Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church

By Christ's institution, the baptized live the inherent human reality of marriage in the supernatural form of a sacrament, a sign and instrument of grace. The theme of the marriage covenant, as the meaningful expression of the communion of love between God and men and as the symbolic key to understanding the different stages of the great covenant between God and his people, is found throughout salvation history^{485Cf. John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, 12: AAS 74 (1982), 93: “For this reason the central word of Revelation, ‘God loves his people', is likewise proclaimed through the living and concrete word whereby a man and a woman express their conjugal love. Their bond of love becomes the image and the symbol of the covenant which unites God and his people (cf. Hos 2:21; Jer 3:6-13; Is 54). And the same sin which can harm the conjugal covenant becomes an image of the infidelity of the people to their God: idolatry is prostitution (cf. Ezek 16:25), infidelity is adultery, disobedience to the law is abandonment of the spousal love of the Lord. But the infidelity of Israel does not destroy the eternal fidelity of the Lord, and therefore the ever faithful love of God is put forward as the model of the faithful love which should exist between spouses (cf. Hos 3)”.}. At the centre of the revelation of the divine plan of love is the gift that God makes to humanity in his Son, Jesus Christ, “the Bridegroom who loves and gives himself as the Saviour of humanity, uniting it to himself as his body. He reveals the original truth of marriage, the truth of the ‘beginning' (cf. Gen 2:24; Mt 19:5), and, freeing man from his hardness of heart, he makes man capable of realizing this truth in its entirety”^{486John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, 13: AAS 74 (1982), 93-94.}. It is in the spousal love of Christ for the Church, which shows its fullness in the offering made on the cross that the sacramentality of marriage originates. The grace of this sacrament conforms the love of the spouses to the love of Christ for the Church. Marriage, as a sacrament, is a covenant in love between a man and a woman^{487Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 48: AAS 58 (1966), 1067-1069.}.

The sacrament of marriage takes up the human reality of conjugal love in all its implications and “gives to Christian couples and parents a power and a commitment to live their vocation as lay people and therefore to ‘seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God”'^{488John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, 47: AAS 74 (1982), 139; the quotation in the text is taken from Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, 31: AAS 57 (1965), 37.}. Intimately united to the Church by virtue of the sacrament that makes it a “domestic Church” or a “little Church”, the Christian family is called therefore “to be a sign of unity for the world and in this way to exercise its prophetic role by bearing witness to the Kingdom and peace of Christ, towards which the whole world is journeying”^{489John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, 48: AAS 74 (1982), 140; cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1656-1657, 2204.}. Conjugal charity, which flows from the very charity of Christ, offered through the sacrament, makes Christian spouses witnesses to a new social consciousness inspired by the Gospel and the Paschal Mystery. The natural dimension of their love is constantly purified, strengthened and elevated by sacramental grace. In this manner, besides offering each other mutual help on the path to holiness, Christian spouses become a sign and an instrument of Christ's love in the world. By their very lives they are called to bear witness to and proclaim the religious meaning of marriage, which modern society has ever greater difficulty recognizing, especially as it accepts relativistic perspectives of the natural foundation itself of the institution of marriage. III. THE SOCIAL SUBJECTIVITY OF THE FAMILY