Église St. Jovite, Saint-Jovite, Québec---Saturday,
October 8, 2016
[Texts: Song of Songs 5:1–14; Psalm 32(33); 1 Corinthians 12, 31–12.12;
Matthew 5.1–12a]
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, dear friends:
We are gathered here today as the family and
friends of Caitlin Prendergast and Adam Fontebasso to help them celebrate the
joyous event of their marriage.
Much planning has gone into the expression of
this love and today’s celebration. People have given presents, arranged
flowers, and prepared a reception. There will be photos, music, and food,
reflecting the view even today that marriage is one of the great human
institutions.
Jesus chose to describe the kingdom of God—God’s
life with us—under the image of a wedding feast. They are both covenants, not
contracts. Covenants are unbreakable. Covenants are unconditional. And
covenants involve sacrifice.
For Catholics, marriage is more than a social
event. It is also a sacrament of God’s grace.
We believers are well aware that marriage
these days is a risky enterprise. Christians are still hopeful about the future
of those bold enough to enter into the life-long commitment of a marriage that
is exclusive and fruitful. We can also count on help from God, Jesus Christ, the
Church, family, friends, and neighbours.
And so it is that, as persons of faith,
Caitlin and Adam have come to this church. They are asking God’s blessing on
the lifelong adventure of marriage that they are entering today. They come to
ask you to share with them their joys and sorrows. All this will be part of
their life together.
Dear Caitlin and Adam, we come, not as
fair-weather friends, but as your committed supporters. We pledge to you our enduring
willingness to journey with you and to support you in the days ahead.
Caitlin and Adam were raised in the Christian
faith. They proclaim this faith and declare it will be the foundation of their
marriage. Their faith perspective on life, sexuality, and the source of true
happiness differs from that of society.
In the “beatitudes,” Jesus describes happiness.
He proclaims that openness to receiving all from God, which he calls poverty of
spirit, is precious. So, too, are peacemaking, gentleness, purity of heart, and
the wonderful capacity to accompany people in their needs, as Caitlin and Adam
will do in the medical profession. This is what truly makes for happiness.
The reading from the Song of Songs is part of a
beautiful love poem sung by one smitten by love. She seeks her beloved until she
finds “my fair one.” She then proclaims that love will outlast death.
We pray that God will bless Caitlin and Adam
in their marriage and in their children. But married life means sacrifice. They
must forgive one another as soon as the inevitable quarrels begin. St. Paul reminds
us that love is “kind, not envious or boastful or arrogant and rude. Love does
not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful.”
The Catholic Church teaches that it is not the
bishop, priest, or deacon who ministers the sacrament of marriage, but the
couple themselves. (The priest is the Church’s witness.) In their union with
Jesus in the sacrament of marriage, Caitlin and Adam will minister to each
other. Each will impart to the other God’s grace to be faithful and true to them
every day. Christ is the unseen partner of their union.
My dear friends Caitlin and Adam: You are
about to enter into a union that is most sacred and most serious. It is most
sacred, because God himself established it. By it, he gave to humans a share in
the greatest work of creation, the work of the continuation of the human race. He
sanctified human love and enabled man and woman to help each other to live as
children of God, by sharing a common life under his fatherly care. Because God
himself is its author, marriage is a holy institution, requiring of those who
enter into it a complete and unreserved giving of self.
But Christ our Lord added to the holiness of
marriage an even deeper meaning and a higher beauty. He referred to the love of
marriage to describe his own love for his Church, that is, for the people of God,
whom he redeemed by his own blood. And so, he gave to Christians a new vision
of what married life ought to be. This ideal is a life of self-sacrificing love,
like his own. For this reason, his apostle, St. Paul, clearly states that
marriage is now and for all time a great mystery. It is intimately bound up
with the supernatural union of Christ and the Church, which union is also to be
its pattern.
This union, then, is most serious. It will
bind you together for life in a relationship so close and so intimate that it
will profoundly influence your whole future. That future, with its hopes and
disappointments, its successes and its failures, its pleasures and its pains,
its joys and its sorrows, is hidden from your eyes. You know that these
elements are mingled in every life. You can expect them in your own. And so not
knowing what is before you, you take each other for better or for worse, for
richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death.
These words are most serious. It is a
beautiful tribute to your undoubted faith in each other. Recognizing their full
weight, you are still ready to pronounce them. Because these words involve such
solemn obligations, you rightfully rest the security of your wedded life upon
the great principle of self-sacrifice. You begin your married life by the
voluntary and complete surrender of your individual interests for the greater
good of the life you will share. Henceforth, you will belong entirely to each
other. You will be one in mind, one in heart, and one in affections.
From now on, whatever sacrifices you may have to
make to preserve this mutual life, always make them generously. Only love can
make sacrifice easy; and perfect love can make it a joy. God’s love is perfect,
and so he sacrificed his son to reconcile the fallen with the perfect. “Greater
love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
No greater blessing can come to your married
life than pure conjugal love, loyal and true to the end. May, then, this love
with which you join your hands and hearts today never fail, but grow deeper and
stronger as the years go on. If true love and the unselfish spirit of perfect
sacrifice guide your every action, you can expect the greatest measure of
earthly happiness that men and women live out in this vale of tears.
God pledges to you the life-long support of
his graces in the Holy Sacrament that you are now going to receive.
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