A Sacramental Theology of Marriage: A Q&A with Fr. José Granados
In this month’s Q&A, contributing editor Nathaniel Peters interviews Fr. José Granados about his new book, The Sacramental Theology of Marriage: One Flesh in One Spirit.
Nathaniel Peters: Your new book offers a comprehensive vision of the Catholic theology of marriage. What is your overall argument, and what are two points or insights that you found especially significant in writing it?
Fr. José Granados: To answer this question, let’s start with the book’s subtitle: “One Flesh in One Spirit.” One might argue that marriage is “one flesh,” but spouses never become “one spirit” because they are two individuals with their own freedom, preferences, and paths. However, this idea of the spouses being one spirit is found in the works of Tertullian, and “spirit” refers to the Holy Spirit, which unites the two spouses in communion of prayer. The book’s cover, depicting a family of musicians in front of a church in Prague, evokes this idea as well. Here, music symbolizes the presence of the Spirit, which elevates the spouses beyond themselves and opens them up to propagate life, participate in society, and build up the Church.
Thus, a key to understanding the book is to view marriage as the unity of flesh and spirit. The theological starting point is the resurrection of the flesh, which prepares us for the resurrection of our bodies—the moment they will be filled with the Holy Spirit. If, at the end of time, the body can be filled with the Spirit and become a “spiritual body,” as St. Paul says, then this means that, from the beginning of creation (when God created them male and female), the body is open to the Spirit. Otherwise the beginning and the fulfilment would have no connection.
In this book, I have tried to show that marriage is the initial opening of the human body to the Spirit of God, which is His love and communion. Marriage appears as the sacrament in which the body opens itself to the love of God. This openness occurs through the sexual differences between a man and a woman, who are united in lifelong fidelity and in the generation of human life.
From this, we can deduce another important point. If marriage is the sacrament through which creation opens itself to the love of God, then this sacrament encompasses all of creation and all of society. Then, if marriage is one of the seven sacraments of Christ’s grace, the Church’s work must concern all of created reality. The sacrament of marriage is where the Christian faith touches the flesh, the cosmos, and the city of men.
Thus, the book starts with the resurrection to shed light on creation. In this way, marriage appears to be the key to understanding the unity of history. This is why the book is divided into two parts. The first part examines creaturely marriage, and the second examines marriage as the fruit of Jesus’s death and resurrection. Marriage embraces all of history. This also is why one of marriage’s central aspects is indissolubility, the capacity to embrace the whole of the life of the spouses.
St. Augustine identified the “sacramentum” (“sacrament”) of marriage with the indissoluble bond. The specifically Christian aspect of marriage is not a concrete rite, but rather, the capacity of the conjugal bond to unite spouses until death. This is not perceived as an obligation, but as a strength that enables the spouses to form a lifelong covenant. It is not perceived as the harshness of the law, but as the mercy that enables the spouses to forgive one another. If we view indissolubility as the key to marriage being a sacrament, we see that the Church has recognized this sacrament since the beginning, though it developed its theology more precisely later on.
NP: Your previous book was on sacramental theology as a whole. Marriage was the last sacrament to be recognized as such, at least by the Catholic Church, and is not recognized as a sacrament by most Protestant communities. What is significant about marriage’s sacramentality and its role as part of the new law of Christ? How does marriage connect to your broader theology of the sacraments?
JG: Marriage appears last on the list of sacraments, and there were some doubts in the Middle Ages about whether it transmitted grace, doubts solved definitively by Bonaventure and Aquinas. However, marriage has been recognized as a sacrament by the Church since the beginning of Christianity. In fact, it is the only sacrament to which St. Paul applies the term “mysterion,” which later became “sacramentum” in Latin. While St. Paul does not refer to the seven sacraments as “mysterion” as we do today, this term does say something crucial about sacramentality.
Later, St. Augustine brought marriage closer to baptism and priestly ordination by uniting them with the term “sacramentum.” Even during the Middle Ages, when there were doubts about the grace communicated by marriage, it was acknowledged that marriage is a sacred sign and the most significant of all because it represents the union of Christ and the Church, the greatest mystery. Interestingly, the Protestant theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg was open to recognizing marriage as a sacrament. For in today’s society, he argued, to live marriage according to the Creator’s plan is a distinctive sign of a Christian. All of this helps us understand the main thesis of the book: the sacrament of marriage is necessary to grasp the very concept of a sacrament.
Underlying this idea is the notion that sacramentality originates in creation and the cosmos. Everything created refers beyond itself to the Creator. Among all created things, the human body is central in opening everything to God. This is why St. John Paul II spoke of the body as the “original sacrament.” This applies uniquely to the body of husband and wife because, in their union, the work of the Creator is revealed in a new way: they transmit life and receive a call to a love that elevates them. Thus, the sacrament of marriage lies at the basis of the concept of a sacrament. In marriage, we learn what it means for the body to be a symbol of a self-giving love that leads us to the invisible, that is, to God.
In my previous book on the sacraments, I argue that the Eucharist is the fundamental sacrament and that the others are extensions of the Eucharist to different areas of Christian life. Now, marriage is the sacrament through which all of creation is incorporated into the Eucharistic body. Without the sacrament of marriage, there would always be a risk of faith becoming divorced from tangible reality, including people, society, and culture. Through its witness to the inclusion of creation in the Eucharist, marriage becomes a strategic sacrament for understanding the others.
For example, marriage helps us understand what it means to be born into the body of our family, which is essential to grasping the new birth of baptism into the Body of Christ. Additionally, marriage opens the door to understanding how love (and therefore grace) can reach us through the body, as occurs throughout the sacramental economy. Marriage also allows us to see that there is a “language of the body,” which is helpful to grasping the connection between the matter and form (or words) of each sacrament.
NP: Your book underscores St. Bonaventure’s understanding of marriage as instituted by God in creation. What insights does he offer us today?
JG: Bonaventure argues that marriage is a sacrament linked to creation. Unlike the other sacraments, which are instituted as medicine after sin, the Seraphic Doctor says, God instituted marriage before sin. Bonaventure states that God established this sacrament by saying, “A man shall leave his father and mother.”
According to Bonaventure, Adam spoke these words. This means that God instituted this sacrament by inspiring Adam from within his experience of the body and of love. We are very close to the exegesis of the book of Genesis proposed by Saint John Paul II in his theology of the body, which sees an intrinsic connection between God’s action and human experience. For St. Bonaventure, while the other sacraments use bodily elements (such as water, bread, or wine), which are inferior to the human being, marriage is primordial because it uses the bodies of man and woman themselves. To be sure, St. Bonaventure also teaches that Christ confirms this creaturely sacrament and gives it a new dimension, which aligns with the Council of Trent’s teaching that Christ instituted all the sacraments.
St. Bonaventure’s theology gives the body a very positive value. While earlier theologians doubted the capacity of the sexual body to communicate grace, Bonaventure affirms that conjugal consummation perfects marriage and causes it to communicate greater grace. In other words, the carnal union of spouses is a channel of grace because it perfectly signifies the Incarnation of the Word. The Christian spouses become one flesh, just as the Son of God became flesh to unite with the Church in one body. St. Francis of Assisi, with his love for the humanity of Jesus, played an important role in this revaluation of the body. When the Church strengthened her love for the flesh of Christ, her appreciation of the goodness of conjugal flesh was also strengthened.
NP: Critics of John Paul II’s theology of the body claim that he inverted the traditional order of the ends of marriage. In more direct terms, he made the spouses’ union and pleasure more important than procreation. Is this the case? How do more recent popes and theologians square with the tradition in their teachings on marriage?
JG: St. John Paul II did not reverse the traditional order of the ends of marriage. In fact, he says the opposite in catechesis 127:3: “In this renewed orientation, the traditional teaching on the ends of marriage (and their hierarchy) is confirmed and deepened from the perspective of the interior life of the spouses, of conjugal and familial spirituality.” St. John Paul II reinterprets the “ends” from the idea of “languages or meanings of the body” proposed by Humanae Vitae. The body has a unitive and a procreative meaning, both of which are necessary to express love because love is total and fruitful self-giving. According to John Paul II, these two meanings originate from the Creator, who shaped the human body.
St. John Paul II prioritizes the generative meaning within the unity of love because it opens man and woman beyond themselves, reminding them that they come from God. Thus, he did not forget the traditional language about the ends; rather, he made it more understandable to modern man, deepening its unity by viewing everything through the lens of love and self-giving. The procreative meaning is also a dimension of the gift spouses give each other because they give each other fruitfulness, which they receive from God.
NP: Many of those same critics have objections to natural family planning and the way that many Catholics use it. They claim that NFP is, effectively, a Catholic form of contraception that should be much more rarely used, if ever. How should couples that want to be faithful to God—Catholic or Protestant—think about being open to children?
JG: In Humanae Vitae, St. Paul VI speaks of responsible parenthood. This insistence on the responsibility of the spouses is also present at Vatican II. However, it is important to note that the Council also indicates that this parenthood must be generous. In other words, “responsible” and “generous” are inseparable. “Responsibility” comes from “responding,” and the “response” must be appropriate to the gift received. The gift of a child is overwhelming and exceeds the parents’ abilities, as they are entrusted with a new human being to educate toward God. Therefore, “responsible” parenthood is not parenthood that wants to have everything under control. Rather, the only possible response to the gift of a child is generosity in trust toward God and the fruitful life He has promised us. This is why the Second Vatican Council praises large families.
However, there may be serious reasons to postpone having a child, such as the mother’s health or serious economic or psychological issues. In these cases, the spouses are encouraged to use NFP. Although NFP can also be used when there are no serious reasons, the moral qualification of this lack of generosity is completely different from that of contraception. Contraception directly goes against the Creator’s design for the body, constituting an intrinsically evil act. On the other hand, NFP, even when used for not serious reasons, accepts the language of the body as instituted by the Creator, including infertile periods. NFP is not used to eliminate the language of the body, but rather, to recognize the body’s fertility.
But I would like to conclude by referring to what I said earlier. A marriage is a sacrament that goes beyond the couple because it opens the couple to God. This openness to God extends to openness to children and to a mission in society and the Church. This book invites spouses to look beyond themselves to better understand the greatness of the gift they have received and make it fruitful. It also invites the Church’s shepherds to guide families on this journey to holiness.