At Our Parish

Christ performed his first miracle at a wedding feast,
and the Church has always considered marriage to be a Sacrament which confers
a special grace on the couple to live out their life together as a witness to God's love for us.
We congratulate you on your upcoming marriage, and wish you many blessings
as you proceed in the preparation for this most significant moment in your lives.
The preparation for any Sacrament is a very important moment in one's spiritual life.
Our parish community thanks God for your upcoming union in Christ Jesus.
The love that you give to one another is a clear sign of God's love
for His People and His Church.
We pray that many blessings will flow from your life together.
As this Sacrament is rooted in the community living out our faith,
​we look forward to your active participation in the life of the Church.
In Christ,
Monsignor Steven Otellini, Pastor
 

Important Notice Regarding Previous Marriage(s)
It is extremely important to declare any previous marriage to the person taking down initial information for your possible wedding at Nativity. This would include:
a) a religious marriage either in the Catholic Church, or another Christian church by either party (Catholic or non-Catholic);
b) a civil marriage entered into by either party (Catholic or non-Catholic).
 
Even if these marriages ended in a civil divorce or civil annulment it is necessary to mention these since they will have to be dealt with prior to your confirming a date to be married at Nativity. Should you have obtained an annulment from another church (e.g. Orthodox, Episcopal) you will have to have these re-examined and ratified in the Catholic Church.

Click here for the guidelines for weddings at the Church of the Nativity.

The Sacrament of Marriage

The sacrament of marriage is a visible sign of God’s love for the Church. When a man and a woman are married in the Church, they receive the grace needed for a lifelong bond of unity.

Marriage is a Covenant
The Sacrament of Marriage is a covenantal union in the image of the covenants between God and his people with Abraham and later with Moses at Mt. Sinai. This divine covenant can never be broken. In this way, marriage is a union that bonds spouses together during their entire lifetime.

The sacrament of Matrimony signifies the union of Christ and the Church. It gives spouses the grace to love each other with the love with which Christ has loved his Church; the grace of the sacrament thus perfects the human love of the spouses, strengthens their indissoluble unity, and sanctifies them on the way to eternal life. (CCC 1661)

The love in a married relationship is exemplified in the total gift of one’s self to another. It’s this self-giving and self-sacrificing love that we see in our other model of marriage, the relationship between Christ and the Church.

Marriage is based on the consent of the contracting parties, that is, on their will to give themselves, each to the other, mutually and definitively, in order to live a covenant of faithful and fruitful love. (CCC 1662)

The Church takes the lifelong nature of the Sacrament of Marriage seriously. The Church teaches that a break in this covenant teaches goes against the natural law of God:

The remarriage of persons divorced from a living, lawful spouse contravenes the plan and law of God as taught by Christ. They are not separated from the Church, but they cannot receive Eucharistic communion. They will lead Christian lives especially by educating their children in the faith. (CCC 1665)

Marriage Reflects the Holy Trinity
We believe that God exists in eternal communion. Together, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are united in one being with no beginning and no end. Human beings, likewise, were created by God in God’s image for the purpose of communion with another human being.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “The Christian family is a communion of persons, a sign and image of the communion of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit” (CCC 2205). The Sacrament of Marriage is “unitive, indissoluble and calls us to be completely open to fertility.” Christian marriage at its finest is a reflection of God’s self-giving love expressed between the love of two people.

God created man and woman out love and commanded them to imitate his love in their relations with each other. Man and woman were created for each other...Woman and man are equal in human dignity, and in marriage both are united in an unbreakable bond.
​(United States Catechism for Adults, Ch. 21, p. 279)