The universal call to sanctity : marriage

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And so it was, God saw all he had made, and indeed it was very good. God created man out of love also calls him to love-the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being.

God said, “Let us” make man in our image and likeness and let them be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all the wild beasts and all the reptiles that crawl upon the earth” God created man in the image of himself, In the image of God he created him, Male and female he created them.

God endowed them with free will and intellect, and God blessed them, saying to them “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and conquer it.” The first task God gave Adam and Eve was to multiply, fill the earth and conquer it. God made them fruitful.

It was God himself who created Adam and Eve to be sexually attracted to each other. So sex is a wonderful thing created by God to be enjoyed by man for procreation. Sex is a wonderful thing ordained to life, to love and unto fruitfulness. The main purpose of sex is therefore procreation. God loaded the sexual organs with a high degree of physical pleasure and enjoyment so that the command to procreate and fill the earth would not be tenuous and difficult. Therefore sex is not merely something good, it is something sacred and holy.

This is a point that needs emphasizing, this basic sanctity of sex. When the sense of the sacredness of sex is lost, the sanctity of marriage also is forgotten. Sex becomes a plaything, an exciting tool for pleasure rather than an instrument of God.

Unfortunately, man in pursuit of selfish satisfaction, and pleasure, has now inverted the proper order of things, seeking satisfaction and pleasure as an end in itself, in contempt of the good to which it is joined, and which is its aim, that is procreation.

In his preaching Jesus unequivocally taught the original meaning of the union of man and woman as the Creator willed it from the beginning: permission given by Moses to divorce one’s wife was a concession to the hardness of hearts. The matrimonial union of man and woman is indissoluble: God himself has determined it: “what therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder”

At first, man wanted to multiply and fill the earth and conquer it for many divers reasons, economic, political, military and other social reasons. People married many wives to have many children who could help them to achieve their ambitions. We know King Solomon who married 700 wives and had 300 concubines. Agha Ne Fon, my grandfather, in North West Cameroon, had 250 wives and more than a thousand children. In Africa, marrying many wives is still an African culture. Europeans have since made it illegal in their Criminal Codes for a person to marry more than one wife.

Jesus Christ, the Son God, Came to the World about two thousand years ago, he did not abolished the human laws but perfected them. He taught man how Human Beings should live and behave according to God’s designs.

Christ is the center of all Christian life. The bond with him takes precedence over all other bonds, familiar or social. Christ himself has invited certain persons to follow him in this life, of which he remains the model:“For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it,” Both the sacrament of Matrimony and virginity for the kingdom of God come from the Lord himself.

Christ instituted the Sacrament of Matrimony. To ascertain the right use of the procreative power, God founded the institution of marriage: the lifelong and irrevocable union of one man and one woman. It was not merely for the purpose of peopling the earth that God instituted marriage, “It is not good that the man is alone,” said God as Adam slept in Eden, “I will make him a helper like himself.” It is God’s design that man and woman should complete each other, draw strength from each other, contribute to one another’s spiritual growth.

Marriage is defined as “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament”

“By its very nature the institution of marriage and married love is ordered to the procreation and education of the offspring and it is in them that it finds its crowning glory”

Children are the supreme gift of marriage and contribute greatly to the good of the parents themselves. The parties to a marriage covenant are a baptized man and woman, free to contract marriage, who freely expresses their consent; “to be free” means: they are not under constraint; they are not impeded by any natural or ecclesiastical law.

“From a valid marriage arises a bond between the spouses which by its very nature is perpetual and exclusive; furthermore, in a Christian marriage the spouses are strengthened and, as it were, consecrated for the duties and the dignity of their state by a special sacrament.” A happily married couple enjoys a taste of heaven on earth, while an unhappily married couple is in hell on earth.

Unfortunately, about 70% of people go to hell because of sex-related sins: Fornication, Adultery, divorce bigamy, abortion, incest, homosexuality, promiscuity and lust.

We count on our Mother Mary, to intercede for us, to her Son Jesus Christ, to protect us against all sins of thoughts words, deeds and omission, so that we can fly to heaven when we die. *Chief A.S. Ngwana is the National Chairman, Cardinal Democratic Party (CDP),Cameroon and a moralist.