1. Sacrificial Aspects of Eucharist and Marriage
by
Casey Truelove
A Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts in Theology
Director: Dr. Michael Waldstein
Second Reader Name: Dr. Roger Nutt
Ave Maria University
May 2010

2. Sacrificial Aspects of Eucharist and Marriage
Part I: Sacrifice 1
Definition of Sacrifice 1
The Perfect Sacrifice 5
To Sacrifice is a Joy 8
Part II: A Sacrifice Worthy of God 9
Jesus’ Sacrifice is the Model 9
The Sacrifice of the Last Supper 11
New Sacrifice 12
Buying Us Back 13
Once-Saved, Always Offered 14
Reliving the Memories, Fulfilling the Past 15
Common Misconceptions & Protestant Emphases 18
Part III: Marriage & Sacrifice 22
God’s Sacrifice is Love 22
Gift of Self 23
No Love Without God 27
Sacrifice and Marriage 28
Marriage as God’s Magnet 30
Marriage & The Eucharist 33
The Marital Act 34
Indissolubility 36
“For Better or Worse” Even if “Worse” is REALLY Bad 37
Divorce 39
Annulments 41
Can only Christians participate in God’s love? 42
Why can this union not come about in homosexual relationships? 44
Fecundity 46
When the Sacrifices Cease 47
Sacrificing Marriages to the Idol of Contraception 50
Must the union bear children? 53
In Death, We Part 53
Conclusion 54
Appendix Sapiential Character of Theology 56
Sapientia 56
Theologia 60
Sapiential Theology at Ave Maria University 63
Bibliography 68

3. Out of love, Our Lord sacrificed Himself for the Church on the altar of the cross. Out
of love, Jesus is offered every day (except Good Friday) on the Eucharistic altars of the
Catholic Church. From our participation in this sacrifice, we learn to offer ourselves out
of love for Him.
For besides intimately linking them to His life and His mission, He also gives them a sharing in
His priestly function of offering spiritual worship for the glory of God and the salvation of men . .
. For all their works, prayers and apostolic endeavors, their ordinary married and family life, their
daily occupations, their physical and mental relaxation, if carried out in the Spirit, and even the
hardships of life, if patiently borne—all these become "spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God
through Jesus Christ." Together with the offering of the Lord's body, they are most fittingly
offered in the celebration of the Eucharist. Thus, as those everywhere who adore in holy activity,
the laity consecrate the world itself to God.1
This is how husbands are called to sacrifice for their wives as Christ did the Church
(c.f. Eph. 5:25). In this document, I will be exploring the notion of sacrifice, the Sacrifice
of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, and the sacrifices offered within a marriage. I will argue that
the true sacrifice is found in Christ on the cross, re-offered in the Mass, that spouses
unite themselves and their the sacrifices involved in marriage and family life to this
sacrifice, and that when the emphasis in the Mass is not placed on the sacrifice,
marriages suffer.
Part I: Sacrifice
Definition of Sacrifice
Something in man’s nature resonates with the idea of offering a sacrifice. Even the
mention of the word “sacrifice” elicits phantasms of cultic ceremonies in many of our
minds. All of man’s history is filled with offerings made to greater things--from pagan
rituals offered to their many and varied gods, to the sacrifices offered to the One True
Lumen Gentium 34, emphasis added.1

4. Truelove !2
God in the Jewish Temple, to the sacrifice that the One True God made of Himself on
the Cross and re-offers on every Catholic altar each day around the world. Man has been
making sacrificial offerings since his beginning (c.f. Gen. 4:3-4), but just what is a
sacrifice?
In its broadest sense, St. Augustine stated: “true sacrifice is offered in every act
which is designed to unite us to God in a holy fellowship.” By this definition, any act2
that is designed to draw man closer into union with God is considered a sacrifice. This
certainly fits with the Latin roots of the word: sacra “holy” and facere “to make.”
Sacrifice (sacrificium) is that which makes us holy by uniting us to God. Using this
definition, even the pagans were truly offering sacrifices. They were on to something;
there are elements of truth in their practices: they recognized that they were subordinate
to higher powers and they made ritual acts of worship for their gods. The Jews, also and
more so, were truly offering sacrifice. They were sacrificing to the true God and even
received directions on how God wanted them to sacrifice. This sacrifice was a
prefiguration of the sacrifice of Christ. Later, I will discuss how Jesus’ sacrifice is the
true sacrifice, toward which all sacrifices point.
St. Thomas Aquinas suggests that though there are many different kinds of
sacrifices, they are all related to virtues. All acts of virtue, according to him, are directed
to the reverence of God, so they are all sacrifices. The primary acts we associate with
sacrifice belong, fittingly, to the virtue of religion. As for the others, he states:
Acts of the other virtues are directed to the reverence of God, as when a man gives alms of his own
things for God's sake, or when a man subjects his own body to some affliction out of reverence for
God; and in this way the acts also of other virtues may be called sacrifices. On the other hand
there are acts that are not deserving of praise save through being done out of reverence for God:
Augustine, City of God, Book X, 6.2

5. Truelove !3
such acts are properly called sacrifices, and belong to the virtue of religion.3
For a clearer understanding, let us, as a background, keep in mind Augustine’s
definition--an act which unites us to God. In sacrifice, there is an offering of something
to someone. Augustine also stated: “Every visible sacrifice is a sacrament, that is a
sacred sign of the invisible sacrifice.” This invisible sacrifice is the interior disposition4
of the offerer. Thomas comments on this: “The invisible sacrifice is that by which a man
offers his spirit to God . . . Wherefore, whatever is offered to God in order to raise man’s
spirit to Him may be called a sacrifice.” The thing is offered in order to manifest man’s5
interior disposition: “the sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and
contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Ps. 51:17 ). Matthias Scheeben stated that6
in the widest sense, a sacrifice is a surrender of a thing to another person, in order to
manifest to that person one’s love and esteem. Whatever physical action is done, it is7
made as a surrender of the thing to be sacrificed as a representation of the offerer’s
interior condition--his love and esteem for the person(s) to whom he is sacrificing. In
that offering, man is trying to unite to God in a holy fellowship. Pagans and Jews often
offered animals--manifesting their love for their gods or God. Jesus offered Himself,
manifesting both His love for the Father, and the Father’s and Son’s love for us. Only in
Jesus’ sacrifice is the union fully accomplished.
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica II-II Q.85 A.3 ad.3, trans. Fathers of the English3
Dominican Province (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1981)--further noted as ST.
Augustine, City of God, Book X, 5.4
ST III Q.22 A.2.5
All direct biblical quotes use the Revised Standard Version.6
Matthias Scheeben, The Mysteries of Christianity, (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company,7
2006), 432--further noted as TMoC.

6. Truelove !4
Not only must something be physically offered, but there must also be words that
express the offering. Augustine wrote: “...spoken words are the symbols of things.
Therefore in our prayers and praises we address significant sounds to God, as we render
to him in our hearts the realities thus signified.” In this way, sacrifice is something8
particularly human--only man can will to offer something and only man can express this
sacrifice with words. Scheeben stated: “As an irreducible minimum, sacrifice requires an
externally manifested dedication of the object to God, and a prayer for its acceptance
which must be at least tacitly implied in the dedication.” If one is offering something to9
God, it should be manifest that he is doing so--not necessarily for God’s sake (because
He knows what is in the heart of the offerer), but for the sake of the offerer, those
participating in the offering, and anyone who might happen to witness the offering. The
thing is surrendered to God to show the interior state of the person, surrendering
himself to God. In Pagan and Jewish sacrifices, the verbalization of the sacrifice is part
of the ritual. Jesus indicated his offering many times, particularly near his death: “This
is my body, given for you . . . this is my blood . . . of the New Covenant . . . shed for you . .
. ” (Mat. 26:26,28; Mk. 14:22,24; Lk. 22:19,22; 1 Cor. 11:24,25). “Father, take this cup
from me, but not my will, but your’s be done” (Mat. 26:39; Mk. 14:36; Lk. 22:42). “Into
your hands, I commit my spirit” (Lk. 22:43).
Not only must a thing be physically and orally offered, but it must also be changed.
Thomas further differentiates a sacrifice from an oblation, stating that some change
should occur in the thing sacrificed:
A "sacrifice," properly speaking, requires that something be done to the thing which is offered to
Augustine, City of God, Book X, 19.8
TMoC 433.9

7. Truelove !5
God . . . On the other hand an "oblation" is properly the offering of something to God even if
nothing be done thereto . . . Hence every sacrifice is an oblation, but not conversely.10
Not only is sacrifice an act by which we unite with God, but we offer something in that
sacrifice in such a way that it is changed by the mode of offering. It is surrendered in
such a way as to show that it is being given to God. As Scheeben stated:
Man’s complete surrender of the object to God can and should be accomplished and made
manifest by a real and visible alteration wrought in the object. In proportion as this alteration,
and the withdrawal of the object from human use effected by the change, and the occupying of it
by God, are more real and perfect, the sacrificial ideal is more effectively and fully realized.11
This is readily seen in animal sacrifice. As an ox is slaughtered, it is made no longer
useful to man--except, perhaps, as food, and this end is made useless to man by the
burning of the sacrificed animal. By doing this, the offerer has completely detached
himself from the ox, which he once held and used as an earthly possession. The change
wrought in the animal manifests man’s interior disposition--the love of the one to whom
the offering is made over the thing offered. To sum up, a sacrifice offers something to
someone, manifesting the offerer’s interior disposition both in words that express the
offering, and in the action of the sacrifice, which changes the thing in such a way that it
no longer belongs to the offerer.
The Perfect Sacrifice
After describing what a sacrifice is, Scheeben continues to list three qualifications of
a perfect sacrifice offered to God:
If in making this surrender the emphasis is placed on the alienation of the gift on man’s part in
order to express his utter subjection to God or his atonement for sin, the change to be effected in
the sacrificial victim consists in its destruction and annihilation, and most of all in slaughtering it.
Thus we see that the first qualification of perfect sacrifice regards the change of the
ST II-II 85.3.10
TMoC 433.11

8. Truelove !6
thing offered--like the killing of the animal in pagan and Jewish sacrifice. This is done
for either the expression of man’s subjection to God (latreutic sacrifice) or for the
atonement for man’s sins. The latreutic sacrifice is due to God whether we sin or not
because it is based “on our nothingness in comparison with Him.” We make this12
alienation of the gift to manifest our subjection to God. We recognize our nothingness in
comparison with Him by offering Him something we value to show that we value Him
even more. By so doing, we worship God as God--Him to which all honor and glory are
due, He who is infinitely beyond all of us, the only perfect, uncreated being. To make an
offering for atonement for our sins, the sacrifice of an animal manifests both our
remorse and, again, our value of God above both the thing sacrificed and above the
sinful activity in which we had engaged. Scheeben comments:
The value of this external oblation consists essentially in the disposition with which it is offered,
not in the thing itself; the presentation of it to God cannot afford Him any special pleasure, since
the object does not acquire any intrinsic nobility.13
Jesus’ offering, on the other hand, is the offering of Himself. This offering is not merely
of a symbolic value. Of all created things, Jesus’ human nature is the most valuable--His
offering is of an infinite value. As the model of all sacrifices, the perfect sacrifice
required a change in the thing offered.
Scheeben’s second qualification for the perfect sacrifice deals with the change of
ownership over the thing--the offering-up of the sacrifice:
[I]f the stress is laid upon the donation of the object to God, the transfer of it to His possession,
the alteration of the gift must consist not so much in its annihilation as in a transfiguration and
ennobling of it. This is accomplished by means of the fire which transforms the oblation, and
makes it ascend heavenward as the flame or smoke of sacrifice.14
Ibid. 434, Footnote 1.12
Ibid. 434.13
Ibid. 434.14

9. Truelove !7
We see here, that the second aspect of sacrifice is particularly concerned with
showing that the thing offered is becoming God’s thing. In doing so, the offering also
changes from its ordinary state to the dignity of a thing in God’s possession. The offering
changes. In the case of an animal offering, it is burned and becomes smoke that rises up
to God. Jesus sacrificed His mortal body; it was transformed into a glorified body, and it
ascended to God.
Thirdly, Scheeben states:
If the idea of sacrifice is to be perfectly realized, the victim and the offerer must be joined in one
person, so that one and the same person may be both the offerer, through his spiritual
disposition, and the victim, in that part of his being which is actually immolated.15
Whereas in most sacrifices, men offer to God something else that represents their inner
disposition, in the truest form of sacrifice, the man would offer himself.
If all three conditions mentioned are to be fulfilled, no mere man is capable of offering a sacrifice.
The sacrifice of external objects has no more than a symbolic worth. The sacrifice of himself, of
his own life and body, is not suitable for man, in view of his nature. For, on the one hand, God has
not given him the right to dispose of his own body and life; on the other hand, although man can
deprive himself of life by destruction of it, he cannot actually donate it to God; he is able, indeed,
to destroy it, but he cannot make it ascend to God as a living holocaust. The sacrifice of himself
would be no more than a sacrifice of death; but death in itself would be merely a suffering or a
punishment for man, and is not the most perfect worship of God, who is a God of the living, and
wills to be adored as such.
According to its highest notion, sacrifice as the most effective and perfect form of worship, is
realized only if God receives from the creature a worship that is absolute in its value, that is, if the
offerer is of infinite dignity, and the victim of infinite worth.16
This perfect sacrifice must offer the offerer as a victim, but man has not the authority
to take his own life. It must be offered to God, but man cannot offer himself if he is dead.
Not only that, but the perfect sacrifice must offer something of absolute value and,
although humans are of great value, they are not of infinite value. Only God is of infinite
value. Only the sacrifice of God, by God, to God could fit these requirements. Only Jesus’
Ibid. 435.15
Ibid. 435.16

10. Truelove !8
sacrifice fits this description. More will be discussed about Jesus’ sacrifice later. Before
that, however, I will make one more note on the definition of sacrifice.
To Sacrifice is a Joy
How many times have we all done something really arduous for the sake of a loved
one without thinking twice? We knew that no matter how difficult the task was, what we
were doing was more important than any pain or other difficulty we might feel. How
many times would we do those same actions without a loved one to do it for? That
willingness to act for the sake of the beloved in situations within which we might
otherwise refrain is evidence of the positive aspect of sacrifice.
If sacrifice is offered in every act by which we unite to God, sacrifice is mainly a
matter of joy and life. It is ordered to a participation in God, the source of Joy and Life.
The anguishes involved in sacrifice only come to the degree that there are obstacles to
one’s union with God. St. Paul stated: “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake” (Col.
1:24). To the degree that anguish is less, the sacrifice is more perfect because it is a sign
that there are less obstacles to union. The less anguish is involved, the less is needed for
one to unite with God--the soul has fewer earthly attachments holding it back from what
is needed for full union with God.
One might then ask: “If that is true, why was Jesus’ sacrifice painful? It seems that
He suffered a great anguish. Wasn’t He, as God, free of earthly attachments? How does
that reconcile with the joy of sacrifice?” Christ’s sacrifice was a suffering of pain and
anguish on our behalf. His sacrifice was for our sins. If all of humanity were to be
reconciled to God, it would have been a painful process experienced by each person
throughout all of time. The pain would have come from all of our various attachments to

11. Truelove !9
earthly things. Jesus was in anguish on the cross because He bore the pain for our
redemption.
Part II: A Sacrifice Worthy of God
Jesus’ Sacrifice is the Model
By himself, man could not fulfill the requirements of sacrifice. Out of love for His
creature, God took on man’s flesh and, in that God-man reality, offered the sacrifice of
Himself by Himself to Himself. His death on the cross accomplished the latreutic
slaughter.
His resurrection and ascension actually achieve in mystically real fashion what is symbolized in
the sacrifice of animals by the burning of the victim’s flesh . . . The fire of the Godhead which
resuscitated the slain Lamb and, after consuming its mortality, laid hold of it and transformed it,
caused it to ascend to God in lovely fragrance as a holocaust, there to make it, as it were, dissolve
and merge into God.17
By taking possession of His human nature He made His own the object He was to offer, and by
uniting it to His person He invested it with an infinite value. By His Passion and death, which He
had in mind during His whole earthly career, He accomplished its immolation. By His
resurrection and glorification He made it a holocaust. Finally, by His ascension He transferred it
to heaven, and placed it at the feet of His Father, that it might be His as the eternal pledge of
perfect worship.18
Jesus’ sacrifice fulfills all the requirements of the perfect sacrifice. It is the sacrifice,
par excellence. All others find meaning in relation to His sacrifice. The sacrifices that
pagans offer to their gods are “searches among shadows and images for the God who is
unknown yet near . . . a preparation for the Gospel.” These sacrifices show that man19
naturally recognizes that there is a higher being and that sacrifice is due to that being. It
is a part of truth that the people of these religions have found. That truth will help them
Ibid. 436.17
Ibid. 437.18
Catechism of the Catholic Church 843--further noted as CCC.19

12. Truelove !10
to see the fullness of truth available in Jesus’ sacrifice.
Likewise the Jews were given specific instruction by God on how and what to
sacrifice. When God first gave these instructions, Moses met Him on top of Mount Sinai
and God spoke to him at length (Ex. chapters 19-32), elaborating everything, from social
and religious laws to particular feasts, to particular offerings, to blueprints for the Ark of
the Covenant and the Tabernacle. God selected Aaron and his sons to be the priests of
these sacrifices (Ex. 29:44). The minimum, regular, daily sacrifices that God required
were a lamb in the morning and a lamb in the evening (Ibid. vv. 38-46), but there were
also many other sacrifices that would be offered: holocausts, sin offerings, thank
offerings, etc.
The main sacrifice of the Temple was the sin offering on the Day of Atonement, Yom
Kippur. On this day, the high priest would slaughter a bull outside the Holy of Holies as
a sin offering for himself and his house, (Lev. 16: 3,11). Then he would sprinkle some of
the bull’s blood on the Kapporet and in front of it seven times (v. 14). Afterwards, he
would go back outside, slaughter a male goat (that was taken from the people--v. 5) and
sprinkle its blood inside the Holy of Holies in the same way (v. 15), making atonement
for the sanctuary because of the uncleanness of the people (v. 16). He would return
outside and put some of the blood from the bull and the goat on the altar, making
atonement for the altar (v. 18), sprinkling it with his finger seven times to cleanse it
from the uncleanness of the people (v. 19). Then he presents another male goat (that
was also procured from the people at the same time as the other goat). This one he grabs
and “confesses over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their
transgressions, all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and sending it away

13. Truelove !11
into the wilderness” (v. 21). After washing his vestments and himself, the high priest
would offer two rams (one of his own and one from the people--vv.3,5) as holocausts,
making atonement for himself and the people (v. 25).
The liturgical precepts of the Old Law have a twofold end: first, to render to God the legitimate
worship needed for that time; second, to prefigure the messianic salvation . . . Under the second
aspect they are abolished; under the first they are fulfilled.20
The entire Jewish sacrificial system worshipped God as He had instructed them, but
it was all a preparation for the sacrifice of the New Covenant: the sacrifice of the Cross,
and that same sacrifice re-offered in the Mass, all of which was instituted at the Last
Supper.
The Sacrifice of the Last Supper
The sacrifice of the New Testament began not on Calvary, but in the upper room. At
the Last Supper, Jesus and His apostles were celebrating the Passover meal (cf. Lk.
22:15), but it was different from the regular Passover meal. In this particular meal, Jesus
introduced a new sacrifice: He offered Himself as the sacrifice (changing the bread and
wine into His Body and Blood--substantially, not accidentally); the apostles partook in
this sacrifice, and He ordered that this new sacrifice be repeated.
What the Lord is doing here is something new. It is woven into an old context--that of Jewish
ritual meal--but it is clearly recognizable as an independent entity. He commanded it to be
repeated, which implies that it was separable from the immediate context [Passover] in which it
took place.21
Since Jesus is God, He need only speak and things come to be (see Gen. 1). This new
sacrifice became present at the Last Supper when Jesus said: “This is my body, given up
for you . . . This is my blood . . . of the new covenant . . . shed for you and for all so that
Charles Cardinal Journet, The Mass: The Presence of the Sacrifice of the Cross, (South Bend: St.20
Augustine’s Press, 2008), 24; ST I-II 102.2.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Feast of Faith, trans. (San Francisco: CA, Ignatius, 1986), 40--further21
noted as FoF.

14. Truelove !12
sins may be forgiven” (c.f. Mat. 26:26-29, Mk. 14:22-25, Lk. 22:14-20, 1 Cor. 11:23-26).
The bread and wine actually became the body and blood of Jesus. Not only that, but they
became the body of Jesus “given up for us” and the blood of Jesus “shed for us,”
establishing a new covenant (with new priests and a new sacrifice) and accomplishing
the redemption of mankind. The separation of His blood from His body (as His blood
was separated from His body on the cross) shows that the Last Supper truly is His
sacrifice--not just represented, but actually present on that table in the upper room. The
enactment of His immolation did not happen until the following afternoon when Jesus
offered Himself on the cross, but the sacrifice was mysteriously made present to those
who were with Him the evening before. Jesus also commanded the apostles to continue
this sacrifice, saying: “Do this in memory of me,” (Lk. 22:19; 1 Cor. 11:24, 25) thereby
perpetuating the sacrifice and instituting them as the new order of priests under Him.
New Sacrifice
As Jesus offered Himself in the upper room and on the cross, He made Himself the
victim of this new sacrifice, but He is also the priest (Heb. 7: 27; 8:3,6-7; 9:14)--the one
offered and the one offering. Let us remember that Jesus, as God, had the power to keep
his body alive through any form of torture. The Romans and Jews were instrumental
causes of His death, but the act itself was a willing sacrifice. This death was a laying
down of His life, not a victory of man’s devices of torture over the body of the God-man.
This helps us to understand Jesus’ sacrifice as, all the more, a wiling sacrifice--the free
offering-up of Himself for us (c.f. Jn. 10:17-18). Jesus has been designated by the Father
as the new high priest, according to the order of Melchizedek, (Ps. 110:4; Heb. 2:17; 3:1;
4:14; 5:4-6,10; 6:20; 7:17) “chosen from among men . . . appointed to act on behalf of

15. Truelove !13
men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins” (Heb. 5:1). Jesus fulfills the
foreshadowing of Melchizedek, whose name means “King of Righteousness” and whose
title, King of Salem, means “King of peace” (Heb. 7:2). Jesus mounted His throne of
sacrifice in Jeru-Salem and reigns forever as King of Heaven, where He reigns as God,
Righteousness, Himself. Jesus’ new Sacrifice is the definitive sacrifice, offered for all the
ends of worship:
The sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross is first of all adoration; it is latrial . . . [It] is propitiatory. It
appeases God Who was angered because of sin . . . [It] is eucharistic. It is the greatest act of
thanksgiving . . . [It] is impetratory. It is the greatest supplication, a supreme appeal . . . to divine
goodness.22
Those are the four ends of his sacrifice: latria (worshipping God as God, infinitely above
us), propitiation (paying the debt for the cost of our sins), thanksgiving (offering God
gratitude for everything He has done for us), and supplication (requesting God’s
assistance for our needs).
Buying Us Back
Particularly noteworthy is the propitiatory element of the sacrifice--His offering for
the expiation of our sins (see Heb. 1:31; 2:17). Christ’s death accomplishes the definitive
redemption [“buying back”] of men. The debt owed because of man’s sins was23
superabundantly remitted by the payment of Christ. Christ’s offering for our sins was
like paying for the United States deficit with an $∞ bill (if one could exist) that actually
had a reserve backing it up.
[T]he sacrifice of Christ becomes the real pledge, the purchase money for all the supernatural
goods by which man becomes like to the God-man and is consecrated as a sacrifice to God. It
purchases for him, first of all, the remission of the sins that made him displeasing and unclean in
God’s sight, and unworthy to appear before His countenance. It purchases for him the grace by
which he is sanctified as a victim, the power by which he conquers death in all its forms so that he
Journet, 21-22.22
CCC 614.23

16. Truelove !14
can live for God . . . Remission of sin and sanctification with all its consequences are, therefore, to
be regarded as a reward that God gives to the human race in return for the sacrifice that Christ
offered to Him. By accepting the sacrifice of the first fruits [Jesus’ human nature], God binds
Himself to receive the [whole human] race back into favor and grace to exonerate it of the curse of
its guilt, and to bless it with every spiritual benediction. Christ’s latreutic holocaust takes on the
character first and foremost of a propitiatory sacrifice: it effects the removal of guilt and the
reconciliation of man with God . . . [It] contains everything that is necessary for the restitution of
God’s violated honor and hence for counterbalancing sin . . . by way of justice through real and
equivalent satisfaction.24
Through His suffering and death, Jesus bought us back from the debt of our sins,
giving us freedom as sons of God. Through that same sacrifice, He also gives us grace so
that we are not merely forgiven of sin, but we are also holy. St. John assures us that
Jesus’ redemptive work is effective: “If the Son makes you free, you will be free
indeed” (Jn. 8:36). Unlike the myriad of sacrifices offered in the Temple, which needed
to be continually offered, Jesus’ sacrifice is sufficient for our redemption. He allowed
Himself, a being of infinite value, to be slaughtered. He gave Himself over and offered
Himself to the Father. His offering was received by the Father; He was transformed into
a glorified form, and, in that state, He ascended into Heaven so that He might be
constantly in the Father’s presence, offering Himself on our behalf in a physical way.
According to the Apostle’s teaching, the carrying of the blood of the sacrificed animal into the holy
of holies [on Yom Kippur], whereby it was appropriated to God, was a type of the function of
Christ in heaven, whereby He constantly appropriates His body and His blood and offers them to
God.25
In His Resurrection and Ascension, Jesus’ body has been transformed into its now
glorified form, like the flesh of the holocaust turning into smoke, and has risen up, like
that smoke, to the Father where He is now present to the Father in glorified form.
Once-Saved, Always Offered
God willed, however, that this once-for-all sacrifice would be perpetuated on earth.
TMoC 441-443.24
Ibid. 436.25

17. Truelove !15
Jesus did not end his speech in the upper room with “this is my body, given for you,” as
it might appear from just reading Matthew’s or Mark’s Gospels (c.f. Mat. 26:26, Mk.
14:22); rather, He continued: “Do this in memory of me” (c.f. Lk 22:19, 1 Cor. 11:24). If
nothing else, we must admit that, somehow, “Jesus wanted His sacrifice to be continued
by the Apostles.”26
In memory of Jesus, then, something must not only be said, but done. What? That which He
Himself had just come to do. He had just come to render His Body present in the Eucharist . . .
[and] the Blood of the Covenant, poured out for many. Therefore, in memory of Christ and in
commemoration of Him, the disciples would have to render present in the Eucharist . . . Christ
insofar as He offers Himself and immolates Himself for the remission of sins.27
If, therefore, after the flowing of Blood from the Cross, which happened once for all, sin begins
again and continues in each generation, it would be necessary that the flowing forth from the
Cross--once with respect to Christ but inexhaustibly with respect to men--begin again and
continue to touch each generation.28
Jesus wanted His one-time sacrifice to be repeated and continually applied to men of
every generation throughout the rest of time. To those without faith this would seem
impossible--how does one repeat a one-time thing? Yet, it has always been believed by
the Catholic Church that, “a real and true sacrifice is offered to God” every day in the29
Mass.
Reliving the Memories, Fulfilling the Past
This participation in a one-time event is not new to Judeo-Christianity. The Passover
of the Jews was a sacrifice offered every year, not just as a celebration of what happened
as the Angel of Death passed over the houses of the Hebrew people, but as an actual
participation in the original event. In this respect, the Passover sacrifice foreshadows
Cf. Trent Session 22, Canons on the Sacrifice of the Mass, Canon 2.26
Journet 30-31 cf. 18.27
Ibid. 18.28
Cf. Trent Session 22, Canons on the Sacrifice of the Mass, Canon 1.29

18. Truelove !16
Christ’s sacrifice.
In the sense of Sacred Scripture the memorial is not merely the recollection of past events but the
proclamation of the mighty works wrought by God for men. In the liturgical celebration of these
events, they become in a certain way present and real. This is how Israel understands its
liberation from Egypt: every time Passover is celebrated, the Exodus events are made present to
the memory of believers so that they may conform their lives to them.30
He instituted a new Passover, namely, Himself, to be immolated under visible signs by the Church
through the priests.31
This was not a mere recalling to mind of the past, but, somehow, a bringing to
present what had happened in the past. God allowed something about the Passover to be
such that it transcends time. This is true, in an even greater way, for the sacrifice of the
New Covenant:
In the New Testament, the memorial takes on new meaning. When the Church celebrates the
Eucharist, she commemorates Christ's Passover, and it is made present: the sacrifice Christ
offered once for all on the cross remains ever present. "As often as the sacrifice of the Cross by
which 'Christ our Pasch has been sacrificed' is celebrated on the altar, the work of our redemption
is carried out."32
This sacrifice is not only a reminder of Jesus on the cross, it is the sacramental re-
presentation of that same sacrifice--the re-offering of the one-time sacrifice of Jesus33
on the cross, made present again by God’s power. This is fitting because man’s nature34
requires such a physical act of worship. God created man as a spiritual and bodily35
creature, and He has given man a form of worship that is both spiritual and bodily. This
physical act of worship also fulfills the prophecy of Malachi because it is offered on
Catholic altars across the world: “For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is
CCC 1363.30
Trent Session 22 Chapter 1.31
CCC 1364.32
Ecclesia de Eucharistia 11,22,37 CCC 1366, Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III 74.1, 79.1.33
c.f. CCC 1362; Ecclesia de Eucharistia 12.34
Trent Session 22 Chapter 1.35

19. Truelove !17
great among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure
offering” (Mal. 1:11).
This ritual act of worship is called “the Mass” (missa, Latin: “sent”) and “the
Eucharist” (eucharistia, Greek: “thanksgiving”). In this second name, we see yet another
fulfillment: that of the tōda (Heb.: “thanksgiving”) sacrifice. In the Mass, Jesus’ one-
time, bloody offering is perpetuated in an unbloody manner via the same matter of
unleavened bread, and wine, which He used at the Last Supper. In the same way, the
“tōda embraces the unbloody offering of bread; todah is the only form of sacrifice which
is concerned with unleavened bread.” Just as in the tōda, the priest and people who36
are participating in the Mass also partake of the sacrifice--both by participating in the
offering, and by consuming their part of the offering.37
[A man] confesses God to be his deliverer [from a grave situation] by celebrating a thank offering
(tōda). He invites his friends and associates, provides the sacrificial animal . . . and celebrates . . .
together with his invited guests, the inauguration of his new existence . . . It is not mere sacrificial
rite; it is a sacrifice in which one professes one’s involvement.38
The tōda prefigured Christ’s Eucharistic sacrifice, which all Catholics celebrate, having
been saved from the grave situation in which we placed ourselves through sin.
By our participation in that sacrifice, we are brought up into Jesus’ offering of love;
the fruit of which is applied to us: “The Eucharist . . . applies to men and women today
the reconciliation won once for all by Christ for mankind in every age.” Not only are we39
reconciled with God, but we are continually strengthened by the re-offering of the one
sacrifice so that we might keep from turning away from Him in the future: “I, who sin
FoF 56 (quoting H. Gese, Zur biblischen Theologie (Munich 1977) 107-127).36
See Summa Theologica III 83.1.37
FoF, 54, 55 (quoting H. Gese, Zur biblischen Theologie (Munich 1977) 107-127).38
Ecclesia de Eucharistia 12.39

20. Truelove !18
always, always need a remedy. There is not another oblation for sin; but a presence, an
application, an actualization of that one oblation.”40
Common Misconceptions & Protestant Emphases
This offering of the sacrifice is the reason we gather for worship. It is the most
important aspect of the Mass. Some would argue that worship is predominantly about
listening to the Word of God and being instructed about it. This is a particularly
Protestant concept. In fact, the leaders of the Protestant reformation rejected the whole
idea of the Mass as a sacrifice:
It is a “scandal,” wrote Luther, to think “that the Mass is, as is everywhere believed, a sacrifice
offered to God. For Calvin, Satan alone was able to blind “almost all the world with the pestilent
error, which says that the Mass is a sacrifice and oblation for asking for the remission of sins . . .
according to Calvin, a mortal priest is substituted for the eternal Priest, another sacrifice is added
to that of the Cross, now considered as imperfect, a new redemption and another remission
than that of the Cross is proposed to us.”41
Luther did not think that we have to come into contact with the actual sacrifice of
Jesus in order for it to be applied to us; it suffices that it is recalled to us through
preaching:42
The Mass, [wrote Luther] in its substance, is really nothing other than the words of Christ--Take
and eat, etc. As if He said: ‘Here, O sinful and damned man, on account of the pure and
gratuitous charity with which I loved you, and by the will of the Father of mercies, I promise you
by these words, before any merit and desire on your part, the remission of all your sins and
eternal life. And in order to make you most certain of My irrevocable promise, I will give My Body
and pour out My Blood, confirming My promise by death, and leaving you both of these as a sign
and memorial of this promise.’43
Another argument that Luther made was that the Mass was a meal, instead of a
sacrifice, because in 1 Cor. 11:20 St. Paul talks about a meal happening at their worship
ceremony. There was apparently a common meal before the Eucharist at which food and
Journet 23.40
Ibid. 33.41
Ibid. 37.42
Ibid. 38.43

21. Truelove !19
drink were supposed to be shared. Paul condemns the abuses that had crept in (RSV
Footnote on 1 Cor. 11:20), stating: “When you eat together, it is not the Lord’s supper
that you eat” (1 Cor. 11:20). Luther took this idea of “supper” as the emphasis for what
Jesus had established: His Last Supper had inaugurated a new religion of suppers
instead of sacrifices--common meals celebrated among the faithful instead of re-
presentations of the great work that wrought our salvation on Calvary. Of course,
nowhere else is the Mass described as a supper:
Linguistically speaking, Luther’s use of the word “Supper” [Abendmahl] was a complete
innovation. After 1 Corinthians 11:20 the designation of the Eucharist as a “meal” does not occur
again until the sixteenth century, apart from direct quotations of 1 Corinthians 11:20 and
references to the satisfaction of hunger (in deliberate contrast to the Eucharist).44
Luther counterposed the ideas of meal and sacrifice. Whereas there is no opposition
between “meal” and “sacrifice”; they belong inseparably together in the new sacrifice of
the Lord. The meal symbolism is subordinated to a larger whole and integrated into45
it. The Eucharist (the Mass) is a sacrifice. The consuming of the body of Christ (which46
we also call the Eucharist) is part of that sacrifice--available only to those who are in
communion with the Catholic Church and have performed the requisite fast (one hour
before receiving).
[H]e did not merely say: “This is my body”, “this is my blood”, but went on to add: “which is given
for you”, “which is poured out for you” (Lk 22:19-20). Jesus did not simply state that what he was
giving them to eat and drink was his body and his blood; he also expressed its sacrificial meaning
and made sacramentally present his sacrifice which would soon be offered on the Cross for the
salvation of all. “The Mass is at the same time, and inseparably, the sacrificial memorial in which
the sacrifice of the Cross is perpetuated and the sacred banquet of communion with the Lord's
body and blood” . . . By virtue of its close relationship to the sacrifice of Golgotha, the Eucharist is
a sacrifice in the strict sense, and not only in a general way, as if it were simply a matter of
Christ's offering himself to the faithful as their spiritual food.47
FoF 37.44
FoF 50.45
FoF 38.46
Ecclesia de Eucharistia 12,13.47

22. Truelove !20
This view of the Eucharist as a sacrifice is something to be held by the faithful as
absolute. This is the reason for which the Council of Trent eventually stated: “If anyone
says that in the Mass a true and real sacrifice is not offered to God; or that to be offered
is nothing else than that Christ is given to us to eat, let him be anathema.”48
Unfortunately far too many Catholics have not listened to their Church, and this type of
thinking has crept into the minds of some (many?) Catholic theologians, priests,
liturgists and catechists. This leads to further error. If one does not have the sacrifice of
Christ to re-offer at every Mass, what does he have? Absent the focus on the sacrifice of
the Mass, the people turn in on themselves and become concerned with being
entertained instead of offering God the form of worship He gave us. Their worship
becomes horizontal (an action between each other) instead of vertical (an action
between them and God).
Some would argue, because of this horizontal focus, that the predominant aspect is
the gathering of the community of believers. An example of this is the work of Judith
Marie Kubicki, C.S.S.F., an associate professor of theology at Fordham University. Her
article Recognizing the Presence of Christ in the Liturgical Assembly represents not49
only how poor much of Catholic sacramental and liturgical catechesis is these days, but
how dangerous it can be to follow “down” the road of horizontal liturgy. In her article,
she includes comments like the following: “It is Christ’s presence in the Church,
specified by the Church gathered for worship, that forms the basis for the possibility of
Council of Trent, Session 22, Canon 1.48
Judith Marie Kubicki C.S.S.F., "Recognizing the Presence of Christ in the Liturgical Assembly."49
Theological Studies 65 (December 2004), p. 817-837.

23. Truelove !21
all other modes of presence.” In order to find backup, she refers to dissident modern50
theologians like Karl Rahner:
By the very fact of being . . . the enduring presence of Christ in the world, the Church is truly the
fundamental sacrament, the wellspring of the other sacraments in the strict sense . . . For Rahner,
this presence of Christ in the Church necessarily precedes the possibility of the presence of Christ
in the Eucharistic species.51
The are many misinterpretations for what worship is, but we must ask ourselves:
“What has God asked for?” While both the preaching of the Gospel and Christ’s presence
in the gathered assembly are important, they are subordinate to the sacrifice. There is a
hierarchy in place and it is noted by the liturgical documents. Paul VI, in a change from
previous lists, arranges the various hierarchical forms of Christ’s presence in the liturgy
into a roughly ascending order:
1) The people
2) The preaching of the Word of God
3) The governing office of the Church, the bishops
4) The administration of the sacraments [other than the Eucharist], and
5) There is another way in which Christ is present in His Church, a way that surpasses all the
others. It is His presence in the Sacrament of the Eucharist . . . This presence is called "real" not
to exclude the idea that the others are "real" too, but rather to indicate presence par excellence,
because it is substantial and through it Christ becomes present whole and entire, God and
man.52
The inversion of this order can cause the community to be too focused on itself and
not enough on the Lord. This confusion has even spilled over into some aspects of
Catholic liturgies: particularly in the direction the priest faces. Throughout the history of
Christianity, there was an almost unspoken recognition of the fact that worship took
place facing East--all members of the worshipping community, priest and people
together, faced East (the place of the rising sun as a symbol both of the rising “Son” and
Ibid. 820.50
Ibid. 821.51
Mysterium Fidei 35-39 (emphasis added).52

24. Truelove !22
the direction from which He will come again). The sacrifice is offered by the priest, at53
the head of the gathered assembly, who are all facing in the same direction, offering that
one, same sacrifice together. Those who have inverted the importance in the liturgy have
confused the orientation of the priest and started to build church buildings in which the
people look at each other instead of looking together toward God.
Looking at the priest has no importance. What matters is looking together at the Lord. It is not
now a question of dialogue but of common worship, of setting off toward the One who is to come.
What corresponds with the reality of what is happening is not the closed circle [of priest and
people facing each other,] but the common movement forward, expressed in a common direction
for prayer.54
This lack of focus on the sacrifice has resulted in bad liturgy and bad architecture,
both of which foster a poor understanding of the sacrifice. We could always benefit from
strengthening our understanding of the sacrifice of the Mass, but it is particularly
needed in those places where the liturgy, architecture and catechesis have turned
horizontal as opposed to vertical. Without the sacrifice, the people have no connection
to the Body of Christ. They are not actively uniting themselves to God in holy fellowship.
Yes, the sacrament works ex opere operato--so as long as it is validly offered, it becomes
Jesus--but the poeple still need to be participating in the sacrifice, recognizing that it is
Jesus, “discerning the body” (1 Cor. 11:29), and adding themselves to that sacrifice in
order to allow that union come about.
Part III: Marriage & Sacrifice
God’s Sacrifice is Love
As we saw, Jesus’ sacrifice is the perfect sacrifice. When we unite ourselves to His
Ratzinger treats on this well in his book Spirit of the Liturgy, pp.62-84. See the following citation.53
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Spirit of the Liturgy, trans. (San Francisco: CA, Ignatius, 2000), 81.54

25. Truelove !23
self-sacrifice, we are uniting ourselves to real, true, perfect love. This love, with which
Our Lord Jesus Christ offered Himself on the cross--and with which He re-offers
Himself through the priest in every Mass--is the love that He shares with the Father and
the Holy Spirit: divine love. This divine love is an attribute of God. As our current Holy
Father’s first encyclical reminded us, “God is Love.” God is Love itself, the source from
which all love flows. All loving between any of His creatures does not originate from the
creatures; their love is, more accurately, a participation in the Love that God Himself is.
Marriage is a union based on that love. When their worship loses the idea of sacrifice,
men and women receive minimal graces and are not able to see the example of true, self-
sacrificing love that is offered to them in the liturgy. Without those graces and that
example, people easily lose willingness to fully sacrifice for each other and because of
this, marriages suffer.
Gift of Self
Marriage needs sacrifice. As we saw above, St. Augustine stated: “true sacrifice is
offered in every act which is designed to unite us to God in a holy fellowship.” We also55
saw that sacrifices require change in their offerings--some recognizable alteration of the
object of oblation to signify its surrender to God. The sacrificial object is offered as a
manifestation of the interior disposition of the creature to the creator. This alteration of
the object of sacrifice represents what is happening interiorly to the person--he is giving
himself to God, letting go of whatever earthly attachments he might have and turning
himself over to God: “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and
contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Ps. 51:17). Man is called to give of himself
Augustine, City of God, Book X, 6.55

26. Truelove !24
and his attachments and live for God.
John Paul II saw this giving of oneself as something particularly human. He saw all
of creation as a gift because it was brought forth from nothing. Within visible creation56
(that is, not considering the angels), only man is created in the image and likeness of
God (Gen. 1:26-27)--with intellect and will--and so only man can understand creation as
a gift and receive it as a gift. Man, the late pope recognized, has a dignity far greater57
than that of the rest of earthly creation. He is “the only creature on earth which God
willed for itself.” God accentuated this point by bringing all the animals to man as58
possible helpmates, only for man to see that they were unfit, lower than him. God even
allowed man the authority over them to give the animals their names. “Man is alone
because he is ‘different’ from the visible world.” This solitude among the animals and59
the rest of creation John Paul II called, man’s original solitude: man was the only
rational animal--the only creature with both a body and a person. Only man had the
physical and mental ability to say: “I.”
God saw that it was not good that the man was alone, so He gave the woman to the
man as a help similar to him (c.f. Gen. 2:18, 20). Man alone, because of his intellect, can
understand creation as a gift that he has been given. He can then know that the only
legitimate response is, in like manner, to give of himself to and for another. This “giving”
is expressed in man’s body, which John Paul II called “a witness to creation as a
fundamental gift, and therefore a witness to Love as the source from which this same
Pope John Paul II, Man and Woman He Made Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. Dr. Michael56
Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2006), 13:3. Further noted as TOB.
TOB 13:4.57
Gaudium et Spes 24:3.58
TOB 5:6.59

27. Truelove !25
giving springs.” God gave the woman to the man as a “help like himself” so that the60
man might have someone to whom he could give himself and thereby adequately
respond to the gift of creation. To do this, God put that first, solitary man to sleep, took a
rib out of his chest and, from it, formed a woman. It is only from this point on that they
are distinguished as male and female. Masculinity and femininity come about at the61
same time in creation because they only exist in relation to each other. A human is only
male insofar as another human is female. Each human’s person is expressed in his
masculinity or femininity, which is most apparent in his or her body. The body is an
expression of the person (fully dignified and able to give/receive the gift of self). God
made male and female for each other: “that is why a man will leave his father and
mother and cleave to his wife and the two will become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24, Mat. 19:5,
Eph. 5:31). “The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as
they came from the hand of the Creator.” Man and woman come together in a union of62
love. They make the choice to fully give themselves to each other.
Of the earthly creatures, only man can possess himself and so choose to give of
himself. This self-possession, or self-mastery, is “indispensable in order for man to be
able to ‘give himself,’ in order for him to become a gift.” Self-possession involves man63
using his intellect to see both himself and his spouse as fully dignified persons who are
made in God’s image. Self-possession also requires man to use his will to freely choose
to give himself and not to be forced into the union by his passions or by coercion:
Ibid. 14:5.60
Ibid. 8:2.61
CCC 1603.62
TOB 15:2.63

28. Truelove !26
“Marriage arises in the . . . irrevocable consent, which each partner freely bestows on
and accepts from the other.” In order for a marriage to come about, a man and woman64
must consciously give themselves to each other. Man, as an image of God, is an even
greater image when he exercises this ability to give himself to another person. In doing
so, he is living with and for that person.
If the purpose of sacrifice is to unite us in a holy fellowship with God, man’s gift of
self is his way of participating in God, Who, as noted above, is Love. Love has no
definition apart from God. To the extent which spouses are like God, they are loving.
Insofar as they are loving, they are like God. When they give themselves to each other
fully, husband and wife are living in a communion of persons analogically similar to the
communion of persons in the Godhead of the Most Holy Trinity. In generating God the
Son, God the Father pours Himself out so completely that the Son receives the same
being that the Father is. The Father is continually giving Himself entirely (for all time)
in an act of love. The Father’s act of self gift is so great that it generates another divine
person--the Son--who is so similar to the Father that He shares in the same divine
substance as the Father. The Son is everything that the Father is except the Father. Not
only does the Father generate the Son out of love, but the two love each other with such
a great love that they give themselves to each other. They do so in such a full way that
their act of love co-spirates the Holy Spirit. God, in His essence, is self-giving. In their
gift of self to each other, spouses image God’s gift of self within the Holy Trinity. This
Trinitarian gift of self is what defines love. Sacrifice, as a manifestation of this gift of
oneself, is again “every act which is designed to unite us to God in a holy fellowship.”
Rite of Christian Marriage 2.64

29. Truelove !27
Every time we make any sacrifice, giving of ourselves to and for God and/or other
people, we are uniting ourselves to God, participating in Him who is Love itself. We are
thereby acting out of love and growing in love. Sacrifice is how God has designed to
bring us to Himself, to make holy (sacra facere) His people by their union with Him.
No Love Without God
Sacrifice (gift of self) is how man participates in love. It is both the expression of love
and that by which man participates in love. Man can only have love to expresses by
participating in the Love that God is and, through this expression, man is brought to a
deeper union with God. No love exists fully extrinsic from God. To truly love another,
then, is to give of oneself--to sacrifice. Sacrifice is the root of married life--giving oneself
to and for the other, living to and for the other--all of which cultivates a deeper union
with God. Deeper union with God is the ultimate purpose of marriage.
Allow me to illustrate this a little: I am currently engaged to be married. If I truly
love my wife-to-be, the love with which I love her is that which I receive as a
participation in God, the source of Love. Love for my fiancée is a desire for her ultimate
good--namely, union with God. Love is a participation in God, willing for her a greater
participation in God and manifesting itself as a gift of myself, a sacrifice of some sort.
This sacrifice not only unites me more closely with God, it also unites me more closely
with her. By so doing, it draws her closer to God, which fosters the reciprocal action in
her: loving me more deeply, wanting the ultimate good for me. God is infinitely loving,
so our union with Him will never reach a point of perfection. It can always grow
deeper--as long as we accept the graces He gives us to strengthen that union. Love, then,
works as a perpetual drawing deeper into the mystery of God, that is, unless something

30. Truelove !28
is put in the way. If she and/or I refuse God’s graces to give of ourselves, we place
obstacles in the way of that fuller union. These obstacles are earthly attachments--things
to which we cling instead of surrendering everything to God.
Sacrifice and Marriage
The sacrifice on Calvary is the source from which all the sacraments get their power.
Marriage, as a sacrament, is a sign of Christ and His Church. That is why St. Paul
compelled the men of Ephesus: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church
and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25). Jesus offered Himself on the Cross for the
redemption of His Church. He paid the price to buy Her back from Her debt of sin.
Marriage, according to St. Paul, is a mystery: “a profound one, and I am saying that it
refers to Christ and the church” (Ibid v. 32). Marriage is a sign of Christ by the husband
offering himself for his bride and the wife, in turn, offering herself by being subject to
her husband, as to the Lord (c.f. Ibid. v. 22).
For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself
its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their
husbands. (Ibid v. 23-24)
In this way, we can gain an accurate understanding of these verses--counter to the
lens with which they are commonly viewed, the lens that will want to label them
“misogynist.” St. Paul is calling for both husband and wife to offer themselves up for
each other--to unite themselves and each other more closely to God so that they might
love each other ever-more deeply and lead each other to a blessed eternity with God in
Heaven. To do this, St. Paul recognizes that God has set up a definite order, putting the
husband at the head of the household. It is particularly on the man’s shoulders to
persevere in sacrifice to lead the family in love. The wife is called to be subject to her

31. Truelove !29
husband--to allow her husband to love her and to encourage her husband to lead them
in holiness. The Church takes Her lead from the example of Christ, who gave Himself up
for her. In the same way, the wife follows her husband, who only properly leads by
following Christ, who offered His life for His bride. The husband must be ready to
sacrifice himself in whatever way it takes for the eternal benefit of his family--whatever
it takes to lead the family to Heaven. “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay
down his life for his friends” (Jn. 15:13). Christ also showed us the proper role for those
who hold positions of headship. Leaders must be servants of those over whom they are
heads. Christ showed us that by washing the feet of his apostles (Jn. 13:2-17). Husbands
are to give themselves for their wives and their children. Wives are to encourage and
enable their husbands to be such leaders--this is how they are subject. Sometimes this is
translated as “submit” which has a deep meaning in its Latin roots, being “under the
mission” of their husbands. The mission of the husband is to sacrifice for the eternal
benefit of the family, leading them to Heaven, and the wife is to be “under that same
mission.”
What does this mean practically? It doesn’t mean that a husband would go out
looking for someone to kill him, so that he can lay down his life. It means that in the
trials and struggles of everyday life with his wife, the husband is to see those difficulties
as ways to love her more deeply. One who loves through a challenging situation certainly
loves more deeply than during the times when things are going well. A real husband is
no mere fair-weather lover. He loves through thick and thin, “in good times and in
bad . . . for better or for worse.” How, then, does the wife subject herself to her65
Ibid. 45.65

32. Truelove !30
husband’s love? Does she try to make his life a miserable reality so that his love can be
even deeper? Of course not; she subjects herself to her husband’s love by receiving it as
his gift to her and reciprocating that love back to him. This returned love encourages
and strengthens her husband to be more loving to her. Both husband and wife offer up
their daily struggles, uniting them with the sacrifice of Christ on the cross (particularly
through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass) as a means of coming to love each other ever-
more deeply. This is one of the “ends of marriage”: the good of the spouses, an enriched
union, an ever-ripening love for each other.
Marriage as God’s Magnet
Each sacrament, in its own way, instrumentally causes grace in the person who is66
receiving it. Grace--God’s life in the person--gives the person a participation in divine
live, and hence, divine love. As St. Thomas Aquinas states: “wherever God gives the
faculty to do a thing, He gives also the helps whereby man is enabled to make better use
of that faculty.” Thomas goes on to say that through the sacrament of marriage, man67
receives grace, without which he cannot becomingly live out his marriage. The grace of
the sacrament, then, allows husband and wife to live out their marriage, to more fully
love each other and draw each other to Heaven. God gives man and woman to each
other and gives them marriage in order to draw them both closer to Him and He gives
them graces to better live out that marriage--ensuring their ultimate unity with Him.
Marriage, when the couple responds to God’s graces, works as God’s magnet by which
He unites souls to Himself.
ST III 64.1.66
ST Suppl. 42.3.67

33. Truelove !31
What is it that is lived out in a marriage? To answer this question, John Paul II
focuses us on what is promised in the marriage vow: “I take you as my wife . . . I take you
as my husband . . .”
The words, “I take you as my wife/as my husband,” bear within themselves precisely that
perennial and ever unique and unrepeatable “language of the body,” and they place it at the same
time in the context of the communion of persons. “I promise to be faithful to you always, in joy
and sorrow, in sickness and in health, and to love you and honor you all the days of my life.”68
This taking of the spouse includes a gift of self to that spouse who is reciprocally
giving his/herself as a gift as well. To confirm that this is the intention of the couple the
priest, at the wedding itself, asks the couple for their consent: “[Name] and [name] have
you come here freely and without reserve to give yourselves to each other in
marriage?” With their affirmative response, they give their consent to give themselves69
entirely to each other. The priest continues his inquiry to make sure of their consent for
their understanding of the indissolubility of the marriage bond and their requisite
openness to children:
Will you love and honor each other as man and wife for the rest of your lives?
Will you accept children lovingly from God, and bring them up according to the law of Christ and
his Church?70
Once the consent to these has been received, the bride and groom each profess their
vows: “I [name] take you [name] . . .” In the marriage vow, both persons are giving
themselves to each other and receiving each other’s gift. “Take,” here is used in the
sense of “receive,” not “steal” or “grab.” I receive you as my spouse: I recognize the
inherent dignity with which God has made you and I recognize that you are giving
yourself totally to me for the rest of your life. I receive that gift and, possessing myself,
TOB 103:5.68
Rite of Christian Marriage 44.69
Ibid.70

34. Truelove !32
recognizing the dignity that God has also given to me, I give myself to you in the same
way as your spouse. It is significant that these vows: “I take you,” are offered at the altar
and not the narthex nor the ambo, nor even the nave. The vows are professed next to the
altar, the place of sacrifice.
Marriage and sacrifice go hand in hand. The spouses must give themselves to each
other out of love. The couple is united by the mutual gift of self. Sacrifice is what brings
about their marriage. Every marriage needs sacrifice. It would be preposterous to think
that marriage would be possible without love. If we remember that real love is a
participation in God, who, as the source of Love, is gift of self in His essence, we see that
real love is sacrificial love, and we realize that it would be equally preposterous to think
that marriage could exist without sacrifice as it would to think that it could exist without
love.
There is no doubt; there are many sacrifices involved in a marriage. The storybook
endings of “happily ever after” fail to consider the many challenges involved in a
marriage and in raising a family: how often do we link Snow White and Prince
Charming with taxes, mortgages, groceries, cooking, cleaning, home maintenance,
disciplining children, the pain of childbirth, illnesses, etc.? Each of these can be looked
at as burdens that must be born, or they can be looked at as pathways to sanctification.
To undertake each of these acts merely because they need to be done and simply to get
them done, is to fail to see in them their real purpose. They are opportunities to grow
closer to God--ways in which one might give himself to those in need out of love,
offering himself for their benefit while drawing all involved closer to God. With every
challenge that comes up in a marriage, it is an opportunity to renounce some earthly

35. Truelove !33
attachment (often pride) for what will be best for the whole family--ultimately drawing
everyone involved into a fuller union with God. True love for one’s family comes through
participation in God--it must; there is nowhere else from which true love comes. It turns
the suffering involved in the daily living-out of marriage into a joy--a willingness to
endure challenges because of the goods that come from performing such acts in a loving
manner: the strengthening of the marriage bond through a fuller participation in God
and the sanctification of the persons involved through a fuller participation in God.
Marriage & The Eucharist
Marriage, like all other sacraments, has a termination in the Eucharist. As baptism
deputes one to receive the Eucharist and Confession brings someone back into full
communion with the Church so that he may receive the Eucharist, and Holy Orders are
conferred on a man, making him a priest who can confect and offer the Eucharist,
Marriage is ordered toward bringing both the couple and their children into a greater
participation in that Eucharistic life.
The happiness of a marriage depends on common denominators, and the most common
denominator of all is the love of God expressed in a common liturgy, a common faith, wherein
husband and wife receive the same Bread and are made one Body in Christ.71
The couple, by being an image of Christ and the Church, come to understand Christ
more deeply in the sacrifice and reception of His true Body and Blood. At Mass, a couple
can unite their daily sacrifices with that of Jesus on the cross, as His sacrifice is re-
offered through the priest, and they can receive their Lord in Holy Communion--thereby
receiving even more graces to help them live their lives in union with God. By
sacrificing for each other, they more deeply participate in His sacrifice on the altar. “The
Sheen, Fulton J. Three to Get Married, (New York: Scepter Publishers, 2007), p. 108.71

36. Truelove !34
spiritual sacrifice that they offer in the Eucharistic sacrifice is their Christian life
together.” The vows being recited by the altar, then, become even more significant. By72
offering up themselves to each other in their wedding vows and re-proposing those vows
to each other in every marital act, the couple mirrors Christ, who offered Himself for his
bride once on the altar of the cross and continually re-offers Himself through His priests
and through His Body and Blood, made re-present on millions of Catholic altars around
the world every day.
The Marital Act
There is a specific bond forged between the couple in the marital act. At the altar, the
couple professes a vow to take each other--to receive each other’s self gift. That vow
makes the marriage ratum, non consummatum: valid, but not consummated, not
brought to completion, not yet made perfect. When the couple performs the marital act,
they consummate the marriage bond brought about by their vows: “I take you . . .” This
“taking” is what John Paul II refers to as the Language of the Body. These words are
spoken by the body in every act of intercourse. Every time a married couple performs
the marital act, they actually re-propose those vows to each other: “I take you . . .” The73
act itself moves both people to the depth of their being--that is why it is so powerful and
so desirable. This is the act in which the man and woman become one flesh and most
fully image God while here on earth. We read in Genesis that man is made in the image74
and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26-27). In this act man and woman give themselves
Coleman O’Neill. O.P. Sacramental Realism: A General Theory of the Sacraments, (Chicago,72
Midwest Theological Forum, 1998), p. 188.
TOB 118:4.73
Ibid. 9:3.74

37. Truelove !35
completely to each other: body and soul. This is the fullest gift of self that man is able to
give--the fullest image of the communion of persons within the Trinity. The love
between man and woman is so great that they are incapable of fully expressing it. Within
their capacity the fullest possible expression of that love is the marital act. In this act,
husband and wife totally give themselves to each other out of love. It involves the gift of
the whole of both persons, not just their bodies:
Conjugal love involves a totality, in which all the elements of the person enter - appeal of the body
and instinct, power of feeling and affectivity, aspiration of the spirit and of will. It aims at a deeply
personal unity, a unity that, beyond union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul; it
demands indissolubility and faithfulness in definitive mutual giving; and it is open to fertility.75
Both the total gift of self and the dignity of the persons demand that this union be
exclusive. If a husband and wife fully give themselves to each other and fully accept76
each other’s gift, then they no longer belong to themselves. They are no longer free to
give themselves to anyone else or receive anyone else’s gift. From the point of the vows
on, they are married “until death do they part.”
Marriage offers the proper context within which man might properly use his sexual
drives. If a couple engages in sexual intercourse outside of a marriage, they are acting
out an imperfect (concupiscent) desire. Marriage is the only proper context for the
sexual passions. We have seen above (and will continue to see) discussion of the first
end of marriage (namely, union). This is another end of marriage, commonly referred to
as “the remedy for concupiscence.” Self-gift through sexual intercourse can only be77
fully given within the context of a marriage. This proper context helps to order the
CCC 1643.75
Familiaris Consortio 19.76
ST Q.42 A.3.77

38. Truelove !36
desires of the spouses so that they truly give themselves to each other as persons,78
rather than taking each other as objects.
One can see the obvious dangers that are present in committing this act outside of a
valid marriage: whether one intends to or not he/she speaks the Language of the Body
(“I take you . . .”). Through that activity, his/her body conveys these words. If that is
occurring outside of a marriage, this speech can be nothing but a lie. The lie might
deceive the couple for a long time because of the emotional bond it causes, but it does
nothing to further their real love for each other--it can only further their dependence on
each other and mask itself as real love. Marital acts outside of the marital union are an
obvious contradiction--an impotent attempt towards expressing real love. Every
misinterpretation of marriage, and specifically the marital act, prevents this real,
sacrificial love from coming about and/or deepening. Any attempt at marriage or the
marital act that does not consist of one man and one woman who are already publicly
committed to each other for life cannot, by any means, come to the full depth of love of
an authentic marriage that is in line with God’s design. Their bodies cannot say: “I take
you” without lying. This lie cannot draw them deeper into the truth; rather, it pulls them
farther from the truth. Their bodies express what they could only truthfully say if they
were, in fact, married: “I completely give myself to you and only you for as long as we
both shall live and I receive your gift of self to me.” These words, spoken truthfully,
cannot be taken back.
Indissolubility
A valid marriage cannot, by any means, be ended until one of the spouses dies.
TOB 127:3.78

39. Truelove !37
When Jesus was questioned about the permanence of marriage, he responded: “What
God has joined, let man not separate” (Mat. 19:6). After a marriage has been entered
into validly by a couple in the proper wedding ceremony and then consummated by a
full marital act, their union is irrevocably sealed--till death do they part. The marital
union is indissoluble. The uniting of the flesh in the marital act is the fullest expression
of the gift of one’s self to the other, thus their bodies speak a gift of each one’s whole life
to the other for as long as they both shall live.
By its very nature conjugal love requires the inviolable fidelity of the spouses . . . it cannot be an
arrangement “until further notice.” The intimate union of the spouses, and the good of the
children, demand total fidelity from the spouses and require an unbreakable union between
them.79
This is both a great blessing and a great responsibility. Indissolubility is a great blessing
because, by it, the spouses should be able to rest secure in the stability of their family,
trusting that the other person is not going to leave him/her, creating an environment
most suitable for the flourishing of them and their children. Indissolubility also becomes
a responsibility: a person must prepare himself for such a lifelong gift of self to one
person. The only thing that breaks the bond of the gift is the death of one of the spouses
(the reason for this will be taken up later). Marriage takes sacrifice to last. To perdure in
living with one’s spouse, one must continually be giving himself to his spouse. Through
that gift of self, the couple will be more deeply united to each other and with God.
“For Better or Worse” Even if “Worse” is REALLY Bad
By participating in God’s love, the husband and wife love each other with the love
that is proper to spouses. They sacrifice for each other’s benefit. They give themselves to
each other in the marital act, from which they gain innumerable graces to equip them
CCC 1646.79

40. Truelove !38
for the life of their family. Throughout the whole of the rest of their lives they sacrifice
for each other--in their various daily duties, in their patience and humility with each
other, in forgiving each other’s transgressions, in the various acts of affection for each
other. They become each other’s path to holiness.
This path to holiness is not just a path while things are going well. Spouses are not
merely partners who have made an emotional contract, breakable when times are tough.
They have been bonded in the sacrament of Holy Matrimony. This bond lasts as long as
they both live, no matter what. Their love for one another, through good and bad, is
what will lead them to union with God. Even if one partner fails to keep his/her part of
the bond, the other is still bound to keep up hers/his. The acceptance of the other’s
failure while still loving him/her is a great sacrifice.
If a man has been unfaithful to his wife (or vice verse), her calling is not to leave him
for his infidelity. She is called to forgive him--to love him even though his love for her
has not been manifest. Infidelity, though a great offense, does nothing to cancel out the
marriage bond. It is impossible to break that bond. For the wife to love her husband
through such an offense is a great gift of self. She should, by no means, encourage this
type of activity, but she must continue to be faithful to him. By so doing, she is uniting
with God more fully--and possibly meriting the graces necessary to strengthen the
husband’s fidelity.
If a situation is so bad that it becomes dangerous for the spouses to live together (i.e.
one of the spouses is abusive), it is permissible that they live separately, but this
separation does nothing to their marriage bond. No matter what happens, they will be
married to each other as long as they are both living. The gift of self, here, would be for

41. Truelove !39
the abused person to forgive the abuser and pray for the abuser’s conversion. If it is ever
deemed that it would be safe for the two to live together again, that would be ideal.
Often, however, it is the case that they must remain separated because the safety of the
abused is not likely. Again, it is a gift of self for each of them to remain faithful to each
other in this situation. The abuser is called to repent, go to Confession, seek any help
that may be needed to control whatever is triggering the violent behavior, trusting
ultimately that God wants both of them to be together in a healthy relationship and that
He can make that happen. This is the path toward union with God for each of them:
accepting the circumstance and offering their struggles to Him as their sacrifices. One of
the greatest struggles that occurs in this state is that of loneliness. They are united to
each other, but they are unable to live with each other and enjoy the many blessings that
come along with a healthy marriage. Since they are married, they are not able to date or
marry anyone else. This is a very challenging life--a great sacrifice for the love of the
person’s real spouse. They each have many opportunities from this life to give of
themselves to and for both each other and God. By so doing, they will be uniting ever
more with God’s love and be able to love each other ever more deeply.
Depending on the circumstances, they might not ever return to each other. The
abuser might not repent, the abused might not forgive. They might not adequately turn
themselves over to the mercy of God. They might start the forgiveness process too late
and die before returning to one another. Regardless, the bond between them, started at
the altar and consummated in the marital act, will never be removed until one of them
dies.
Divorce

42. Truelove !40
“What about divorce?” one might ask. Divorce has no effect on the reality of the
marriage bond. When a couple gets married, two separate bonds are enacted. The
couple gives themselves to each other in marriage primarily in reality (in the eyes of
God, witnessed by the Church) and they also autograph a civil document (marriage
license), which states that the government recognizes that they are married. This
document, because the state recognizes that marriage is a good for society, allows them
certain benefits allotted by the state. A divorce simply breaks this civil recognition of the
marriage. In effect, a divorce is only a decree that the state-issued marriage license no
longer applies. A divorce cannot have any effect on the couple’s actual marital union--
that union is indissoluble.
Unfortunately, many people are under the false impression that marriage is merely
something to do with the state. They think that it has nothing to do with a reality that
takes place between the couple or they think that the reality between the couple is
somehow dependent on the state. A person who falls into this fallacy might end up
marrying, divorcing, and “remarrying” any number of times--ruining the gift he had
given to his real spouse, the first person whom he married. When Jesus was asked
about divorce, He stated: “Because of the hardness of your hearts, Moses allowed you
divorce, but from the beginning it was not so” (Mat. 19:8). What God has put together
man cannot, by any means, separate (c.f. Mat. 19:6). Those “remarriages” mentioned
above are not real marriages. They amount merely to ceremonies that look like
marriages, but in them, no real marriage bond can come about because at least one
partner is already bound to another person who is still alive. As long as that partner is
still alive, the marriage bond still exists.

43. Truelove !41
Annulments
What about annulments? There are many who incorrectly describe annulments as
“Catholic divorces.” This is far from the truth. Whereas a divorce declares an end to a
civil marriage license, an annulment declares that the real marriage bond in question
never existed--it was null from the beginning. How can this be if the couple went
through a marriage ceremony and signed the civil documents and lived together as
husband and wife? A declaration of nullity regarding a marriage has very little to do with
whether the couple dressed in fancy attire and recited words in front of other people. It
deals, rather, with the validity of the union.
There are a number of requirements for someone to be able to validly get married
(including ability to choose, knowledge of the choice and of the person being chosen,
ability to give oneself, etc.). The lack of these are considered impediments to being80
able to get married. If any of these were present before the wedding, at least one of the
persons was not truly able to give him/herself to the other, so the marriage never
actually existed. Even though a marriage appeared to exist and a civil bond was enacted,
no real marriage bond was ever able to take place. The question is not whether the
people were able to commit themselves to a certain status; rather it is whether that
power was in fact employed in the specific instance in question. Only the tribunal for a81
diocese (or the Roman Rota for difficult cases) has been given the authority by God to be
able to adjudicate whether a particular marriage ever existed. By default, a marriage is
always presumed to exist unless it can be proven otherwise. If, after a thorough
For an official ruling on impediments, see the Code of Canon Law 1083-1129.80
Edward Peters JD., J.C.D. Annulments and the Catholic Church, (West Chester: Ascension Press,81
2004) 151-152.

44. Truelove !42
investigation, the tribunal can prove that there was an impediment to a full gift of self,
which prevented a marriage from coming about, then they will declare that there never
was a marriage. The Church does not break a marriage bond by rendering a declaration
of nullity. It only states that a real marriage never existed. It is important to remember
that if a valid marriage exists, neither divorce nor annulment are able to break it. If it is
the case that the marriage in question was a real marriage, then the couple is still bound
to each other and they are not free to marry anyone else because their gift has been truly
exchanged, and it cannot be taken back. They are called to sacrifice for each other,
thereby growing deeper in their union with God and leading each other into a greater
union as well.
Can only Christians participate in God’s love?
Union with God happens even in non-Christian marriages. Any amount of real love
that exists between any two people exists as a participation in God. To the extent that
real love exists, union with God exists. Even if the couple does not recognize God, they
still participate in Him when they love. In marriages between baptized persons,
however, the union is a sacrament. It is a sign of the union of Christ and His Church.
Christian marriage, as a sacrament, instrumentally causes grace. Christian spouses82
have the added help of this grace to live out their marriage, whereas a marriage in which
at least one spouse is not baptized cannot be a sacrament. Baptism deputes people to the
other sacraments. One can neither give nor receive sacraments if he or she is not
baptized. The spouses are the ministers of the sacrament of marriage. Non-baptized
people can neither receive sacramental marriage nor administer that sacrament to their
ST III 62.1,3.82

45. Truelove !43
spouses. Valid marriages between baptized persons are automatically sacramental and,
by being so, incorporate them into Christ, making them members of Him. The couple,83
through their marriage, which is a sign of the union of Christ and His mystical body, the
Church, become incorporated more deeply as members of that body. They have an extra
avenue by which they participate in the love of God.
All love between couples, if it is real love, is a participation in God. The challenge
comes when one tries to differentiate real love (perfect love, in union with God) from a
perceived love or mere emotional desire (imperfect love, which desires one’s own
pleasure). It is possible that there could be a non-baptized, atheist couple who have real
love for each other--sacrificing for each other. The love that they share, even though
they fail to recognize it, is a participation in God. “Whatever goodness and truth found
in them is considered by the Church as a preparation for the Gospel.” This love, as a84
participation in God should draw them toward Him and His Church. Unfortunately,
because they are not members of Christ’s body, they do not have the graces that are
available to members of the Church to remain strong in their virtuous activity. “More
often, however, deceived by the evil one, people have gone astray in their thinking and
exchanged the truth about God for a lie and served the creature rather than the
creator.” It is possible for non-baptized, non-Christian couples to sacrifice for each85
other and act virtuously, drawing each other into union with God through love, but,
unless that union brings them into the Church, sacramentalizing their marriage, they
are not as likely to keep up a life of such virtue as Christians acting in the same manner.
ST III 62.1.83
Lumen Gentium, 16.84
Ibid.85

46. Truelove !44
On the other hand, there could be baptized Christian couples who say they love each
other very much, but are really just fooling themselves (or are being fooled by their
emotions) and who fall to merely using each other instead of sacrificing for each other.
Because they are baptized, they would start with a sacramental union. It is possible
however, for them to be only Christian in name, not living virtuous lives and falling from
the perfect love to which they are called. The love between a couple is not a black and
white measurement; rather, real love in a relationship is a measurement of perfection.
Living as a true Christian means living a whole way of life that is conformed to God. The
more one conforms his life to God, the more truly Christian he is, and the more his life is
based on truly loving God and those around him. In every relationship there is an
admixture of imperfect desires and perfect love. Some relationships are more perfect
than others. The degree of perfection rests in their union with God, the source of all
perfection. This relationship must be kept up by virtuous lives, sacrificing for each other
continually and thereby growing into an ever-deeper union with God.
Why can this union not come about in homosexual relationships?
One might ask: “What about people who are in same-sex relationships? They love
each other. Why does the Church teach against this?” Let us review again. Real love has
its source in God. To truly love someone is to unite with God in willing the ultimate good
for that person and then to sacrifice, to give of oneself for that person’s ultimate benefit.
To the degree that the love between the two is this kind of love, it is true. This love,
between two persons of the same sex, can only be the love of chaste friends. Their
difficulty arises in the aspect that God has designed man for woman and woman for
man: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they

47. Truelove !45
become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24, Mat. 19:5). He wills for their ultimate good through the
complementarity of the masculinity and femininity. Love between two persons of the
same sex cannot be marital love, nor can it be anything that looks like it would be
leading to marital love. It would be the love of a brother or sister--the desire for him or
her to be united with God in eternal happiness forever. This desire would manifest itself
in a way that sacrificed one’s self to lead the other person to a deeper relationship with
God.
God designed man and woman for each other and any action that tried to rival that
of God’s design for man and woman in marriage would be a false form of love. If any
relationship between two persons of the same sex were to have temptations to be
romantic, those temptations would be disordered. They would be contrary to what God
has designed, not properly ordered to union with Him. There are explicit statements
about this in the Bible: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an
abomination” (Lev. 18:22). “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them
have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon
them” (Lev. 20:13). Later in the Bible, Paul called homosexual acts: “dishonorable
passions,” “unnatural relations,” “shameless acts,” “error,” and “improper
conduct” (Rom. 1:26-28). Romance between two persons of the same sex is against
God’s design. It neither comes from God as a participation in the source of real love, nor
does it lead to union with Him. Homosexual romantic “love” is not a possibility.
Two people with such temptations would be best to sacrifice those desires. If
necessary, they should avoid each other’s company for the eternal benefit of both of
their souls. These temptations are often strong and one might consider disobeying God

48. Truelove !46
or disbelieving that His teaching is accurate in order to justify homosexual activity. This
would neither be union with God, nor the sacrifice of earthly imperfect things. The gift
of self involved in true love in such a situation would be the sacrifice of the temptation to
commit a homosexual act because it is an act against God’s will. This sacrifice shows
that one loves God more than his own bodily urges--sacrificing what feels good for what
is good.
God designed marriage to be between a man and a woman. It cannot come about
between man and man, nor a woman and woman. If you have ever made a saline
solution by mixing salt and water together, you know that there would be no way to
come up with the saline if you were trying to add water to water or salt to salt. Saline
needs the mixture of the complementary ingredients of salt and water. In the same way
marriage needs the complementary ingredients of a man, a woman, and God. Without
the mixture of all the ingredients, they are not able to bring about a marriage.
God also designed marriage to be fruitful. Something that cannot happen with a
homosexual couple. Their lack of sexual complementarity brings with it a lack of
fecundity. They are not able to commit a true marital act. The nature of the marital act is
the act by which a man and a woman would normally go about conceiving a child. Note
well that this does not say that every particular marital act does in fact conceive a child--
only that it is the act by which humans normally would conceive.
Fecundity
So far we have looked mostly at marriage’s first end (unity/love) and that it is
expressed by its second end (proper context for sexuality--“remedy for concupiscence”),
which naturally results in marriage’s third end: children. St. Thomas states that,

49. Truelove !47
“Matrimony was instituted for the begetting of children.” The marital union is86
deepened through acts of sacrificial love between the spouses, giving themselves to each
other--particularly through the marital act. This act can only be a truly loving act when it
stays true to the nature of the act. Otherwise they are performing another act--one that
may look the same, but is radically different in nature (more will be discussed about this
later). When God blesses a particular act with new life, the spouses become parents who
share in the joy of a new life in their midst and who become responsible for that new
life--making sure this new person grows in a healthy environment and that he/she is
educated well for living and raising his/her own children and drawing all of them closer
to God. Children are a great blessing and spouses are called to lovingly accept the
children whom God gives to them.
Lo, sons are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of
a warrior are the sons of one's youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them! (Ps.
127:3-5)
Children are really the supreme gift of marriage and contribute very substantially to the welfare of
their parents . . . Hence, while not making the other purposes of matrimony of less account, the
true practice of conjugal love, and the whole meaning of the family life which results from it, have
this aim: that the couple be ready with stout hearts to cooperate with the love of the Creator and
the Savior. Who through them will enlarge and enrich His own family day by day.87
Seeing children in this way, we can better understand marriage. The indissoluble union
creates a stable environment in which children can thrive under the rearing of a father
and mother. These all deepen the love not only of the marriage, but of the family. A
healthy family grows in love for each other and for God. Husband and wife are called not
only to sacrifice for each other, but also for their children.
When the Sacrifices Cease
ST III 42.2 s.c.86
Gaudium et Spes 50:1.87

50. Truelove !48
Without sacrifice, marriages suffer. If it has not been manifest, married couples need
to give of themselves to each other. A lack of sacrifice leads to a lack of real love,
participation in God. The spiritual life is dynamic. We are always moving--either
drawing closer to union with God or moving farther from Him. Without consistently
joining themselves more deeply to union with God, via offering sacrifices, to receive the
love with which they can love each other, a couple will begin to stagnate and eventually
regress. If they are not sharing between themselves, the love they have received from
God, what are they sharing? If they cease to grow into a deeper union with God, they cut
themselves off from the source of all virtues. By ourselves, we cannot maintain virtuous
lives, so we fall into vice. Vices pull couples apart from each other. Those vices cannot
break the marital bond that unites them as husband and wife, but they can and do affect
the couple’s view of each other, their family and the value they place on that bond.
Living without sacrificing to unite with each other and God causes serious injury to
their ability to love each other. This is the root of divorce: a lack of sacrifice, two people
who were once loving toward each other have failed to sacrifice in one form or another.
The primary sacrifice, as we saw above, is the Eucharist. Couples who stop going to
Mass (or stop participating when they do go) cut themselves off from the greatest
possible avenue toward fuller union with God and with each other. They cease to join
themselves and all of their lives (their joys and their sorrows) to the Crucifixion. Couples
who frequently attend Mass together and truly offer our Lord’s sacrifice together rarely,
if ever, get divorced. Without this sacrifice in their lives, couples face a great difficulty.
God’s grace is sufficient to keep them together in other ways (after all, many non-
Catholic couples remain faithful to each other), but couples have the greatest advantage

51. Truelove !49
when they frequently participate in the sacraments.
The lack of sacrifices in marriages takes on many forms: impatience with each other
and each other’s flaws, pride, jealousy, greed, lust, etc. One of the more visible ways in
which a couple would lack sacrifice is not being open to children. The marital act is the
fullest expression of love that a man and woman may give to each other, but it ceases to
be the marital act if the couple disrupts its nature.
The nature of the marital act is unitive and procreative. In order to be truly unitive, it
must be procreative and in order to be truly procreative, it must be unitive. They depend
on each other. To remove the unitive aspect is to reject the other person as a person--88
neither giving oneself to that person nor receiving that person’s gift, but rather taking
the person as an object for sexual gratification. This is lust--and it can even happen in a
marriage. Pleasure in the act is good to the extent that it is caught up into the gift of self,
but taking pleasure in the other at the expense of the gift is bad. The extreme of this
would be in the instance of rape. The one person forces the other into the act one takes
and the other is violently taken--neither give and neither really receive. This is not an act
that is at the level of the dignity of the human beings involved. This is not an act of love.
The nature of the act is no longer unitive, because of this, it is also no longer truly
procreative--the act may conceive a child, but the conception of that child came about
through means that were neither worthy of the dignity of that child, his parents, nor God
who gave that child life, so the act is not truly procreative. Removing the unitive aspect89
TOB 118:6.88
It is important to remember that the child, even though his conception came about through89
undignified means, retains the full dignity of a human being. He deserves all the dignity of every other
human being (including, and especially, life, which many would try to remove from him before he is
born).