The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 227: Summary of the Sacrament of Matrimony (2026)

Episode Date: August 15, 2026

This summary of the Catechism's teaching on the sacrament of Matrimony pulls together several beautiful themes regarding marriage and family. Fr. Mike emphasizes the family as the Domestic Church, that community where parents and children grow in charity, forgiveness, prayer, and self-giving. We're reminded that the communion of love shared by husband and wife in marriage is a sacramental sign of the union between Christ and his Church. Today's readings are Catechism paragraphs 1659 through 1666. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture, and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church discovering our identity and God's family. As we journeyed together toward our heavenly home, this is Day 2-27, 2-217-217. Reading paragraphs 1659 to 1666. It is Nugget today. As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the foundations of faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

You can also download your own catechism in your reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com slash CIY. You can also click follower or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications. Today is day 227. We are reading the last section on holy matrimony. We covered almost, well, I was going to say almost all the sacraments. There are no secret sacraments. These are the seven that we're talking about.

These are the seven that exist. Unless you want to call. you know, the church is the universal sacrament of salvation, but the seven sacraments, this is the last one. And these are the last notes on that note tomorrow. And the next day, we have the last two pieces, the last two beats. And what those two beats are, they're going to be about sacramentals, right? And so there are sacramentals that in popular piety. And then the next day, we're talking about Christian funerals. And so that's coming up with kind of a lot of topics, but a lot of good content, which is amazing. Today is a Nugget Day where we get to recover

what is it that we learned about the sacrament of holy matrimony. And so as we launch into today, let's call upon the Lord like we do every single day as we begin every single thing that we do. And we pray, Father in heaven, we give you praise and glory. In the name of your son, Jesus Christ, we ask you please accept us. Receive us in the name of your son, Jesus. By the power of your Holy Spirit, Lord God, help us to listen to your voice, especially in our brokenness, in this moment, Lord God, in our struggle.

and especially if we're pressing play on a moment right now, Father, where we're just like, I'm so far from you. I'm so far from living this life that you've called me to live. I'm so far from being faithful. God, meet us in this moment, be with us in this moment, meet us in our brokenness, and help us to be unafraid to approach you. We have great fear of the Lord, yes, but let us not be afraid. And so we come before you, invoking the name of your son, Jesus Christ, and and claiming the promise of your Holy Spirit that helps us and enables us, gives us the power and the ability to pray. Be with us this day and every day. In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. This is Day 227. We're reading the Nuggets 1659 to 1666. In brief, St. Paul said, husbands, love your wives. As Christ loved the church, this is a great mystery. And I mean it in reference to Christ and the church.

The marriage covenant by which a man and a woman form with each other an intimate communion of life and love has been founded and endowed with its own special laws by the Creator. By its very nature, it is ordered to the good of the couple, as well as to the generation and education of children. Christ the Lord raised marriage between the baptized to the dignity of a sacrament. The sacrament of matrimony signifies the union of Christ and the church. It gives spouses the grace to love each other with the love with which Christ has loved his church, the grace of the sacrament thus perfects the human love of the spouses, strengthens their indissoluble unity, and sanctifies them on the way to eternal life.

Marriage is based on the consent of the contracting parties, that is, on their will to give themselves each to the other, mutually and definitively, in order to live a covenant of faithful and fruitful love. Since marriage establishes the couple in a public state of life in the church, it is fitting that its celebration be public in the framework of a liturgical celebration before the priest or a witness authorized by the church, the witnesses, and the assembly of the faithful. Unity, indissolubility, and openness to fertility are essential to marriage. Polygamy is incompatible with the unity of marriage. Divorce separates what God is joined together. The refusal of fertility turns married life away from its supreme gift, the child. The remarriage of persons divorced from a

living, lawful spouse contravenes the plan and law of God as taught by Christ. They are not separated from the church, but they cannot receive Eucharistic communion. They will lead Christian lives, especially by educating their children in the faith. The Christian home is the place where children receive the first proclamation of the faith. For this reason, the family home is rightly called the domestic church, a community of grace and prayer, a school of human virtues, and of Christian charity. There we have it. Paragraph 1659 to 1666. These are the second to last. I think second to last nuggets that we have before we enter into the next pillar, the third pillar. You guys, wow, we made it through two, almost, almost two full pillars. Again, as I said, at the beginning

of this, we have two more days, basically from paragraph 1667 to 1690. But today we have this reminder, this review of what it is, what the Holy Sacrament of Matrimony, Sacrament of Holy Matrimony really is. Now, we didn't necessarily talk too much yesterday about this reality of the domestic church. We talked a little bit about it, and we're going to hear more about it, as I mentioned yesterday, when it comes to commandment number four, about the duties of parents to children, the duties of children to parents, the responsibilities, the rights that parents have over their children and the rights that children have with their parents. But there's this recognition that, again, if we go back to yesterday's reading, a little bit of yesterday's reading, because today,

what do we say? It says, the Christian home is the place where children are, children receive the first proclamation of the faith. For this reason, the family home is rightly called the domestic church, a community of grace and prayer, a school of human virtues, and of Christian charity. We mentioned yesterday that this is the place. It's meant to be the place. Now, as we said, so many times, we experience all of this. We experience this world under the regime of sin, right? We experience this world as those who suffer from the fall. And our families suffer from the fall. and our marriages suffer from the fall, and we suffer from the fall. And yet at the same time, it's meant to be this place in paragraph 1657 highlights this.

It is there in family, in marriage and the family, that the father of the family, the mother, children, and all members of the family exercise the priesthood of the baptized in a privileged way. But how? By receiving the sacraments and not just simply the reception of the sacraments, but participating in the sacraments. So there is, there's an aspect in which, again, we receive, we receive the sacrament of confession. We receive the sacrament of the Eucharist. We receive the sacrament of anointing of the sick. We receive them. But we also, in an active way, participate in them.

It's not a passive reception. So I will, sometimes think of it like this. When it comes to the Mass, now we can be seated, right? When the proclamation of the Word happens, right? When we sit town at the Mass and we hear readings from the Old Testament, the Psalms, the New Testament, the Gospels, we can sit down. And that being seated is not meant to be a posture of passivity. And similarly, when it comes to any of the sacraments, it's not meant to be a posture of passivity, but a posture of receptivity. It's so different. And I don't know if we mentioned this. I think we might have mentioned this months ago, actually, by this point. But it's that difference. I mentioned this. I think it was Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Is that the example that I had given? If this sounds familiar at all where Fred Astaire was the professional Dan. Ginger Rogers, he danced with her. He said she was his favorite dance partner. Apparently,

according to some sources, Ginger Rogers wasn't a professional dancer, although I think she made a living doing it, so that means professional. But she was the most amateur, I guess, of Fred Astaire's partners. But he loved dancing with her because she was so easy to be led. Because it was his job, right? As the man in the kind of dancing they were doing, his job, his role was to lead. Her job wasn't to be passive, right? It wasn't to be dragged around on the dance floor was to be led. So he was going to lead. She was going to be led. He was going to be active. She was going to be receptive. He was going to offer, initiate. She was going to receive. So we can not say active and passive, but he was initiating. She was

receiving. And this is how all of us approach the sacraments, right? God is the one who's initiating. God is the one who's moving here. We're not passive. We are receptive. And similarly, here, as it says, in the domestic church, the father of the the family, the mother, children, and all the members of the family, exercised the priesthood of the baptized in a privileged way by the reception of the sacraments. So receptivity, which is participation in. How if that makes sense? I don't want to eat a dead horse here, but I think it is so important that we recognize the next time you go to confession, the next time you go to Mass, that we're not there passively observing. We are actively participating in. We are receptive again to what's

happening. Prayer and Thanksgiving goes on to say, this is the privileged way, the witness of a holy life and self-denial and act of charity. Witness of a holy life, self-denial and act of charity that reminds us, right? What the end of our lives are meant to be, what the goal of our life is meant to be. Union with Christ, union with God himself, becoming like God, becoming more and more like Jesus. That's why you were baptized. Salvation. I remember Dr. Michael Barber had pointed this out in his book on salvation. He said, salvation is being saved from being un-Christlike. It's not just salvation from hell. It's not just salvation from sin.

In even more profound and deeper way, it is salvation from being unchrist-like. Salvation from a life lived devoid of Christ, a life lived that we could even be like Christ. Salvation is being saved from being unchrist-like. And so we're called to the witness of a holy life, to be like Jesus, self-denial and active charity, to be active lovers in this world, to care for the people around us, starting with the people closest to us. Where in the domestic church? And he recognized that since marriage is the fundamental building block of society, husbands caring for their wives and wives caring for their husbands, husbands pouring themselves out in love for their wives,

wives receiving that love and pouring themselves back out for their husbands, forming a community, forming this stable and lasting building block from which comes life. As we highlighted this, it's essential that that couple be open to life and even if they cannot have biological children of their own, to still have the kind of marriage that remains open to life, whatever that means for them in the sense of whether that means like they don't adopt, but they find a way to pour themselves out to the people around them, or they do pursue adoption. I remember, frankly, my best friend, he talked about how he and his wife were unable to conceive for the first decade, or even maybe more, of their marriage. And at one point,

you know, for a long time, they were pretty content. about that. That's okay. I mean, they're learning how to love each other, learning how to grow together. But at one point, his wife turned to him and said, just, she's like, there's so much love in here. Like, there's so much good in our marriage. I just, I, I, I want to be able to share it. Like, I want it to be more. I want there be more of us to share it with, like, meaning she was expressing this, this deep rooted, deep-seeded desire for family. And since long story short, they ended up adopting uh, three children. And then, um,

after they adopted the third child, uh, she got pregnant for the first time and then had pregnant the second time. So they have five kids in space of like a day or whatever it was in the space of just a couple of years. But that sense is, here is the sacrament of holy matrimony. The love between a husband and a wife. That is meant to be lived in such a way that the husband and wife say, this, this can't just be limited to the two of us. We want this to, we want this to live on in our kids, not to like posterity's sake, not for like legacy's sake,

but for love's sake. And in that, creating a school of love. In fact, that's what John Paul II called marriage and the family. He called it the school of love. Not because you get there once you graduate, but that's where we're supposed to learn how to love. Again, as I said, this is a little foreshadowing, a little teaser for when we get to the Fourth Commandment, because the way the church talks about that Fourth Commandment, honor to thy father and mother is so profound and is so beautiful. If you think this was beautiful and challenging,

wait until we get to the commandments because every one of them, every one of them is beautiful and challenging. But today, we have reached the end of our time talking about the seven sacraments. As I mentioned, tomorrow we'll talk about other liturgical celebrations like sacramentals and funerals. But today, what a great gift and be able to reach day 227 to get almost, almost to the end of this second pillar of the catechism and almost ready the day after the day after tomorrow to begin that third pillar today i'm telling you what i'm doing today i am praying for you please pray for me my name is father mike and i cannot wait to see you tomorrow god bless