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GENERAL AUDIENCE OF WEDNESDAY, 13 OCTOBER [1982]
At the general audience in St Peter's Square on Wednesday morning,
13 October, Pope John Paul II continued his treatment of the subject of
the sacramentality of marriage, basing his analysis on St Paul's Letter
to the Ephesians.
1. In our previous consideration we have tried to study in depth—in
the light of the Letter to the Ephesians—the
sacramental "beginning" of man and marriage in the state of original
justice (or innocence).
We know, however, that the heritage of grace was driven out of the human
heart when the first covenant with the Creator was broken. The
perspective of procreation, instead of being illumined by the
heritage of original grace, given by God as soon as he infused a
rational soul, became dimmed by the heritage of original sin. We
can say that marriage, as a primordial sacrament, was deprived of that
supernatural efficacy which at the moment of its institution belonged to
the sacrament of creation in its totality. Nonetheless, even in this
state, that is, in the state of man's hereditary sinfulness, marriage
never ceased being the figure of that sacrament we read about in
the Letter to the Ephesians (Eph 5:21-33) and which the author of
that letter does not hesitate to call a "great mystery." Can we not
perhaps deduce that marriage has remained the platform for the actuation
of God's eternal designs, according to which the sacrament of creation
had drawn near to men and had prepared them for the sacrament of
redemption, introducing them to the dimension of the work of salvation?
The analysis of the Letter to the Ephesians, especially the classic text
(5:21-33), seems to lean toward such a conclusion.
2. When in verse 31 the author refers to the words of the institution of
marriage contained in Genesis (2:24: "For this reason a man will leave
his father and mother and will cling to his wife, and the two shall
become one body"), and then immediately states: "This is a great
mystery; I mean that it refers to Christ and the Church" (Eph 5:32), he
seems to indicate not only the identity of the mystery hidden in God
from all eternity, but also that continuity of its actuation. This
exists between the primordial sacrament connected with the supernatural
gracing of man in creation itself and the new gracing, which occurred
when "Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her to make her
holy..." (Eph 5:25-26)—gracing
can be defined in its entirety as the sacrament of redemption. In
this redemptive gift of himself "for" the Church, there is also
contained—according
to Pauline thought—Christ's
gift of himself to the Church, in the image of the nuptial relationship
that unites husband and wife in marriage. In this way, the sacrament of
redemption again takes on, in a certain sense, the figure and form of
the primordial sacrament. To the marriage of the first husband and wife,
as a sign of the supernatural gracing of man in the sacrament of
creation, there corresponds the marriage, or rather the analogy of the
marriage, of Christ with the Church, as the fundamental great sign of
the supernatural gracing of man in the sacrament of redemption—of
the gracing in which the covenant of the grace of election is renewed in
a definitive way, the covenant which was broken in the beginning by sin.
Supernatural gracing
3. The image contained in the quoted passage from the Letter to the
Ephesians seems to speak above all of the sacrament of redemption as
that definitive fulfillment of the mystery hidden from eternity in
God. Everything that the Letter to the Ephesians had treated in the
first chapter is actuated in this mysterium magnum (great
mystery). As we recall, it says not only "In him [that is, in Christ]
God chose us before the world began, to be holy and blameless in his
sight..." (Eph 1:4), but also "in whom [Christ] we have redemption
through his blood, the remission of sins, so immeasurably generous is
God's favor to us..." (Eph 1:7-8). The new supernatural gracing of man
in the sacrament of redemption is also a new actuation of the mystery
hidden in God from all eternity—new
in relation to the sacrament of creation. At this moment, gracing is in
a certain sense a new creation. However, it differs from the sacrament
of creation insofar as the original gracing, united to man's creation,
constituted that man in the beginning, through grace, in the state of
original innocence and justice. The new gracing of man in the sacrament
of redemption, instead, gives him above all the remission of sins. Yet
even here grace can "abound even more," as St. Paul expresses elsewhere:
"Where sin increased, grace has abounded even more" (Rom 5:20).
4. The sacrament of redemption—the
fruit of Christ's redemptive love—becomes,
on the basis of his spousal love for the Church, a permanent
dimension of the life of the Church herself, a fundamental and
life-giving dimension. It is the mysterium magnum (great mystery)
of Christ and the Church. It is the eternal mystery actuated by Christ,
who "gave himself up for her" (Eph 5:25). It is the mystery that is
continually actuated in the Church, because Christ "loved the Church"
(Eph 5:25), uniting himself with her in an indissoluble love, just as
spouses, husband and wife, unite themselves in marriage. In this way the
Church lives on the sacrament of redemption. In her turn she completes
this sacrament just as the wife, in virtue of spousal love, completes
her husband. In a certain way this had already been pointed out "in the
beginning" when the first man found in the first woman "a helper fit for
him" (Gn 2:20). Although the analogy in the Letter to the Ephesians does
not state it precisely, we can add also that the Church united to
Christ, as the wife to her husband, draws from the sacrament of
redemption all her fruitfulness and spiritual motherhood. The words of
the letter of St. Peter testify to this in some way when he writes that
we have been "reborn not from a corruptible, but from an incorruptible
seed, through the living and enduring word of God" (1 Pt 1:23). So the
mystery hidden in God from all eternity—the
mystery that in the beginning, in the sacrament of creation, became a
visible reality through the union of the first man and woman in the
perspective of marriage—becomes
in the sacrament of redemption a visible reality of the indissoluble
union of Christ with the Church, which the author of the Letter to
the Ephesians presents as the nuptial union of spouses, husband and
wife.
New actuation of the mystery
5. The sacramentum magnum (the Greek text reads: tò
mystérion toûto méga estín) of the Letter to the Ephesians speaks of
the new actuation of the mystery hidden in God from all eternity. It is
the definitive actuation from the point of view of the earthly history
of salvation. It also speaks of "making the mystery visible":
the visibility of the Invisible. This visibility is not had
unless the mystery ceases to be a mystery. This refers to the marriage
constituted in the beginning, in the state of original innocence, in the
context of the sacrament of creation. It refers also to the union of
Christ with the Church, as the great mystery of the sacrament of
redemption. The visibility of the Invisible does not mean—if
it can be said this way—a
total clearing of the mystery. The mystery, as an object of faith,
remains veiled even through what is precisely expressed and fulfilled.
The visibility of the Invisible therefore belongs to the order of signs,
and the sign indicates only the reality of the mystery, but not the
unveiling. The "first Adam"—man,
male and female—created
in the state of original innocence and called in this state to conjugal
union (in this sense we are speaking of the sacrament of creation) was a
sign of the eternal mystery. So the "second Adam," Christ, united with
the Church through the sacrament of redemption by an indissoluble bond,
analogous to the indissoluble covenant of spouses, is a definitive sign
of the same eternal mystery. Therefore, in speaking about the eternal
mystery being actuated, we are speaking also about the fact that it
becomes visible with the visibility of the sign. Therefore we are
speaking also about the sacramentality of the whole heritage of
the sacrament of redemption, in reference to the entire work of creation
and redemption, and more so in reference to marriage instituted within
the context of the sacrament of creation, as also in reference to the
Church as the spouse of Christ, endowed by a quasi-conjugal covenant
with him.
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