman. Fr. Mike explains why marriage looked different in the Old Covenant and how God was preparing his chosen people throughout time to accept Christ’s law of marriage. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 1609-1617. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture and passed down to the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity and God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 220. We're reading paragraphs 1609 to 1617. As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the Foundations of Faith approach, but you can follow along with

any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own Catechism in a year reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com slash C-I-Y. Also, you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates, daily notifications, just one note. Thank you so much. All of you who have supported the production of this podcast, all of you keep pressing play on day 220. Please know I am truly praying for you.

It is day 220, reading paragraph 1609 to 1617. Yesterday we started talking about Holy Matrimony and God's plan, marriage and God's plan in the order of creation this incredible gift of marriage in God's vision was Harmony right in God's vision is life and God's vision is fruitful and God's vision is this mutual relationship of love and respect and trust and honor and So good and then we also hit paragraph 1606 to 1608 and said,

okay, here's what, but what does marriage look like under the regime of sin? Like that's a vision of marriage from Genesis chapter two. Now what is the experience of marriage after Genesis chapter three? And 1606 said this, every man experiences evil around himself and within himself. In this relationship makes itself felt in the relationships between man and woman.

And that's so true, right? Whether it has to do with marriage, it has to do with family, it has to do with friendship, it has to do with just business, anybody we encounter. We experience evil around ourselves and within ourselves. And because of that, we have a new experience of marriage. And yet at the same time, marriage not only has a dignity but in the Lord marriage has been elevated to the place of a sacrament. That's why we're talking about the seven sacraments in this whole section. And in Christ this primordial gift from God to humanity, the gift of marriage, the gift of family,

even though broken, has been elevated by Jesus to be a sacrament. Now, at the same time, marriage existed in the Old Covenant, and yet there has been a development, a pedagogy, right, on the Old Law, where from the very beginning, it's got to be the male and female, and yet we experience this brokenness. And so there are times where we look male and female and yet we experience this brokenness. And so there are times where we look in the Old Testament and we see polygamy, we look in the Old Testament, we see divorce. And what does God do about that?

What does Jesus do about that in the New Covenant? And that's what we're gonna talk about today. So you guys, let's say a prayer to get our hearts and our minds ready for launching into these paragraphs. We'll pray, Father in heaven, we gather, we pray in the name of your Son Jesus Christ, we pray in the power of your Holy Spirit that the gift you've given to us, the gift of life, the gift of love, because you are love, you made us in your image and likeness, that these gifts, life and love, that we can embody them and live them out

in our lives and our relationships. Lord God, we know that you are everywhere. You are in healthy relationships. You are in broken relationships. You are in healthy people. You are in broken people. We know this because you are in our hearts and we are both healthy and broken.

We're both free and bound. The line of good and evil passes through our hearts and you love our hearts so help us help us to see your plan for marriage in the Bible to see your plan for marriage in Christ to see your plan for marriage in our lives and in our world we ask you this in the mighty name of Jesus Christ our Lord amen in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit Amen, it is day 220. We are reading paragraphs 1609 to 1617

Marriage under the pedagogy of the law In his mercy God has not forsaken sinful man the punishments consequent upon sin Pain and childbearing and toil in the sweat of your brow – also embody remedies that limit the damaging effects of sin. After the fall, marriage helps to overcome self-absorption, egoism, pursuit of one's own pleasure, and to open oneself to the other, to mutual aid, and to self-giving. Moral conscience concerning the unity and indissolubility of marriage developed under the pedagogy of the Old Law. In the Old Testament, the polygamy of patriarchs and kings is not yet explicitly rejected.

Nevertheless, the law given to Moses aims at protecting the wife from arbitrary domination by the husband, even though according to the Lord's words, it still carries traces of man's hardness of heart, which was the reason Moses permitted men to divorce their wives. Seeing God's covenant with Israel in the image of exclusive and faithful married love, the prophets prepared the chosen people's conscience for a deepened understanding of the unity and indissolubility of marriage. The books of Ruth and Tobit bear moving witness to an elevated sense of marriage and to the fidelity and tenderness of spouses. Tradition is always seen in the Song of Solomon a unique expression of human love, insofar as it is a reflection of God's

love, a love strong as death, that many waters cannot quench. Marriage in the Lord. The nuptial covenant between God and His people Israel had prepared the way for the new and everlasting covenant in which the Son of God, by becoming incarnate and giving His life, has united to Himself in a certain way all mankind saved by Him, thus preparing for the wedding feast of the Lamb. On the threshold of His public life, Jesus performs His first sign at his mother's request during a wedding feast. The church attaches great importance to Jesus' presence at the wedding at Cana. She sees in it the confirmation of the goodness of marriage and the proclamation that,

thenceforth, marriage will be an efficacious sign of Christ's presence. In his preaching, Jesus unequivocally taught the original meaning of the union of man and woman as the Creator willed it from the beginning. Permission given by Moses to divorce one's wife was a concession to the hardness of hearts. The matrimonial union of man and woman is indissoluble. God Himself has determined it. What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder. This unequivocal insistence on the indissolubility of the marriage bond may have left some perplexed and could seem to be a demand impossible to realize. However, Jesus has not placed on spouses

a burden impossible to bear or too heavy, heavier than the law of Moses. By coming to restore the original order of creation disturbed by sin, he himself gives the strength and grace to live marriage in the new dimension of the reign of God. It is by following Christ, renouncing themselves, and taking up their crosses that spouses will be able to receive the original meaning of marriage and live it with the help of Christ. This grace of Christian marriage is a fruit of Christ's cross, the source of all Christian life. This is what the Apostle Paul makes clear when he says, Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that

he might sanctify her. Adding at once, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one. This is a great mystery, and I mean it in reference to Christ and the Church. The entire Christian life bears the mark of the spousal love of Christ and the Church. Already baptism, the entry into the people of God is a nuptial mystery. It is, so to speak, the nuptial bath which precedes the wedding feast, the Eucharist. Christian marriage, in its turn, becomes an efficacious sign, the

sacrament of the covenant of Christ and the Church. Since it signifies and communicates grace, marriage between baptized persons is a true sacrament of the new covenant. Okay, here we are, paragraph 1609 to 1617. There's so much to talk about here today. And one of the first things we're gonna talk about is marriage under the pedagogy of law. Okay, we just had marriage under the regime of sin, right? Paragraphs 1606 to 1608, 1609 starts by saying,

in yet, right? And yet, in his mercy, God is not forsaken sinful man. So we ended the last section yesterday, talking about here are some of the consequences in paragraph 1605 and now here in 1609 of the fall. And the consequences of the fall in relationship are, here's pain and childbearing, and here is toil by the sweat of the brow.

Now, the catechism makes this so clear. I almost always wanna point this out whenever we read Genesis chapter three, right at the story of the fall. These are not curses given by God to the woman. You're going to have pain in childbirth or curses by God given to the man. You're going to toil by the sweat of your brow. These are remedies because here is the man and the woman and they failed to love.

They chose themselves over choosing the other. You know, here's Adam, he's standing there as Eve is eating the fruit of the tree that they were forbidden to eat. Here's Adam, who's standing there as the serpent is essentially threatening his bride and he's doing nothing. He's choosing himself and here's Eve who also chooses herself. And so what happens? God says, okay, from now on, as often as you love, it's gonna cost something. Love from now on is gonna involve sacrifice. So yes, you will give birth to new life,

to new human beings with bodies and souls that will be in God's image and likeness. And it will be painful. You're gonna love this child with everything you have and it will be a sacrifice because from now on love always involves sacrifice. Same thing for the man. You're gonna provide for your family, you're gonna work hard, you're gonna care for them and in that love it's gonna cost you something. In that

love it will involve sacrifice and that is again, it's meant to not be a punishment and not meant to be a curse, it's meant to be a remedy. What's the remedy? It helps us overcome self-absorption, right? Helps us overcome egoism. How many of us look at our lives as if we're the star of our own lives and then all of a sudden here's this spouse in your life, here's a child in your life or children in your lives and you realize, oh, okay, I am not the star. I am a supporting character here.

Pursuit of one's own pleasure. The ability, it helps us hopefully to open ourselves up to the other, to mutual aid and self-giving. That's at the heart of this. And so again, keeping in mind, God's original plan was just this gift of love. Because of the fall, here is the way we experience this. But also even in that, what happens even in the brokenness of our hearts and brokenness of our relationships, the point is, the hope is, that we'll still learn how to love. But we can never forget this. We can never forget that from now on in our broken world, in this world after original sin, love always demands sacrifice. It always involves sacrifice. Just a little note on

this before we move forward. I shared this with some of our students over the course of the last number of years. And one student at one point, I think a lot of students challenged me on a lot of the things I say, and one student at one point challenged me on that and said, well, yeah, but you know, does love have to involve sacrifice?

And tried to give some reasons like, no, I want to, like I want to love my boyfriend, I want to love my fiance, I want to do all these things. And the aspect is like, okay, I'm not saying love is always drudgery. Let's make that clear. I'm not saying that love isn't also amazing, that love isn't still an incredible gift

and a sign of God's goodness. That's still there. But it always has to still involve sacrifice. For example, talking to this young woman about her fiance. Okay, so you love your fiance, you love spending time with them, but spending time with them means that you are sacrificing time you could be doing anything else. And so that's a sacrifice. Even if it's a sacrifice you're happy

to make, it's still a sacrifice. And even the fact of, you know, choosing one person means you're sacrificing everyone else for that role. Choosing one person to date or one person to marry means everyone else has been sacrificed in the sense that they're no longer an option. And so we realize this, that love always involves sacrifice. Now, with that in mind, that when you choose one person, you're excluding everyone else.

Paragraphs 16.10 and 16.11 highlight the fact that, while God's original plan was union between one man and one woman that lasted through life in mutual love and support, after the fall, there is this pedagogy that God has to raise up people and make clearer and clearer that this is marriage between one man and one woman. Because you have stories, you guys, you've read the Bible, you know that there are kings and patriarchs, even like some of the great people, the fathers of the faith, who had practiced polygamy and you're saying like, wait a second, I thought you said from the beginning it was, you know, one man, one woman. Absolutely it is. But remember pedagogy, pedagogy is like the teaching, right? I always like to think of it like this. Whenever we look at the Old Testament, there's this thing I remember, years

ago I studied to get my minor in secondary education and so I got to take a lot of education courses. And one theory was called the plus one theory of education. And the idea behind this was that a student, if they're at level four, they can understand levels one, two, three and four and you can challenge them, introduce them into level five, just plus one. So understand four and below, and then when you're teaching them, they can be invited to level five. But someone who's at level four,

to all of a sudden talk about level eight, they'd be lost. And so God being a really good teacher, here's this people, these people who are, they're used to polygamy, right? The people that they are, they're used to multiple wives, they're used to dominating each other, they're used to using each other. they're used to using each other, they're used to just getting by

and not seeing in the other the image and likeness of God. And so what does God do? In his pedagogy, he's reminding them that originally one man and one woman, in their lives now, they're getting more and more to the place of it still is in this world, one man and one woman. In fact, the law of Moses talked about this law of Moses would say that essentially

again, plus one theory of education where, okay, you're at level four, level four would say, okay, marriages, maybe a commitment is for your whole life. But also they'd say, oh, but it involves many women in one guy, like kind of a situation or this one guy married to many individual women. Okay. The plus one theory of education that would say, okay, but here's the thing. Each woman you're married to is not your property. Each one you're married to is not subject to your arbitrary domination. She's not your property. You don't own her.

This still has to be at the heart of it has to be this relationship that is one of trust, one of love, one of respect, one that actually acknowledges the dignity of the spouses. Right. And we look at that now like that's ridiculous. And I get it. But God was taking a rough people because no one saw human beings as having a dignity on their own. People easily saw others as simply being property. And so here's God's plus one theory of education

where he's tolerating polygamy. He's even tolerating divorce until he can teach that, okay, but that's not what it was in the beginning and that's not what it will be from now on. And that's what brings us to marriage in the Lord. And this is remarkable. I don't know if you noticed how many times we use the word either unequivocally or indissolubility and Jesus unequivocally taught the original meaning of the union of man and woman as a creator, willed it from the beginning that in the

beginning, one man, one woman, not anything else. That's what it's going to be from here on out. And that's just so clear that Jesus makes that abundantly clear with no compromise. Again, the unequivocal teaching of this. And Jesus even says, because they challenge Jesus and say, wait, but Moses permitted a man to give his wife a bill of divorce and dismiss her. And Jesus says, yeah, he did. Why?

Because of the hardness of your hearts, Moses permitted divorce. But in the beginning, it was not so. And Jesus makes it so clear. Paragraph 1615, it says, this unequivocal insistence on the indissolubility of the marriage bond may have left some perplexed and could seem to be a demand impossible to realize. In fact, the disciples respond, they say, well, if that's the truth, then it's better not to marry. They were so disheartened by this, right? Like, oh my gosh, if that's the call,

that there's no divorce from your marriage, because Jesus says, makes it very clear, he says, if you divorce your wife and marry another, you're committing adultery, because you're already married. That relationship cannot be dissolved. Like that marriage is permanent. It is lifelong, even if you walk away

or even if the other person walks away. So what happens is that teaching may have left some perplexed and could seem to be a demand impossible to realize. However, and this is so powerful, in the middle of paragraph 1615, it says, however, Jesus has not placed on spouses a burden impossible to bear or too heavy.

It's not heavier than the law of Moses. Why? Because by coming to restore the original order of creation, that sin is distorted, right? Jesus himself gives the strength and grace to live marriage in the new dimension of the reign of God. What's that mean? One of the many things it means is Jesus did not come to just give us new rules. Because we all know this. And Christopher West will say this again and again when he quotes the theology of the body, or teaches the theology of the body, is that we all know this. We all know that rules in and of themselves do not change hearts. Just if there's a rule and Jesus says, oh, here's the new law, here's the new rule, no divorce. Like, okay, that doesn't new law, here's the new rule,

no divorce. Like, okay, that doesn't change my heart all of a sudden. If Jesus says, you hurt in the old covenant, you should not commit adultery. But I'm saying those of you who commit adultery in your heart are still guilty. Like, okay, that new rule doesn't change the heart. But Jesus will change the heart. He doesn't just give new rules, He gives new hearts. And how do we get those new hearts? Well, it says it is by following Christ renouncing ourselves and taking up our crosses That everyone but in this case spouses will be able to receive the original meaning of marriage and live it with the help of Christ So it's it's not just a matter of okay. I'm gonna think holy thoughts. I'll read my Bible. I'm going to let Jesus do it for me

Yes, there's grace. That grace changes our hearts, but it means we have to cooperate with that grace. And it's very clear what cooperation with grace, part of what cooperation with grace looks like by following Christ, renouncing ourselves, and taking up our crosses. That gives us the kind of hearts that can love the unlovable. That gives us the kind of hearts that can love the unlovable. That gives us the kind of hearts that can do the undoable. That gives us the kind of hearts that can forgive the unforgivable. And I know that so many people who are listening to this,

this is the situation you're in. You're in a situation where it's, how do I even do this? How do I keep loving my spouse? How do I keep loving my spouse when they're here? How do I keep loving my spouse? How do I keep loving my spouse when they're here? How do I keep loving my spouse when they've walked away? Or maybe as you're listening, you're like, I'm the one who walked away. What do I do now?

And the short answer is I don't know. I'm sorry about that. The long answer is, well, I do know what to do. At least in this case, I need to follow Christ. I need to renounce myself. I need to take up my cross. I need to love in whatever way I can. Listen, I understand this is a high call, especially in a world under the regime of sin. Relationships and hearts that have been broken under the regime of sin. of sin, relationships and hearts that have been broken under the regime of sin, this is such a high call. And so you can say, Father, you have no idea and you'd be right. You have no idea what I'm

going through and or what I went through and you would be right. And yet at the same time, I know a couple things. One is your story isn't over yet. The second thing is God loves you and wants to give you the grace to take whatever the next best next step is. What is the good next step that God's calling you to take? He loves you and is going to give you that grace. Take that hard step to follow Him, to renounce yourself, to pick up your cross. And also know that we're united. Go all the way back to baptism.

Remember in baptism, we were made in not only God's sons and daughters, we were made into a family with each other as well. And in this family, we're all broken. In this family, we are all in need. In this family, we all need each other. And so I would say that it doesn't solve any problems, but it does matter. Just to say that, hey, I'm here with you, I'm praying for you doesn't necessarily solve any problems, but I think it does matter.

Because prayer matters and you matter. And as we continue to talk tomorrow, we're talking about virginity for the sake of the kingdom. It's a whole other kind of take a left turn for a little bit. But we're also going to realize that we're the body of Christ. We're the family of God and God loves you. Whatever your story is, it's not over yet. God loves you as you are. He loves me as I am, but He loves us too much to let us stay where we are and stay as we are. And you matter. And you're part of this family. And because of that, I know it doesn't fix everything, but

it does matter. I am praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.