The Marital Act is the Image of God

We are made for God, and made in the Image of God.

Our longing for each other mirrors our longing for unity with God.

Romance, intimacy, life with someone dependable with whom we can share everything, including the ecstacy of the marital act all reflect, by God's design, a foreshadowing of our destiny of unity with God.

Fornication, polygamy and adultry are sins because they violate the image of the first commandment. One God means one image of God means one spouse. Though spouses are imperfect, we must seek the image of God in one person.

The marital act mirrors comingling and the desire and reality of being fully united and comingled with another, which is being like th e trinity, and to become other than just ourselves but rather a union in which we are permanently lost in the ecstasy of union.

Some saints and mystice report that their spiritual ecstasies can include sexual ecstasy, reflecting hwo the physical reactions are linked to spiritual reactions whihc also suggests that those who abues the physical are in a sense longing for the spiritual. Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.

The marital act is both physical and divine and is a source of divine grace. With every marital act we renw our vows and receive the graces associated with the sacrament of marriage. Indeed, each marital act is the receiving of the sacrament of marriage. The public exchange of marriage vows is only a public symbol of what is really consumatted in the privacy of the marital act itself. This is whey the Churh readily annuls a public vow which is neve r consumated in the marital act.

Thus, the marital act is a sacrament of grace...just like frequent holy communion...that strengthens marriages and families.