Three to Get Married

“Willed by God in the very act of creation, marriage and the family are interiorly ordained to fulfillment in Christ…” Thirty years before these words appeared in Pope St. John Paul II’s Familiaris consortio, Fulton J. Sheen offered to the Church and the world Three to Get Married: a profound yet accessible articulation of this selfsame Christian vision of love and marriage. “Love is trinity; sex is duality,” Bishop Sheen avers: love and marriage elevate sexuality into a life-giving, life-affirming covenant, because love and marriage are ordained by God to just that purpose. “The ultimate reason why it takes three to make love is that God is Love, and His Love is Triune.” Marriage brings this mystery to light brilliantly: lover, beloved, and love are present in the relationships between husband and wife and God and between children, mother, and father—and in these capacities the human person and human society attain their full flourishing.

A milestone in Christian philosophy and pastoral counsel, Three to Get Married is a clarion call to the truth, goodness and beauty of human love within the elevated status of Christian marriage and family, in which God serves as the sure and sustaining force of that unity which no man shall put asunder.