The third and fourth passes over the Mt. Everest of marriage
05/30/2025
For those who have not been at
morning Mass this week, this is the fourth homily in a series on Pope St. John
Paul II’s theology of the body. So, good luck keeping up with it. Our spiritual
Sherpa John Paul II guides us up a third pass over the Mt. Everest of marriage
which turns out to be a dual passage, and transforms the doctrines of creation
and redemption.
That is, John Paul proposes that
both God the Father’s handiwork in creation as well as God the Son’s sacrifice
for redemption are best understood in terms of marriage. The divine apple
doesn’t fall far from the divine tree, so Jesus confesses in Jn 5:19: “The Son
cannot do anything on his own but only what he sees his Father doing for what
he does his son will do also.”
Every artist, author, musician,
sculptor, chef, architect, in a word, every creator leaves traces of himself or
herself in their works, like you see cameos of Alfred Hitchcock in his movies.
Theologians call the traces that God leaves of himself in creation “vestigia
Dei” literally “footprints of God.”
Our pope-saint maintains that
marriage is the most unmistakable footprint of God in creation; indeed,
marriage carries God’s very image and likeness (Gn 1:26). John Paul explains:
The words of Genesis 2:24, “the man
will…unite with his wife, and the two will be one flesh,” spoken on the
background of this original reality [of creation] in the theological sense,
constitute marriage as an integral part and in some sense the central part of
the “sacrament of creation” (506).
The key words “integral part” and
“central part” make me think not only of footprints but in particular of how
DNA functions in living organisms.
Just like DNA provides the
biological genetic material that communicates structure and purpose to living
organisms – their raison d’être in French – so marriage serves as basic
theological genetic material giving structure and purpose to creation as a
whole. In other words, marriage reveals why God bothered to create in the first
place. Marriage is the DNA of creation.
When I studied at the University of
Dallas, I took a class called “Junior Poet.” We chose a famous poet, read all
his or her works, as well as their criticism, and were grilled at the end of
the semester by three literature professors. So I chose Gerard Manley Hopkins
because he wrote the fewest poems at only 74. Maybe I could manage that many.
Gerard Manley Hopkins put this
theological genetic code into poetry: “The world is charged with the grandeur
of God. It will flame out like shining from shook foil.”
Theologically-speaking, therefore, every molecule in the universe carries a
spark of God’s grandeur. That is, God’s trinitarian love most clearly seen in
marriage was the Big Bang that brought everything into existence.
On the other side of this dual
pass, John Paul teaches that the mystical marriage of Christ and the Church
carries the theological genetic code for redemption (the sacrifice of the
Cross) because by it God the Son brings about “a new creation” (2 Co 5:17).
Ponder this papal passage charged with the grandeur of God:
This redemptive gift of self “for”
the Church also includes – according to Pauline thought – Christ’s gift of self
to the Church, in the image of the spousal relation that unites husband and
wife in marriage. In this way, [what Christ accomplished in] the sacrament of
redemption clothes itself, so to speak, in the figure and form of the primordial
sacrament [of marriage, what the Father accomplished in creation] (508).
In other words, the mystical
marriage of Christ and the Church provides new theological language to describe
Christ’s saving death, which ushers in nothing short of “a new heavens and a
new earth” (Rv 21:1). Like Father, like Son.
John Paul sees these two passes
intersecting in every marriage and therefore articulated eloquently in
Ephesians. He muses:
In this way the Mystery hidden from
all eternity in God [God as triune love] – a mystery that in the beginning in
the sacrament of creation became a visible reality through the union of the
first man and the first woman in the perspective of marriage – becomes in the
sacrament of redemption a visible reality in the indissoluble union of Christ
with the Church, which the author of Ephesians presents as the spousal union of
the two, husband and wife (509).
In John Paul II’s estimation
marriage stands as “the primordial sacrament” because it, more than anything
else in creation or redemption, serves as the theological DNA where we detect
the vestigia Dei of both Father and the Son.
Our papal Sherpa points us to a
fourth and final pass over the Mt. Everest of marriage to reach its summit by
seeing marriage as the prototype and pattern for the other six sacraments, even
the Eucharist. The pope is not shy about stressing this audacious aspect of
marriage:
If we reflect deeply on this
dimension [of the whole sacramental order], we have to conclude that all the
sacraments of the New Covenant find their prototype in some way in marriage as
the primordial sacrament (511).
Let’s look briefly at how marriage
gives their marching order to each of the other sacraments.
John Paul immediately notes that
Baptism and Eucharist, easily find enormous meaning in the light of marriage.
He writes:
This text [of Eph 5:26, “make her
holy with the washing of water accompanied by the word”] without any doubt
speaks about the sacrament of Baptism…the Eucharist…seems to be indicated by
the following words…: everyone nourishes and cares for his body “as Christ does
with the Church, because we are members of his body” (Eph 5:29-30) (514).
Beyond Baptism and Eucharist, we
likewise observe marriage’s prototypical function in Confirmation as our Lord
beautifying his Bride with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Through confession,
Jesus forgives his backsliding Bride of her sins.
By the Anointing of the Sick, Jesus
purifies and prepares his Bride for the eternal nuptials of heaven. Through the
men called to Holy Orders Jesus demonstrates the love of a Bridegroom for his
Bride. And this is the root reason why every sacrament without exception begins
and ends by invoking the Holy Trinity, whose divine DNA is enshrined in every
marriage reflecting God's triune love: “In the name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
We have reached, therefore, the
summit of the Eucharist seated atop the Mt. Everest of marriage by means of yet
a fourth pass: marriage as the model of every sacrament. The pope succinctly
summarizes that the seven sacraments are how Christ loves his Bride the Church
“in the spousal way” (478). The spousal way simply means the sacramental way.
Look around: can you see how majestic this Mt. Everest of marriage is? From its
peak you can see everything else better.
Praised be Jesus
Christ!
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