When my wife and I married, we sang Rory Cooney and Gary Daigle’s “Covenant Hymn.” Based on Ruth’s proclamation to her mother-in-law Naomi, that she would follow wherever Naomi went and live with her (Ruth 1:16a), the hymn references the pledge of Abram and Sarai and thus traces a lifetime of covenantal love: dreams, doubts, possibilities, promise. The hymn emphasizes the indissolubility of covenant: “And we will be buried together, and waken to greet a new dawn.” This hymn gave us each poetic voice to pledge ourselves together as husband and wife.
It was difficult, later that year, to hear the words of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke (20:35) that those who are dead are no longer married. Jesus’ teaching deviated from the cultural emphasis on finding your “soul mate”—souls, remember, exist after death! St. Paul removes all doubt. With finality he proclaims that if you are married on Earth, you are married on Earth. But once either of you die, the marriage is done (Romans 7:2b). This is what current marriage vows say: Spouses consent to love and honor each other “all the days of [their] life”—“until death do [they] part.” Scripture and doctrine affirm that couples will not remain married to each other in heaven. Yet marriage offers important insight for understanding heaven itself; as a sacrament of the church, it is an effective sign of God’s grace.
The mutual consent that spouses give each other in marriage is an expression of genuine human love. Drawing us into God’s love, it is sacramental. Consent, the words required for marriage, proclaims and enacts human participation in God’s covenant with people. As Pope Benedict XVI taught in Deus Caritas Est (On Christian Love), the exclusive love identified in marriage is intended to be an effective sign of God’s love for us and our love for God. No matter how short we fall from the ideal—abuse, addiction, infidelity—this human consent to love each other “in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health” is a public reminder of what God’s love for us entails. Marriage can thus offer us a foretaste of heaven. No, we are not married to our earthly spouses in heaven. But we will, there, be married to God in Christ.
Perhaps, especially for those grieving a spouse, this could appear lacking. Surely, our earthly relationships matter. Indeed, they do! The funeral liturgy confirms it. We proclaim that in heaven we will “one day . . . see [the dead] again and enjoy his/her friendship.” Those in heaven, the Body of Christ, have been transformed by God’s grace, and there, together, they will find what it means to be fully human. They will find what it means to be truly happy. Perfected in heaven, we hope to find the perfection toward which marriage points us.
At my wife’s funeral, we sang that same “Covenant Hymn.” No longer sung with the hopeful voice of a newlywed, I then sang with the desperate voice of one proclaiming God’s promise: “I’ll raise you from where you have fallen, faithful to you is my name.” I sang acknowledging marital grace as God’s voice permeated mine.
This article also appears in the June 2025 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 90, No. 6, page 49). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
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