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Question

Hello Father Angelo,

I have a question for you to share.

Are marriage unions chosen by God or by men?

Jesus was clear when he said that what God has joined together, no human being must separate… so, is God the one who unites?

God also knows our future and therefore he knows if a woman I meet will be my future wife…

I think that God is sovereign and what he decides he realizes… but does God really take care of every man on Earth?

It is a delicate phase in my life and I need your advice, a few words on the questions I asked you.

Thanks in advance and warm wishes.

The priest’s answer 

Dear friend,

1. To answer your question properly, it is necessary to distinguish between first Cause and second causes.

The first Cause of every being and of every action is God.

The second causes are men.

2. Certainly, at the beginning of the meeting between the two there is God, the first Cause, because nothing escapes his government, not even our meetings.

However, God does not drive the union as if men were simply puppets in the hands of the puppeteer, because he leaves to the individuals, endowed with freedom and personal initiative, to study each other, to associate with each other, to cultivate friendship, to choose one another.

3. Probably the Lord gives people more than one chance to start their own marriage.

He lets individuals determine their concrete choices and also to choose people.

4. But when the two determine themselves at the time of conjugal consent, God then intervenes to seal their union, bringing about such a strong union of their souls and their bodies that they are like beings fused into a new being, the conjugal us.

In reality, each of the spouses retains their own identity and their own substantial autonomy.

But after the consent, such a strong relationship of their whole being has been established between them that they belong to each other.

5. It can certainly be said that the Lord is at the root of the knowledge and sympathy of the two and therefore at the root of all choices and all couples.

But precisely because he offers individuals a range of people to unite with, it is not wrong to say that some occupy the first place in the choice offered by the Lord.

And then some marriages are more corresponding to God’s will.

6. Of course, the Lord also leaves to the second causes the possibility of making mistakes and setting up a marriage that has only the formality of marriage, that is, the exterior, but not the substance.

In this case, God does not seal anything.

Indeed, the Church intervenes declaring after a solemn canonical trial that the celebrated marriage was null.

I thank you for the question, I remember you in prayer and I bless you.

Father Angelo