Sacramental marriage – a religiously sanctioned monogamous relationship between a man and a woman, which is a sacramental sign of the love of Christ and the Church.

Marriage is defined as a natural community because the man and woman who create it, in their gender and in their souls, have an inherent natural capacity to create unity:

• fully human, and therefore sensual and spiritual at the same time,
• full friendship, that is, lived in a special form, through which a man and a woman generously share everything among themselves, without one of the spouses keeping anything exclusively for each other,
• faithful and exclusive – the man-woman relationship that they create through marriage, in the internal, intimate and external spheres, is a matter for only two of them – for better and for worse, until the end of life,
• fertile – bearing fruit in natural offspring, which also give birth to spiritual life, faith, eternal life. And when physical fertility is impossible, the spouses realize spiritual fertility – giving birth to others to eternal life.

The importance of the Catholic marriage community is fulfilled above all by creating conditions for the growth of the authentic good of both spouses and by the birth and education of children. The spouses realize this spiritual unity not only through family life, similar to non-Christian marriage, but also through the reception of the sacraments, prayer and thanksgiving, the witness of holy life, self-denial and active love.

According to the Church, marriage in this sense is at the heart of the family. Catholics believe that they pronounce their marriage vows before God and the Church, and Christ makes such a union a sacrament, that is, the mystery of sanctification of spouses, a sign of his presence in all their affairs, and at the same time a source of special grace for them.