Note: This article is part of an ongoing series on Pope St. John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body (TOB).”

From the beginning, God gave us marriage not only for the good of spouses sharing this life together but also as a sign of the intimate union God Himself desires to have with each of us. God created the human race to share in His divine life. He wants us to be intimately united with Him for all eternity, so that we can participate in His infinite perfection, infinite joy, infinite love. He gave us marriage as an efficacious sign (i.e., a “sacrament”) of this incredible plan to unite Himself with us as intimately as a husband who lovingly unites himself with his bride in marriage.

This spousal analogy for God’s relationship with His people appears repeatedly in the pages of Scripture and comes to a crescendo in Ephesians 5, which portrays Christ as the Bridegroom and the Church as the Bride for whom He has given Himself completely on the Cross to redeem and sanctify.

In his meditations on this passage, Pope St. John Paul II saw that Christ’s spousal love for the Church moved Him to suffer and die for us so that our sins may be forgiven. This interweaving of spousal and redemptive love demonstrates how marriage is the central form or figure for God’s plan to save us, which includes the seven sacraments of the Church He gave us as channels of sanctifying grace.

In addition to being one of the seven sacraments, John Paul II wrote of how “marriage constitutes … the figure” upon which the whole “sacramental order is built” because the latter “springs from the spousal gracing that the Church receives from Christ” her bridegroom (98.2). This means that “all the sacraments of the New Covenant find their prototype in some way in marriage” (98.2).

For example, St. John Paul II saw an allusion to baptism in Eph 5:26 when it refers to Christ cleansing His bride “by the washing of the water with the word” (99.1). He further saw St. Paul’s words about the husband nourishing and cherishing his wife in Eph 5:29 as an allusion to the Eucharist (99.1). Thus, all of the sacraments have a spousal character and origin.

Christ’s spousal love for us is also a saving, redemptive love. It is both a love of union (i.e., wanting to be united with the beloved like spouses in marriage) as well as a love that calls forth action, change, and growth. His spousal, redemptive love calls us to repentance and holiness of life. Through the Sacrament of Marriage, Christian spouses participate in Christ’s love for the Church. Therefore, St. John Paul II taught that our marital love must be based on this model. The love of Christian spouses, then, must also be a love grounded in redemption, self-sacrifice, mercy, and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. Christian spouses are called to let Christ’s love for the Church penetrate and purify their love, strengthening their union and transforming their hearts.

Thus, Christian marriage is not only meant to be a source of natural consolation but a sacrament that calls us to holiness. According to St. John Paul II, the Sacrament of Marriage is given to us both as a grace and a life task; it is where “eros and ethos” interpenetrate in the heart of man and woman (101.3). He saw Christian marriage as “an exhortation to gain mastery over concupiscence” (101.1) and the fruit of this mastery as unity, indissolubility, and a deepened sense of one another’s dignity.

Even for the unmarried, John Paul II held up the Sacrament of Marriage as a reminder that Christ “assigns the dignity of every woman as a task to every man … and the dignity of every man to every woman” (100.6) and that all “are called to chastity” (101.4). Through the grace of Christ’s redemption, we can and should hope to “master the concupiscence of the flesh” such that the communion of persons in marriage—including bodily communion—is lived in a truly dignified manner, “a manner worthy of persons” rather than for mere “egotistical satisfaction” (101.4).

In this way, fervently cooperating with “the grace of the sacrament of marriage”—which has its roots in Christ’s spousal and redemptive love—can enable “man and woman to find the true freedom of the gift together with the awareness of the spousal meaning of the body” (101.5).