Folia Theologica et Canonica 4. 26/18 (2015)
SACRA THEOLOGIA - Sebastian Walshe, O.Praem., A sacramental theology of the family: the unity and harmony of the sacramental order
1 18 SEBASTIAN WALSHE, O.PRAEM. and the first sacrament by which children come to believe is the marriage between their parents. For while habitual faith is infused first at baptism, that faith becomes actual through the witness of the Sacrament of Matrimony. The Sacrament of Matrimony is the first sign by which Christ is glorified; and children first learn to believe in Christ’s love for them - they first become disciples, through the marriage of their parents. And marriage is not a saving sacrament for the children only, but also for all those who shall come into intimate contact with that marriage. In the beginning of creation, God blessed each day and called it good (i.e. Gen 1). But on one occasion, it was not good: it was not good for the man to be alone. Yet once woman was made from man, God said that it was very good. Every artist has his favorite work of art, and God’s favorite is the human family. The reason for God’s predilection is that more than the other parts of his creation, the family reflected his own goodness and beauty. Hence, we cannot know God, we cannot love him, without knowing and loving the natural human family. To do so would be tantamount to considering someone beautiful whose accurate reflection in a mirror we consider ugly. And so the human family is a privileged sign intended by God to lead us into supernatural realities. When we survey the principal mysteries of our faith, we find that they are expressed in terms of relationships within the human family. For example, God is a Father, who has an eternally begotten Son. This is the foundational truth of our faith. The relationship of this Son to his Church is that of a bridegroom to his bride. The love of God for his people is like that of a mother for her infant child, and so on. Because the relationships in a human family are the first (and in some sense, only) signs by which the fundamental mysteries of the interior life of God are made known to us, it is absolutely essential that these relationships be protected, fostered and loved. For if these family relationships are distorted, destroyed or even unappreciated, this will ultimately lead to ignorance and error, indifference or even animosity, toward the entire supernatural order. One last observation: the method used in this article may seem backwards. For example, I will sometimes argue from this or that truth about the Trinity or the Incarnation to the conclusion that the relationships in a family should be such as to aptly signify these truths. This seems backwards because the relationships in a family are better known, so that the argument should go from the family to the mysteries of faith. There are two principal reasons why I sometimes argue from the established truths about the mysteries of the faith to the relationships which ought to exist in a human family. First, generally speaking, in the modern world, it is not the dogmas of the faith that are being called into question. Rather it is the relationships within the family that are being challenged. From the standpoint of the modern reader, therefore, the truths of the faith are more certain, so that by
