337. What is the plan of God regarding man and woman?
(Comp
337) God who is love and who created man and woman for love has called
them to love. By creating man and woman he called them to an intimate communion
of life and of love in marriage: “So that they are no longer two, but one
flesh” (Matthew 19:6). God said to them in blessing “Be fruitful and multiply”
(Genesis 1:28).
“In brief”
(CCC 1601) "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"
(CIC, can. 1055 § 1; cf. GS 48 § 1).
To deepen and explain
(CCC 1602) Sacred Scripture begins with the creation of man
and woman in the image and likeness of God and concludes with a vision of
"the wedding-feast of the Lamb" (Rev 19:7, 9; cf. Gen 1:26-27).
Scripture speaks throughout of marriage and its "mystery," its
institution and the meaning God has given it, its origin and its end, its
various realizations throughout the history of salvation, the difficulties
arising from sin and its renewal "in the Lord" in the New Covenant of
Christ and the Church (1 Cor 7:39; cf. Eph 5:31-32). (CCC 1603) "The
intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has
been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws....
God himself is the author of marriage" (GS 48 § 1). The vocation to
marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the
hand of the Creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the
many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different
cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes. These differences should
not cause us to forget its common and permanent characteristics. Although the
dignity of this institution is not transparent everywhere with the same clarity
(Cf. GS 47 § 2), some sense of the greatness of the matrimonial union exists in
all cultures. "The well-being of the individual person and of both human
and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal
and family life" (GS 47 § 1).
Reflection
(CCC 1604) God who created man out of love also calls him to
love - the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being. For man is
created in the image and likeness of God who is himself love (Cf. Gen 1:27; 1
Jn 4:8, 16). Since God created him man and woman, their mutual love becomes an
image of the absolute and unfailing love with which God loves man. It is good,
very good, in the Creator's eyes. And this love which God blesses is intended
to be fruitful and to be realized in the common work of watching over creation:
"and God blessed them, and God said to them: 'Be fruitful and multiply,
and fill the earth and subdue it'" (Gen 1:28; cf. 1:31). (CCC 1605) Holy
Scripture affirms that man and woman were created for one another: "It is
not good that the man should be alone" (Gen 2:18). The woman, "flesh
of his flesh," his equal, his nearest in all things, is given to him by
God as a "helpmate"; she thus represents God from whom comes our help
(Cf. Gen 2:18-25). "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and
cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh" (Gen 2:24). The Lord
himself shows that this signifies an unbreakable union of their two lives by
recalling what the plan of the Creator had been "in the beginning":
"So they are no longer two, but one flesh" (Mt 19:6).
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