The 4 Yeses From The Altar

My eldest son turns 22 this year and has started talking about marriage. It will be a new phase for our family, and I would like to help him understand the beauty and importance of this sacrament. There are so many things to talk about and one aspect that is often overlooked is the rite of Catholic marriage itself, which is beautiful and full of meaning.  

Today I'm going to talk about the four questions that the priest asks the bride and groom in front of the altar. The bride and groom say “yes” four times, and these “yeses” correspond to the conditions for that marriage to be fully realized. These questions are asked so that the Church can be sure that the couple are committing themselves by virtue of true love. 

Before you read the rest of the article, I want to offer an observation: I wrote it having in mind the Catholic Rite of Marriage that we use in Brazil. I thought it was universal and it was the same all over the world, but when I searched the internet to be sure how those questions are asked in English, I could find only three of them. What I noticed is that the questions two and three in the Brazilian rite are put together in just one (in a more direct way) in the American rite, so the meaning is the same. I translated the questions from Portuguese so my article will make more sense to you reading in English, but I added the American questions in brackets.  

True love is free 
The first question: “You have come here to be united in marriage. Is it of your own free will that you do so?” (Have you come here to enter into Marriage without coercion, freely and wholeheartedly?) corresponds to FREEDOM, because they are making that commitment without any kind of coercion, having freely chosen each other to walk the path of marriage. Without freedom, there is no love.

True love is total 
The second question: “By entering into marriage, you are promising love and fidelity to each other. Do you promise it for life?” (Are you prepared, as you follow the path of Marriage, to love and honor each other for as long as you both shall live?) corresponds to TOTALITY, that is, the total surrender of one person to another person for life. True love requires this lifelong commitment and unreserved surrender to the person you love. Spouses give each other everything they are and everything they have so that they can truly become one flesh. 

True love is faithful 
The third question, “Do you promise to be faithful in joy and sorrow, in sickness and in health, loving and respecting each other all the days of your lives?” (Are you prepared, as you follow the path of Marriage, to love and honor each other for as long as you both shall live?), corresponds to the requirement of FIDELITY. 

Fidelity encompasses much more than simply not going out with someone else, because betrayal itself is the pinnacle of infidelity, but there are various other forms of infidelity within marriage, which you need to be aware of and prevent. 

Love remains pure when it overcomes all the selfishness that instructs the other and also when it removes all the other “loves” that distance it from the other. These other “loves” can be work, friendships, political or religious convictions, one's parents or relatives, leisure preferences, and so on. Everything that cannot be integrated, that cannot coexist with the spouse, must be repelled. 

You shouldn't play with fire or “let your guard down.” A couple must always be vigilant not to let anything or anyone separate them inwardly from their spouse, as this would already be infidelity. 

Fidelity also means making sure that conjugal love is a creative love, in the sense that each spouse is concerned with always improving, perfecting themselves for the good of the other. It also means trying to create an environment in the home that is pleasing to the other, trying to always become more interesting to the other, more delicate, more opportune, enriching the dialogue, overcoming the temptation of love that acts out of duty. 

True love is fruitful 
Finally, the fourth question: “Are you ready to receive with love the children that God entrusts to you, bringing them up in the law of Christ and of the Church?” (Are you prepared to accept children lovingly from God and to bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church?) concerns the FECUNDITY of marriage. 

All true love is fruitful, it produces fruit, because in giving oneself entirely to the other, so that the other may be happy, the one who loves sees their love bear fruit, reproduce itself, sees the growth and maturation of the other. 

Spouses are called to generate new children of God, to prepare new members for the Body of Christ, to prepare new citizens for the Kingdom of Heaven, just as Christ and the Church generate new children of God. Parents give life to the body and God gives life to the soul. This mission is sublime: parents are co-creators with God of new immortal souls!