Why Do We Get Married in the Church?

Genaro Poulat was born into a Catholic family in Mexico City where he lived for the early part of his life. He lives now in Key Biscayne, Florida with his wife Martha, to whom he has been married for 26 years. He has been blessed and fortunate to have 4 kids: Genaro, Daniela, Bernardo and Andres. Over the past 26 years he has lived in Edinburgh, Mexico, New York, Panama and Florida.
Genaro is an International Banker and he has worked in the sector for 28 years. Over the past five years, together with his wife Martha, he has been dedicated to supporting married couples and helping them to get closer to God. Genaro is an active volunteer in his Church and supports many ministries.
To live a Spiritual Marriage.
How do you live a Spiritual Marriage? By having God in your relationship and having a relationship of three, where God is in the center of you and your spouse, fortifying the bond between the two of you and providing strength, support, and guidance. By having God in the center, you will experience a Trinity.
With God in your relationship you will be able to better cherish the beautiful and happy moments, and He will provide support and strength during difficult and challenging times. Now, having God in your Marriage requires commitment, compromise, dedication and devotion.
I’ve been married for 26 years to Martha and have 4 kids. We always lived a Catholic life, but it was not until a few years back, when my wife and I attended the Emmaus Retreat, that we understood that by having God in the center of our lives, we would find more meaning and happiness and better cherish what we have. We have suffered sickness with our kids, family issues, work challenges, difference of opinions and some other situations that we now understand better, since we decided to have God in the center. Having God in the center means walking hand-in-hand with God; believing in Him and trusting in Him. Through time, we realized that God had a plan for us and all that happened was for a reason – He was preparing us for the future. Today we understand it, but it was not as clear as when we didn’t have God in the center. Having God has not made life easy, but it has allowed us to experience challenges more easily.
Being married means making a conscious decision to dedicate yourself to another person’s happiness— for the rest of your life!! Marriage will provide beautiful and happy moments; however, it is not always easy and you will face challenges, risks and threats. Life is like a roller coaster of emotions, but the key is to sustain the relationship and grow from the challenges. You are different individuals, have different expectations and come from different backgrounds, so you need to be able to sustain the relationship and remain together.
What allows you to persist and remain together? What allows you to build happy memories from the challenges and difficulties? Clearly you need to have commitment, dedication, and be able to compromise; but the most important factor is to have God in your life and in the center of your relationship to better face any challenge or situation.
Being married with God will allow you to experience Him in different ways. God is the bond that allows you to stick together. When you have God in the center of your marriage, you create a sacred place and sanctify your relationship.
In the Bible, in Ephesians, we read about marriage and the importance of commitment, love, respect, and devotion and on becoming “ONE Body.” (Ephesians 4:1-6) It also states that we should love our spouse as we love our own bodies, so it tells us that we should take care, protect and tender the other, as we do to ourselves. We also read that the love of spouses should be similar to the love that Jesus gave to his Church; (Ephesians 5:1-2) isn’t that beautiful? In marriage, we follow the example of Jesus!!!
A catholic marriage is not only a sacrament, but also a vocation. A vocation is something that you are called to be, but to succeed you have to work and persist. Marriage requires constant work, dedication and commitment; but by doing it with God in the center, it will certainly be easier.
How do we bring God into our marriage? We do this by first accepting that we want to be ONE and that we are committed to being ONE together for life—no matter what. As the priest tells us on our wedding day, we, as a married couple, are pledging to each other to stay together “for better or worse, in sickness and health, until death take us apart.” Second, we must bring prayer to our relationship and try to attend mass, receive Communion and visit the Blessed Sacrament together; all that will bring blessings, make the relationship stronger, and help in difficult moments.
As a final point, I will say that a long lasting marriage is a decision. It is built based on teamwork, mutual respect, admiration and many shows of love, gratitude, passion, forgiveness and most importantly God in your lives.
My wife and I have made the decision to live with God in the center of our marriage. We couldn’t be happier!!