Through the Sacrament of Marriage, God consecrates the love of a man and a woman and raises their union to the dignity of a sacrament of the New Covenant. Marriage is a sacred covenant modelled on the love of Christ for his Church, a love that is faithful, fruitful, and self-giving even unto the Cross. 

The Sacrament of Marriage is ordered both to the good of the spouses and to the procreation and education of children. The spouses are themselves the ministers of the sacrament: it is their free and irrevocable consent, their “I do”, that makes the marriage, in which the Church receives, blesses, and witnesses.