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    STUDIA THEOLOGIA%20ORTHODOXA - Issue no. 2 / 2011  
         
  Article:   THE SACRAMENT OF MARRIAGE AS GIFT AND MISSION: THE BASIS OF THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY.

Authors:  VALER BEL.
 
       
         
  Abstract:  The Sacrament of Marriage as Gift and Mission: the Basis of the Christian Family. The Lord’s Sacrifice and Ascension and the Sending of the Holy Spirit have introduced a new reality to the world: the mystery of the Church, as the historical anticipation of the future Kingdom of God. The Sacraments of the Church are ways by which Christ’s life is being dispensed to people in the key moments of their lives. Whereas the other sacraments mediate a personal relation between man and God, the Holy Matrimony joins two people, it raises them to the mystery of Christ’s love for His Church and place them on the way to the Kingdom of God. The purpose of Holy Matrimony, by which a new family is formed, is that the man and the woman may become complete and find support in each other, that they reach a communion of love and have offspring as members of the Church and as citizens of God’s Kingdom. The virtues at the foundation of the Christian marriage are: mutual help, fidelity, sacrificial love, giving birth to children and raising them, mutual responsibility of the spouses for one another and for their children. Achieving these virtues means seeking the Kingdom of God and anticipating it within the family, which thus becomes ecclesia domestica. The spouses choose whether they accept this gift of life in ‘Christ and in the Church’ or they prefer to live the mundane life of the fallen world. From this perspective, the sacrament of Holy Matrimony is both a gift from God and a constant mission.

Keywords: The Kingdom of God, Sacrament, Church, family, gift, mission.
 
         
     
         
         
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