Marriage must be cared for just as you provide maintenance and routine check-ups for vehicles in order to keep them in top condition. When the Catholic Church teaches that marriage is a Christian vocation it is saying that the couple’s relationship is more than simply their choice to enter a union which is a social and legal institution. 

In addition to these things, marriage involves a call from God and a response from two people who promise to build, with the help of divine grace, a lifelong, intimate and sacramental partnership of love and life. The call to love is “the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being.” In the vocation of marriage – something which “is written in the very nature of man and woman,” we see that “the love of husband and wife becomes an image of the absolute and unfailing love with which God loves” (#1603 and 1604).

There is an excellent new website for couples from the USCCB  www.foryourmarriage.org coming from the National Pastoral Imitative for Marriage.