We will develop each theme in turn. Theologians are recovering the ancient Christian conviction that the married couple themselves administer the sacrament of matrimony to one another. During the centuries when the church was assuming greater control over the civil as well as the sacramental aspects of marriage, this realization was lost, and the priest became more and more central to the religious ceremony. Today many priests are attempting to make clear that they act only as principal witness of the couple's own conferring and celebration of the sacrament. A key insight in the contemporary understanding of marriage is that the sacrament does not consist primarily in the Christian marriage liturgy.
Marriage is a lifelong process, and the wedding celebration marks only one point in that journey.
The sacramental aspect of marriage is not confined to that moment. Rather, it is the whole way a Christian man and woman live their lives together that makes their marriage a sacrament. Understanding how this is so depends on a realization of what a sacrament is and does. When we speak of sacrament, we generally think first of the seven ritual sacraments such as baptism, Eucharist, and matrimony itself. These sacraments are signs which make present what they signify.