The Wedding of
Cheryl Zurliene and Evan Keil
Dear
brothers and sisters in Christ,
About
the year 723, Saint Boniface famously – and daringly – climbed Mount Gudenberg
where there was “a certain oak of
extraordinary size.”
His pagan contemporaries gathered around this Oak of Geismar to offer, among
others, children as sacrifices to the pagan deities. In his Life of St. Boniface, Saint Willibald
describes for us what Saint Boniface did when he reached the summit:
Taking his courage in his hands (for a great crowd of pagans stood by
watching and bitterly cursing in their hearts the enemy of the gods), he cut
the first notch. But when he had made a superficial cut, suddenly, the oak's
vast bulk, shaken by a mighty blast of wind from above crashed to the ground
shivering its topmost branches into fragments in its fall. As if by the express
will of God … the oak burst asunder into four parts, each part having a trunk
of equal length. At the sight of this extraordinary spectacle, the heathens who
had been cursing ceased to revile and began, on the contrary, to believe and
bless the Lord.
Today, his action would probably be labeled one of
intolerance, of cultural insensitivity, and of religious superiority. And while
there might be something behind each of these accusations, the holy Bishop would
not likely have understood them. He struck down that tree for the simple reason
that it kept those ancient Germanic peoples from encountering Jesus and Saint
Boniface knew that every obstacle to the love of Christ must come down.
If this seems a strange way to begin a homily for a
wedding, I readily admit it is. However, I ask you to bear with me for just a
moment longer and all will, I hope, make sense. After he struck down the great
Thunder Oak, Saint Boniface pointed to a young fir tree growing nearby and said
to the pagan worshipers of the now-destroyed tree:
This
little tree, a young child of the forest, shall be your holy tree tonight. It
is the wood of peace, for your houses are built of the fir. It is the sign of
an endless life, for its leaves are ever green. See how it points upward to
heaven. Let this be called the tree of the Christ-child; gather about it, not
in the wild wood, but in your own homes; there it will shelter no deeds of
blood, but loving gifts and rites of kindness.
Some accounts say those new
Christians began bringing fir trees into their homes and decorated them with
candles. Thus began the custom of what we now call the Christmas tree.
Much as the life of the fir tree
stands as a sign of God’s love for his creation, so, too, should the shared
life of a husband and wife stand as a sign of the love the Lord Jesus has for
his Bride, the Church. So it is that now I ask you, dear brothers and sisters,
to allow me to speak directly to the bride and groom around whom we have
gathered today. You, of course, are most welcome to listen in.
Evan and Cheryl, the great J.R.R.
Tolkien wrote an intriguingly straightforward letter about marriage and the
relationship between men and women to his son Christopher in March of 1941. The
famed author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings warned of the
danger of “the romantic chivalric tradition,” which carried with it three
errors.
The first of these errors is that
the chivalric tradition idealized the relationship between a man and a woman
outside of marriage, and even contrary to it. The second of these errors is
that the chivalric tradition was not centered on God, but instead on Love and
the Lady, both of whom the medieval romances tended to deify. The third of
these errors is that the chivalric tradition portrayed the Lady always as “a
kind of guiding star.” This, said Professor Tolkien, “is, of course, false and
at best make-believe. The woman is another fallen human-being with a soul in
peril.” In the end, Tolkien went on to call a husband and wife “companions in
shipwreck not guiding stars.”
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| J.R.R. and Edith Tolkien |
At first glance, we might be
tempted to think these words somewhat gloomy. Perhaps they are, until we
realize that Tolkien wrote them in the twenty-fifth of fifty-five years of
marriage to his beloved Edith. When he penned these words to his son, he did so
with the full knowledge of all that marriage entails, of all its joys and
difficulties. Here, then, we come to the distinctive mark of Christian
marriage.
The Lord Jesus took the natural
institution of marriage and raised it to the dignity of a sacrament. In Christ,
marriage becomes a vocation, a calling from the Lord that receives “a noble
purpose,” a way of life leading to the sanctification of the spouses (Tobit 8:7).
Husband and wife become for each other a “help and support” as together they
“pray and beg our Lord to have mercy on us and to grant us deliverance” from
their sins (Tobit 8:6, 5). Strengthened by the Lord’s grace and by imitating
his love, the couple united by the Lord learn to “anticipate one another in
showing honor” and, as Tolkien knew well, begin “to forget their [own] desires, needs and temptations” and look instead to the
desires, needs and temptations of their spouse (Romans 12:10). It
is in this way that they keep the command of the Lord Jesus to “love one
another as I love you” (John 15:12).
Evan and Cheryl, this will be
your great task from this day forward, to mirror to each other - and to the
world - the love of Jesus Christ. Though this mission is a daunting one, I urge
you not to be afraid of it. Rather, take it up with joy, confident that the
Lord will strengthen your commitment to one another and will hear your every
prayer, for he himself has brought you to this day.
Permit me, if you will, to say
that you have both come here today as two single trees. You desire to be joined
today in holy matrimony because you recognize in each other not only the one
your heart desires, but also – and more importantly – one who can help you grow
in holiness, one who can help you attain perfection in Christ. Because of your
mutual desire to help each other grow in holiness, you need not be afraid when
one of you takes, as it were, like Saint Boniface, a gentle axe to the other to
clear away whatever is not of Christ, whatever does not reflect his love, and
whatever keeps you from entering fully into his love. And when that gentle axe
comes swinging away at you, do not resist it but allow it to prune away all
that keeps you from growing each day in holiness.
Through the bond of marriage, the
two of you will become today like a great fir tree standing in the midst of a
troubled world as a sign of peace. Through the tender love you bear for each
other, you will stand also as a sign of the joy of the gift of endless life.
United in peace and love, you will grow tall pointing upward ever more clearly,
indicating the way to the heaven, not only for yourselves, but for everyone.
Seek, then, to “put forth [your] branches and bear [the] fruit” of loving gifts
and rites of kindness to all who gather around you (Ezekiel 17:23).
If you let the tree of your
communal life imitate the tree of the Lord’s Cross by laying down your lives
for each other, all who see your married love will see in it a reflection of Christ’s
love for us and, like those early pagans, will be moved to believe and bless
the Lord (cf. John 15:13). If you love and honor each other in this way, you
will indeed “go and bear fruit that will remain” (John 15:16). If you help each
other to become saints, the light of your married life will shine more brightly
than the greatest Christmas tree. You will be not only companions in shipwreck,
but you will become guiding stars for all who seek the salvation of God. Amen.
These
learned men from the East are much like the shepherds who adored the newborn
King only a few days ago. The shepherds, we are told, were “keeping watch over
their flocks by night” (Luke 2:8). The Magi were likewise keeping watch, not
over flocks, but over the heavens, which is why they could say, “We have seen
his star at its rising,” the Magi told King Herod (Matthew 2:2). Both groups,
shepherds and magi, waited something for – or, rather, for someone – who would radically
change their lives.
