A Wedding Homily

Readings: Prov 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31; 1 Cor 12:31-13:8a; Jn 2:1-11

Catholics are like Canadian geese.
Not because we are noisy and annoying—
though some of us are—
nor because we seem to leave
a disgusting mess wherever we go—
though a few of us do—
but because, like them,
and like Coyotes, Bald Eagles, 
and Eurasian Beavers, 
we mate for life.

In a few minutes I will ask Aleks and Caroline
if they are prepared to love and honor each other
for as long as they both shall live
and, if everything goes according to plan,
they will answer “I am.”
And a minute or two after that
they will make to each other a promise
to love and to cherish each other
until death do they part.

It is, if you think about it,
a foolish thing to promise.
We all know of people—
indeed, some of us are such people— 
who in all sincerity made such promises
and yet found ourselves unable to keep them,
often through no fault of our own.
Life takes unexpected turns,
we face unexpected circumstances,
we suffer unexpected tragedies.

And yet, we persist in making such promises;
indeed, we yearn to make such promises
because it seems to be what love demands of us.
We want to say “forever.”
We want our love to be the love 
of which St. Paul speaks: 
the love that bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things;
the love that is 
for better, for worse,
for richer, for poorer,
in sickness and in health.
Such love, Paul tells us, is divine.

But it is also the love
that took flesh in Jesus
and which God deigns 
to share with us
in the sacrament of marriage. 

On this day we have read the story of Jesus 
at the wedding in Cana of Galilee
not simply because it mentions a wedding,
but because it shows us his power
to take the ordinary and transform it,
to turn the water 
in which we would wash
into wine fit for a feast. 
And he likewise takes 
our desire to say “forever”
and transforms it into a sign 
of his enduring love and fidelity.
And it is really only our trust 
in his power to transform
that enables us to make
such a seemingly foolish promise.

The headwaiter at the wedding,
when he tastes the miraculous wine,
says to the bridegroom,
“Everyone serves good wine first, …
but you have kept the good wine until now.”
Aleks and Caroline, 
today you will stand face to face
as you make your promises: 
never before so charming,
never before so beautiful,
never before so much in love.
Yet, as the writer of Proverbs has reminded us,
charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting.
But love… 
love can be forthright
and love can endure,
and in enduring increase.
And so my prayer for you this day,
is that ten, twenty, fifty years from now,
after a life together 
that has taken unexpected turns,
faced unexpected circumstances,
and even suffered unexpected tragedies,
you will still stand face to face,
drinking deeply from the wellspring of the love
that bears, believes, hopes, and endures,
and say to the Lord, 
the bridegroom of your souls,
“you have kept the good wine until now.”

 

A Wedding Homily

Readings: Tobit 8:4b-8; 1 Jn 3:18-24; Mt 19:3-6

“Call down your mercy on me and on her,
and allow us to live together to a happy old age.”
Tobiah’s prayer, uttered back in the 8th century BC,
gives voice to what I suppose every couple wants:
a long and happy life together.
And, like every couple, 
Tobiah and his new wife Sarah,
had obstacles to overcome.

Well… maybe their obstacles
were not exactly like every couple.
Sarah was hounded by a demon named Asmodeus,
who had killed her seven previous husbands
on their wedding night.
She prayed to God to die,
but God in his love had a better plan,
and sent the angel Raphael 
to make sure that she met Tobiah,
whom she married immediately.
Sarah’s parents delayed the wedding feast
until the next day,
since they suspect that Tobiah would meet 
the same fate as her previous husbands;
in fact, they went ahead and dug a grave for him.
But that night, instructed by the angel, 
Tobiah drove away the demon 
by burning a fish’s heart and liver,
which created a stench so bad 
that Asmodeus fled
(and who can blame him).

I know Karlie and Mason 
have faced some challenges
getting to this day,
but I’m hoping they didn’t involve
husband-murdering demons.
Also, I believe Mason and Karlie 
met via a dating app,
not through the intervention of an angel.
Still, I am confident that God has had a hand 
in bringing them together
no less than he did 
in the case of Tobiah and Sarah.
And I believe that God 
will answer their prayer
for a long and happy life together
no less than he answered the prayer
of Tobiah and Sarah.
And it probably won’t involve
burning a fish’s heart and liver.

But it will involve work on their part.
The key to this work is summed up
in our reading from the first letter of John:
“Children, let us love not in word or speech
but in deed and truth.”
Of course, words of love are important,
but the words ring hollow 
without deeds of love.
And in marriage these deeds of love 
are many and varied:
each day brings an opportunity
to show your love for each other:
grand romantic gestures,
but also mundane things
like taking out the garbage
or watching some television show
that you hate but know
the other one loves.

In the vows that they will take
in just a few minutes,
Mason and Karlie will promise
to be faithful to each other
in good times and in bad.
These vows have 
a bracing realism to them.

As beautiful as it is,

this event we celebrate today is not 

some sugar-coated fantasy.

In their promises today, 

Karlie and Mason acknowledge

that there will be both good times and bad—

perhaps not husband-murdering-demon bad,
but bad times all the same.
Despite this realism, 
this wedding is a joyous 
and a hope-filled event,
because God is here,
the God who is greater than our hearts 
and knows everything.

Mason and Karlie,
your deeds of love will carry you
through good times and bad,
because in those deeds God will be at work,
the God who loves you in your love for each other
with a love that surpasses all human love.
Lean on that love.
Find ways to grow together in that love,
for the love of God will make you one flesh,
that no human power can separate.
May God bless your love,
and through your love bring blessings
to your family, your friends,
and all whom you meet.

A Wedding Homily

Readings: Proverbs 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31; 1 John 4:7-12; John 15:9-12

If you do enough weddings
you can begin to feel as if 
the wedding ceremony itself is just an appendage 
to a much bigger and more important event
that includes many hours of photography 
and one or more very lavish and expensive parties,
into which months and even years 
of planning are invested.
It can begin to feel like the actual exchange of vows
in the presence of God, his minister, and his people
is something of secondary importance,
even when occurring in a beautiful setting
and adorned with flowers and music.
This is not to cast any doubt on the sincerity
of the couples taking their vows,
but it is simply to note how difficult it is
to resist cultural pressure and expectations
and what I like to call 
the Wedding-Industrial Complex,
that is devoted to finding new things 
you can spend money on.

From the first time I met with Stephen and Theresa
I knew that this was not the case with them.
They simply wanted to get married.
They did not want to host a lavish event,
or stage a photo op,
or make themselves the center of attention.
They simply wanted to vow their love to each other
in the presence of God and in the midst of people 
whom they love and who love them.
I knew that they did not just want to get married,
they wanted to be married.
They wanted to be joined to one another
in a sacrament that would give them 
the grace that they need 
to live life together 
in the many years to come.
They wanted what really matters.

This is, of course, a beautiful event:
the Cathedral is beautiful,
the music is beautiful,
the couple, in particular, is beautiful.
But the most beautiful thing here
is God’s grace.
Like the wise writer of the book of Proverbs,
Theresa and Stephen know 
that “charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting.”
They know that what matters on this day
is the one thing that is not deceptive and fleeting:
the love of God
that has become real for them
in their love for one another.

We call this love “grace” 
because it is something God gives us 
without our ever deserving it,
just as Theresa and Stephen 
have given their love to each other
freely and generously and not really caring
if the other one has earned it.
That’s how love works,
and that’s how God works.
The beauty of God’s grace 
that we celebrate in this sacrament
is that we love God because God loves us first,
and God loves us not because we are good
but because God is good.

Stephen and Theresa, in the Gospel
Jesus tells his followers to remain in his love
so that they might have fullness of joy.
It is this love that really matters today,
and in the years of marriage that lie ahead of you
the challenge will be simply 
to remain in Christ’s love—
to abide in this eternal moment
when God gives you his love
through your love for one another.
And when life brings you hardships,
as it undoubtedly will,
when you feel misunderstood,
as you undoubtedly will,
when you wonder what 
you have gotten yourself into,
as you undoubtedly will,
return to this moment and remain in it,
for this is the moment when eternal love
shows itself in time and space
in the words of promise
that you will speak to each other.

If you remain in the love 
that God gives you today,
then your life together
will be a life of joy, 
even in the face of hardship 
and misunderstanding
and doubt,
because it will be a life 
graced by God’s love,
the one thing that really matters.

A Reflection on the Occasion of the Celebration of Thomas and Courtney's Marriage

Reading: "Inversnaid," by Gerard Manley Hopkins 

Thomas and Courtney, 
as this celebration of your marriage 
has been approaching,
I have been thinking a lot, 

as one does,
about 17th-century philosophers.
Two in particular: 

Baruch Spinoza and Blaise Pascal.

Spinoza and Pascal
lived in a much larger universe than people
who lived just a few generations before them.
The inventions of the telescope and the microscope
revealed a world both much larger and much smaller
than the tidy, earth-centered cosmos
that humanity had lived with 
since time immemorial.
It was dizzying, and kind of threatening,
to be displaced from the center of the universe
into some undetermined place 
between the infinitely large
and the infinitely small.

For Spinoza,
this dizziness could be cured by thinking,
because he believed that 

as far as the universe extended,
thought extended just as far.
At least in principle, 
we could calculate all causes 
and understand the how and why of everything.
He seemingly found peace in this.

Pascal, on the other hand,
believed that thinking could only do so much:
we can think just enough to recognize
how fragile and uncertain our lives are,
how we might be taken out 
by something immensely big, like a class-five rapid,
or by something immensely small, like a virus.
But at the end of the day, this thought
seems only to increase our dizziness
or, as Pascal put it, our wretchedness.

But the limits of thought 
were not the end of the story for Pascal,
because he believed that in addition
to the thinking capacity of reason
we have a capacity that he called “the heart,”
and, as he famously put it,
“the heart has its reasons 
about which reason knows nothing.”

It is the heart that can acknowledge 
reason’s inability to master the universe,
and yet embrace that universe, 
in all of its danger and promise,
with a kind of humility. 
It is the heart that speaks 
in Hopkins’ poem “Inversnaid,”
in which words slip the bounds the reason,
abandon their mission of meaning,
so that our hearts can feel and know and love
the wet and the wildness of the streams
cascading their way down to a highland lake. 
It is the heart that seeks the still point
amid the rushing immensities
of the infinitely large
and the infinitely small,
the still point where we can stand
as we take the infinite into ourselves.

For Christians like Pascal and Hopkins, 
as for me,
that still point is found above all in Jesus,
whom Pascal described as “a God 
whom we approach without pride,
and before whom we humble ourselves
without despair” (Pensées 245).
But, as Hopkins says in another poem,
“Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.”

Thomas and Courtney,
I believe that amid the glorious chaos 
of this infinite world 
your hearts have found the still point
in one another’s faces.
You have found in each other 
that point of equipoise 
that turns the wildness of the world 
from threat into promise,
that point where you can stand 
to take in infinity,
to rejoice in the wet and the wildness,
the weeds and the wilderness.

May the one who plays in ten thousand places 
bless the love you have pledged to each other,
opening your eyes to the miracle of one another,
speaking to your hearts in times of hardship,
and giving you and those you love years of joy.

A Wedding Homily

Readings: Genesis 2:18-24; 1 Corinthians 12:31-13:8a; Matthew 5:13-16

I take it to be a fairly uncontroversial remark—
indeed, maybe one of the few uncontroversial remarks
one can make these days—
to say that we live in a divided world.
At this historical moment,
more than at any other point in my life that I can remember,
our world seems to be pulling apart
along the lines of different political ideologies,
different races,
different economic classes,
different worldviews.
And while some seem to revel in those divisions,
seemingly intent on making them deeper,
most of us, whatever side we find ourselves on,
feel the pain of those divisions
which often cut through families and friendships,
churches and neighborhoods.
The rhetoric gets louder
and the arguments get uglier,
and our ability to find good
in those with whom we disagree
diminishes daily.

And in the midst of this division
we have come here today to celebrate unity.
We have come to celebrate the uniting of S--- and R---
in the covenant of marriage.
We have come to celebrate as well
the uniting of the D--- and J--- families.
We have gathered people from different places
into this place, this house of God,
people who undoubtedly have different political philosophies
and conflicting worldviews,
who differ on question of economics and immigration
and constitutional interpretation,
in order to celebrate the union of S--- and R---
as they speak their vows to each other
and become for each other, as the book of Genesis says,
“flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone.”
And what has drawn all of us here together is love:
the love that each of you has for S--- and R---,
and the love that they have for each other,
love that they consecrate to God on this day.

This is the love that is God’s gift,
the love of which St. Paul speaks in our second reading,
love that does not seek its own interest,
that is not quick-tempered,
that rejoices in truth.
This is the love that in our divided world
seeks to heal the wounds of division
by bearing all thing, believing all things,
hoping all things, enduring all things.
This is the love that makes the followers of Jesus
a light for the world,
shining so that people can see the path
to God’s kingdom of peace and unity.
This is the same love that will unite R--- and S--- in marriage.

In the Catholic tradition we believe marriage to be a sacrament.
This means not only that it is a source of grace to those who share in it,
but also that it is a sacred sign,
something visible and tangible that shows forth God’s love.

S--- and R---, in entering into holy matrimony,
you not only receive God’s sacramental grace,
but you become yourselves a sacred sign.
Becoming one flesh through the love you vow to each other
you are a sign of unity in our divided world.
When you hold tightly to each other for better and for worse,
through celebrations and successes,
through disagreements and disasters,
you show forth the unifying power of God’s love.
For those wounded by the world’s divisions
you can become, with the help of God’s grace,
a light that makes visible
the love that bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, and endures all things.

Our prayer for you this day
is also our prayer for our world:
that God’s grace will bless you abundantly
with love that overflows
into the lives of all you meet,
bringing peace and healing and unity.
We pray that you become in your life together
a sacred sign of the power of God to heal all division.
May God bless you on this day
and on every day of your life together.

A Wedding Homily

Readings: Genesis 2: 18-24; 1 Corinthians 12:31-13:8a; John 17:20-26

Ishmael, the narrator of Melville’s Moby Dick,
after commenting on the dizzying effects
of trying to write about a creature like the whale, says:
“Such, and so magnifying,
is the virtue of a large and liberal theme!
We expand to its bulk.
To produce a mighty book,
you must choose a mighty theme.
No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea,
though many there be who have tried it.” (Moby Dick Ch. 104).
What Ishmael says of books might also be said of marriages:
no less than a book, a marriage must have a theme,
something that gives it a direction and a meaning;
and a great and enduring marriage,
no less than a great and enduring volume,
must have a mighty theme,

Because marriage involves the most private, intimate love
of a man and a woman,
it is tempting to think that this should be its theme.
To quote the immortal Sonny Bono:
“They say we’re young and we don’t know,
We won’t find out until we grow.
Well I don't know if all that’s true,
‘Cause you got me, and baby I got you.
I got you babe.”
But as important as the intimate love of a man and a woman is
(and who am I to doubt Sonny Bono?),
I would suggest that for Christians
this is an insufficiently mighty theme
upon which to base a great and enduring marriage,
though many there be who have tried it.

In our first reading, from the book of Genesis,
marriage is given a cosmic significance:
God created human beings for companionship
and the mutual love of the man and the woman
are part of the perfection of God’s creation.
When Adam says, “This one, at last,
is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”
we can feel his joy, not simply in finding a companion,
but of discovering a possibility newly born within the cosmos,
the possibility opened up by one with whom he can enter
into a free and equal exchange of love:
in which love is given to another
and then received back, transformed, increased,
ready to be given and received
again and again, day by day,
growing and overflowing into love for all that God has made,
reflecting God’s own free love for the world God has made.

But for Christians this cosmic dimension of marriage
is perhaps not yet a mighty enough theme.
In our reading from John’s Gospel
Jesus prays to his Father for his disciples,
that, “the love with which you loved me
may be in them and I in them.”
This is a love that goes beyond human love,
because it is the love with which the Father loved Christ
“before the foundation of the world.”
But it is also a love that Jesus desires to share with his disciples
so that “they may be brought to perfection as one,”
and so become for the world a sign of the God who is love.
In the Catholic tradition, we teach that marriage is a sacrament,
which means that it is a human reality
by which God shares his love with us.
If marriage is taken up as a form of discipleship,
if it takes as its theme
the love revealed in the cross and resurrection of Jesus,
then the joining together of husband and wife is not simply
a part of the perfection of creation,
but becomes a means of grace,
a way in which divine love comes to dwell in our world,
to heal and to save and to bring joy.
Compared to the immensity of this theme,
this event of divine love invading our world,
the theme of “I got you babe”
seems small and flea-like,
unworthy of the great and enduring love
that we pray will pervade and sustain
the marriage of Trent and Sammy.

Trent and Sammy, I am uncharacteristically hopeful
that you will not rest content
with a small and flea-like theme for your marriage.
Face it: you have a tendency to go overboard.
Knowing as I do your tendencies to excess—
excessive books and wine,
excessive theological and literary conversations,
excessive scholarly conscientiousness,
excessive worrying over wedding preparations—
I feel confident that you will settle for nothing less
as the theme for your marriage
than that “still more excellent way”
of which St. Paul writes
in his letter to the Corinthians,
the mighty love that “bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things,
endures all things.”
And I feel confident that God’s grace
will be there to expand your love for each other
to fill the bulk of this great and whale-like theme,
to help you endure together
through the daily crosses of suffering you will face,
to help you rejoice together
in the daily resurrections of joy that God will give you,
until that day when the perfect comes
and the partial passes away,
that day when we will see no longer dimly,
as in a mirror,
but face to face,
knowing fully,
even as we are known,
that day of which
the joy of this day,
great as it is,
is but a sign,
the day of the great wedding feast of the Lamb.
May God’s grace bring the two of you,
through the love you vow this day,
to that feast.

A Wedding Homily

Readings: Genesis 2:18-24; Romans 12:1-2, 9-18; Matthew 5:13-16

We tend to think of weddings,
at least the churchy part of them,
in somewhat ethereal, disembodied term:
the Church is here to inject a “spiritual” element
into the proceedings.
Eating and drinking at the reception afterward
you may choose to indulge the body,
but at this moment we should focus on the soul, right?
But Christianity does not really divide the world up
into what is spiritual and what is bodily;
because we believe
that God took on flesh in Jesus Christ,
we believe that spirit and flesh—
the holy and the everyday—
always go together.
And the readings from Scripture
that J______ and J______ have chosen for their wedding
underscore this belief:
marriage is not simply about the uniting of two souls,
but rather is very much about the joining
of two flesh and blood human beings
who will undertake the challenging adventure of marriage
by living out their commitment to each other
in their day-to-day life together.

We hear in our very first reading,
which tells the beginning of the tale
of the first human couple,
that the man’s first reaction upon seeing the woman
is not, “this one, at last, is my true soulmate,”
but “this one, at last, is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh.”
Adam recognized in Eve
not simply one with whom he was to join
in elevated spiritual conversation,
but also the one with whom we would become one body
in living out the most ordinary tasks of daily life.

We hear in our second reading,
from Paul’s letter to the early Christian community at Rome,
a call “to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice,
holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.”
Paul is saying that we should not set apart
some area of our life that we designate as “spiritual”
and think that this is the part of life
that is concerned with God
and with which God is concerned.
Paul speaks of the offering of our bodies
as a “spiritual sacrifice.”
What we do together with our bodies
in the everyday stuff of life—
washing dishes and putting gas in the car,
paying bills and showing love,
giving donations to charities and volunteering our time,
raising children and growing old—
are the things by which we are to give honor to God.

In the Catholic tradition,
we speak of marriage as a sacrament,
by which we mean an outward sign that gives us grace.
While we typically think of sacraments
as something we “receive”—
you get baptized,
you receive your first Holy Communion—
marriage is a little different:
you don’t simply receive the sacrament;
you are the sacrament.
Just as in baptism
water is the physical sign
of sin being washed away
and in Holy Communion
bread and wine are the physical sign
of Jesus’s body and blood,
so to in holy matrimony
you, J_______ and J_______,
are the physical sign
of God’s love for the world.

The sacrament of matrimony
is not what happens here this evening—
that is only the beginning.
The sacrament of matrimony
extends throughout your entire lives.
It is the sign to the world of God’s love
lived out in the ordinary daily life
that the two of you will share.
If you let the grace of this sacrament
transform you by the renewal of your minds,
as Paul puts it;
if in your life together
down through the years and decades to come
you seek together to
“discern what is the will of God,
what is good and pleasing and perfect”;
if you let your love be sincere
and “love one another with mutual affection”;
if you “rejoice in hope,
endure in affliction,
persevere in prayer;"
if you truly become bone or each other’s bone
and flesh of each other’s flesh,
then you will truly be the salt that brings savor
to the lives of those around you,
then you will truly be light for the world,
a world that seems all too often
shrouded in darkness.
On this extraordinary day Jesus is calling you
to let your light shine
in all the ordinary days to come,
to become in your love for each other
the living presence
of faith, hope, and love in our world.
May God bless you with this gift.

An All Saints / Wedding Homily

Readings: 1 Corinthians 12:31–13:8a; Matthew 5:1-12a

I’m not sure S______ and J______ were aware of it at the time
but the day that they chose for their wedding
is one of the great feast days of the Catholic Church: All Saint’s Day.
The saints are those who have, as St. Paul put it,
fought the good fight,
finished the race,
kept the faith;
they are those holy ones who have received the crown of glory
and are even now enjoying life in God’s eternal kingdom.
Some of these saints are known to us and named as individuals,
and many of them have special days each year
on which we remember them.
But we believe that there are many saints
whom we do not know,
whom we cannot name,
and so we have this feast day to remember
all of those holy people
who lived out their lives in God’s service
quietly and out of the world’s sight.

Our two readings give us a picture of what it means to be a saint.
In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells us
the qualities possessed by those who are blessed
and what rewards await them:
they are “poor in spirit,”
meaning that they humbly know their need for God,
they are meek, and they hunger and thirst for righteousness,
they are merciful,
pure of heart,
and peacemakers.
They are the ones to whom God will grant his kingdom:
they will be comforted,
shown mercy,
and called children of God.
St. Paul, in his First Letter to the Corinthians,
draws all of the virtues of the saints together
into the one virtue of love:
a love that is patient and kind,
that does not seek its own interests,
a love that bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things,
endures all things,
a love that can fight the good fight,
finish the race,
keep the faith.

But how does one become a saint?
Is it simply a matter
of trying really, really hard to be a good person?
While that is, of course, important,
becoming a saint is really something much more mysterious.
It is mysterious because it is something
that God’s grace does to us,
something that is brought about
by the mystery God’s love at work within us.

S______ and J______, today you enter in a new way
into the mystery of God’s love.
In the Catholic tradition we believe marriage to be a sacrament,
meaning it is both a sign and a cause of God’s grace.
In other words, your married life together
will both make God’s love present to you in a special way
and also show that love to those whom you meet.
But even more,
if you open yourselves up to the grace
that God gives you in your married life together,
you can become saints.
Your marriage can make you
into one of those people we celebrate today,
those who in their everyday lives fight the good fight
in the cause of love and mercy.
My prayer for you on your wedding day
is that the years ahead
be filled with joy that comes from God’s grace,
the grace that can transform you together
into the holy ones of God.

A Wedding Homily

Readings: Ruth 1:1-11, 14-18; Romans 12:3-18; John 15:9-17

A wise friend of mine once said

that marriage is not about standing face-to-face

gazing into each other’s eyes,

but rather is about standing side-by-side,

facing the world together.

This idea runs somewhat counter

to popular, romantic notions of marriage

that focus exclusively on the love of the spouses for each other.

Don’t get me wrong; this love is important;

C___ and G___ would not be here today

if they did not love each other.

But marriage does not simply link two people together.

Rather it places the couple

within a much wider network of relationships

that can be extremely complicated.

When you marry, you are marrying not just your spouse,

but also his or her family, friends, colleagues,

sports teams, favorite musicians, and even ethnicity.

Indeed, one of the challenges of marriage

is learning to negotiate that complexity.

But it is also part of the richness:

when I got married, I acquired not only a wife,

and eventually children,

but what was to my mind

an extraordinarily large Irish Catholic family,

a set of expectations about how and where

holidays should be celebrated,

and a professional football team I was expected to root for.

This has always been the nature of marriage,

as we can see in our first reading,

which tells the first part of the story of Ruth

from the Old Testament.

She is a foreigner, a Gentile,

who marries into a Jewish family

and as a part of all this

becomes a worshiper of the God of Israel.

When her husband, her original link to that family, dies,

she is offered by her mother in law, Naomi,

the chance to cut her ties to them

and go her own way,

back to her own people

and her own gods.

In what to our ears

sounds like something one might speak to a spouse,

Ruth tells Naomi, “Wherever you go I will go;

wherever you lodge I will lodge.

Your people shall be my people

and your God, my God.

Where you die I will die,

and there be buried.”

For Ruth, her marriage had placed her

within a web of relationships, traditions and beliefs

that permanently altered who she was as a person.

Marriage calls us not simply to be faithful to our spouse,

but into a wider faithfulness,

a faithfulness to family, friends, sports teams,

and even to God.

This is why in the Catholic tradition

we call marriage a sacrament:

it is a sign that points beyond itself

to an ultimate reality –

the reality of God’s love.

It points to the reality that,

as St. Paul said in our second reading,

“we, though many, are one body in Christ

and individually parts of one another.”

But in order to be a true sign,

it is not enough for C___ and G___

to love one another,

or even to love

each other’s family and friends and sports teams,

but they must love in a particular way.

What St. Paul writes to the Romans

is a pretty good description

of the love that married couples

ought to have for each other:

“Let love be sincere. . . .

love one another with mutual affection;

anticipate one another in showing honor. . . .

Rejoice in hope,

endure in affliction,

persevere in prayer. . . .

Rejoice with those who rejoice,

weep with those who weep. . . .

If possible, on your part, live at peace with all.”

In John’s Gospel, Jesus puts it even more succinctly:

“love one another as I have loved you.

No one has greater love than this,

to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

C___ and G___,

that is what you are doing here today:

laying down your lives for each other,

entrusting your lives to each other,

saying, “wherever you go, I will go.”

Your lives now belong to each other,

and in belonging to each other

you belong to the whole world.

In loving each other sincerely and faithfully,

you will be a sign to the world

that true happiness is found

not in power

or in prestige

or in possessions,

but in the kind of love

that will lay itself down for another,

in the love that seeks

to live in peace with all.

What you do here today is, I know,

important to you.

It is important to your families.

it is important to your friend.

But even more than that,

it is important to the world:

a world that desperately needs a sign

that love can overcome hate,

that generosity is more powerful than greed,

that peace can prevail over violence.

You can be that sign.

In what you do together here today,

in what you do tomorrow,

in what you do for the rest of your lives,

you become,

in what will often be small

and undramatic ways,

a sign from God,

a sign of hope.

As Jesus said to his disciples, I say now to you:

“Go and bear fruit that will remain.”

May God bless you.