Wedding of Allison
Stupavsky and Austin Menz
My
dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
We
have come together this afternoon, in this church dedicated to the honor of God
and of Saint Anthony of Padua, to witness the exchange of consent of Austin and
Allison. We have come together to celebrate with them as today they “establish
between themselves a partnership of their whole life,” which, by its very
nature, “is ordered to the well-being of the spouses and to the procreation and
upbringing of children.” They will begin this partnership in this church
because marriage has “been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a
sacrament” (canon 1055).
On
behalf of Austin and Allison, I greet you, their family and friends, and
welcome you in the name of Christ. I thank you for the love, support, and
encouragement which you give to them by your presence today and which you have
shared with them in the previous days, weeks, and years. I am confident they
will be able to count on you in the days, weeks, and years ahead for this same love,
support, and encouragement. Now, my friends, before we witness the exchange of
their promises to live their lives together in committed love, I ask you to
allow me to speak directly to the couple; you, of course, are welcome to listen
in.
Austin
and Allison, we, your family and friends, and I, the Church’s minister, are
truly happy to be here with you today. You have invited us to share in this
joyful day, this day that is itself a precious gift from the Lord Jesus Christ
who calls each of us to himself and is yet another sign of his “still more
excellent way” (I Corinthians 12:31). This way is the way of authentic love, of
a love that “does not seek its own interests,” but is instead ever concerned
about the good of the one who is loved (I Corinthians 13:5). In this, we see
that love is – more than anything else – a choice. The emotion of love comes
and goes; sometimes we feel loved and sometimes we do not, but our emotions are
not always reliable or consonant with the reality of a given situation. This is
why the highest form of love is not an emotion but, rather, an act of the will.
It
is to this still more excellent way that you have discerned the Lord Jesus
calling you to join your lives together in holy matrimony. Saint Anthony of
Padua once wisely noted that “although marriage is a good thing in itself, it
does bring with it considerable danger.”[1] What does he mean? In the
bonds of marriage, a husband is bound to care more about his wife than he cares
about himself. Likewise, in the bonds of marriage, a wife is bound to care more
about her husband than she cares about herself. Because a sacred bond joins
those united in holy matrimony, marriage brings the considerable danger of more
opportunities to sin by not living up to the promises made between husband and
wife before God and his Church. But this considerable danger is why Jesus
raised the natural state of marriage to a sacrament, to infuse it with his
grace and to provide a supernatural aid to those called to live the still more
excellent way of love in marriage.
There
is a temptation today to over-romanticize marriage, to think that it will
automatically bring a life of bliss without any difficulties whatever. The
reality, however, as any honest couple will tell you, is not quite so picture
perfect. Marriage is difficult and requires compromise, patience, and
gentleness. Like the Christian life in general, marriage is simple, but it is
not easy. Marriage is simple because, at its core, it involves only one thing,
namely, that every day each spouse must desire the good of the other above his
or her own good and labor to obtain that good for the beloved. In this,
marriage daily requires self-denial and, for this very reason, is not easy.
The
great J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The
Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings,
reflected on the reality of marriage in a letter he wrote to his son Michael in
1941. Then, after twenty-five of his fifty-five years of marriage to his
beloved Edith, Tolkien wrote these words:
Faithfulness in
Christian marriage entails that: great mortification… No man, however truly he
loved his betrothed and bride as a young man, has lived faithful to her as a
wife in mind and body without deliberate conscious exercise of the will, without self-denial. Too few are
told that – even those brought up ‘in the Church’.[2]
Tolkien
here speaks of a danger for the groom in marriage, but lest some think marriage
brings no danger for the bride, we might note the temptation of the wife always
to be right. Marriage, for her, too, requires deliberate conscious exercise of
the will, that is, self-denial. I do not want the two of you to be unaware of
this.
We
see something of this in Saint Anthony of Padua’s commentary on the opening
line of the Gospel passage you have chosen for us today. Jesus warns us rather
sternly, saying, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the
Kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 7:21). Saint Anthony said that “to say truly, Lord,
is to believe with one’s heart, confess with one’s mouth, and attest by one’s
deeds. To have one without the other is a denial.”[3] We might paraphrase the
Lord’s words this way; “Not everyone who says, ‘I do,’ will enter a happy,
blissful marriage.” If you wish to, as the fairy tales say, “live happily ever
after,” you must daily believe in the love Jesus has for his Bride, the Church;
you must confess his – and your - love for your spouse; and you must attest to
this love – both yours and Christ’s – by your deeds. To simply say “I do”
without believing in the power of grace to strengthen your promise, without
repeatedly confessing your love, and without demonstrating your love with
outward signs is a denial of your promise. How, then, can you ensure you do
this each day of your married life?
Jesus
says to us today, “Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them
will be like a wise man who built his house on rock” (Matthew 7:24). He spoke
these words at the conclusion of his great Sermon on the Mount, something of a
guidebook, if you will, for following faithfully after him. Later, he
summarizes the Sermon on the Mount with these words: “[H]e who does not take
his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. He who finds his life will lose
it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:38-39).
If
you, Austin and Allison, would have your marriage survive the rains and floods
and winds of this world intact, if you would have your shared home not
collapse, if you would survive the dangers that marriage brings, then you must
be joined together at the Cross of our Lord and build your life together upon
its foundation. It is as Saint Bruno said, “While the world changes, the Cross
stands firm.” We see the tremendous love Jesus has for his Bride displayed most
fully on the Cross. It is this same love that you must reflect for each other
and for the world. Through your married love, you must become sacramental signs
of Jesus’ love for every person by daily believing in it; by dialing confessing
it; and by daily attesting to it.
To
become such a sign of love, to become a sign of this still more excellent way,
is not easy. This is why Saint Anthony of Padua called marriage “a good thing
in itself,” even as he cautioned of its dangers. Tertullian focused more on the
goodness and beauty of marriage, saying,
How
can I ever express the happiness of the marriage that is joined together by the
Church, strengthened by an offering, sealed by a blessing, announced by angels
and ratified by the Father? ...How wonderful the bond between two believers
with a single hope, a single desire, a single observance, a single service!
They are both brethren and both fellow-servants; there is no separation between
them in spirit or flesh; in fact they are truly two in one flesh and where the
flesh is one, one is the spirit.[4]
If you join yourselves to the
Lord’s Cross, your marriage, too, will stand firm. You will keep your promises
and, having been found faithful to each other, the Lord Jesus will welcome you
both into the Kingdom of heaven. Then, in the end, you will know that “love
never fails” (I Corinthians 13:8). Amen.
[1] Saint Anthony of Padua, Sermon for the Second Sunday After Pentecost,
10. In Saint Anthony of Padua: Sermons
for Sundays and Festivals, Vol. II: From the First Sunday After Pentecost to
the Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost. Paul Spilsbury, trans. (Padua, Italy:
Edizioni Messagero Padova, 2007), 46.
[2] J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter to Michael Tolkien, 6-8 March
1941. In The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien.
Humphrey Carpenter, ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000), 51.
[3] Saint Anthony of Padua, Sermon for the Eighth Sunday After Pentecost,
11. In Saint Anthony of Padua: Sermons
for Sundays and Festivals, Vol. II, 198.
[4] Tertullian, Ad uxorem, II.VIII.6-8. In Pope Saint John Paul II, Familiaris consortio, 13.
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