The
Wedding of Brooke Zerrusen and Lewis Martin
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 Francis of Assisi, to witness the exchange of consent of Lewis and
Brooke, and to celebrate with them as they “establish between themselves a partnership
of their whole life.” By its very nature, this union “is ordered to the
well-being of the spouses and to the procreation and upbringing of children.”
They will begin this partnership in the presence of the Church because marriage
has “been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament” (canon 1055).
On
behalf of the couple, I greet you, their family and friends, with affection and
I welcome you in the name of Christ. I thank you for the love, support, and
encouragement you show them by your presence with us today and I am confident
they will be able to count on you in the days, weeks, and years ahead for this
same encouragement, support, and love. Now, my friends, before we witness the
exchange of their promises to live in committed love until death, come what
may, I ask you to allow me to speak directly to the couple; you, of course, are
invited to listen in.
Lewis
and Brooke, some years ago, when you were washed in the regenerating waters of
Baptism, those waters that receive their power from the wounds of the Savior,
you were clothed in Christ, as the Apostle Saint Paul teaches (cf. Galatians 3:27). This is why you were given a white garment, the Baptismal garment, and
were instructed to see in it “the outward sign of your Christian dignity.”
Moreover, you were told to “bring that dignity unstained into the everlasting
life of heaven.”[1]
It was also on that day that you were “once and for all incorporated into the
covenant of Christ with the Church,” becoming members of his Body.[2] This covenant between
Christ and the Church is repeatedly described as that of a marriage,
particularly by Saint Paul, who calls it as “a great mystery” (Ephesians 5:32).
Who, then, are the parties in this heavenly marriage?
Saint
John the Baptist spoke of himself as the “best man” when he said, “The one who
has the bride is the bridegroom; the best man, who stands and listens to him,
rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. So this joy of mine has been made
complete. He must increase; I must decrease” (John 3:29-30). The bridegroom is
none other than the Lord Jesus, who referred to himself when he asked, “Can you
make the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them” (Luke 5:34)?
The Bride of Christ is none other than the Church, composed as it is of every
member of the Baptized, for when Saint John the Evangelist saw his vision of
the Revelation, an angel said to him, “Come, I will show you the bride, the
wife of the Lamb” (Revelation 21:9). He was shown “a holy city, the new Jerusalem,
coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride for her husband,” a
city with “twelve courses of stone as its foundation, on which were inscribed
the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb (Revelation 21:2, 14).
 |
| MS Francais 403, f. 35v |
We
might say the betrothal of the Lamb of God, the Divine Bridegroom, to the
Church, both the Body and the Bride of Christ, occurred when Jesus offered
himself on the Cross for the forgiveness of our sins and rose victorious over
the grave. The marriage celebration between the Lamb and his Bride will take
place on the Last Day, when it will be said, “For the wedding day of the Lamb
has come, his bride has made herself ready. She was allowed to wear a bright,
clean linen garment,” which is both the Baptismal garment and the wedding
garment (Revelation 19:7-8; Matthew 22:12). At each celebration of the Holy
Mass, we share in the foretaste of that great nuptial banquet.
By
virtue of your Baptisms, your marriage to each other “is assumed into Christ’s
charity and is enriched by the power of his Sacrifice” so that your married
love will be a sacrament, not only for yourselves, but for all the world. Because
the things of heaven are always to be the model of the things of earth, from
this day forward, the love which you have for each other must always be a
reflection of Jesus’ love for his own Bride, the Church.[3] This daily requires
self-denial and, for this very reason, marriage is not easy, but it is
beautiful.
 |
| Edith and John Ronald Reuel Tolkien |
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 wife Edith, the elder 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’.[4]
Tolkien
here speaks of a danger for the husband, but lest some think marriage brings no
danger for the bride, we might note the temptation of the wife to be always
right. Marriage requires of both the deliberate and conscious exercise of the
will, that is, self-denial. I do not want the two of you to be unaware of this.
If
you are to live the mystery of the Lord’s love for each other and for the
world, if you are to “signify and participate in the mystery of unity and
fruitful love between Christ and the Church,” you must follow the admonition of
Saint Paul, which you chose for us to hear today.[5] You must daily “put on, as
God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility,
gentleness, and patience” (Colossians 3:12). You must always remember that you
“have clothed yourselves in Christ,” in him who is Love; therefore, you must
imitate him in all things (Galatians 3:27; cf. I John 4:8).
From
the example that he has given us of selfless love, we know that “true love is
shown by deeds,” that love is shown in the details.[6] Jesus showed his love for
us upon the Cross and you, too, must take up the Cross each day of your married
life. You must always consider one another’s holiness as more important than
your own wants. You, Lewis, must ask each morning, “How can I help Brooke grow
in holiness today?” Likewise, you, Brooke, must ask each morning, “How can I
help Lewis grow in holiness today?” If you live your married life in this way,
you will indeed, “over all these put on love, that is, the bond of perfection”
(Colossians 3:14).
We
know that “love is the bond of perfection in the sense that it completes and
unifies the virtues, and more importantly it perfects, or matures, the
community itself.”[7]
If you love each other with the love of Jesus, with a love that is selfless and
pure and always seeks the good of the other, you will indeed mature and be
perfected together; you will become a source of light, of goodness, and of love
in a world filled with so much darkness, emptiness, and hatred. The world needs
you to be witnesses to the love of Jesus; let his love be always seen in your
love for each other.
If
you hold fast to the sacred duty you received in holy Baptism to love both God
and neighbor, if you remain in the love of Jesus, you will live, as the fairy
tales say, happily ever after and your joy will be complete as you help each
other become saints (cf. John 15:10, 11). You, Lewis, will begin to love Brooke
as Christ loved the Church and, you, Brooke, will be “like the sun rising in
the Lord’s heavens” (cf. Ephesians 5:25; Sirach 26:15). By encouraging each
other to imitate the love of Jesus each day of your lives, may you stand before
him when he comes at last, “giving thanks to God the Father through him”
(Colossians 3:17). Amen.
[1] Rite of Baptism for Children, 99.
[2] Ordering of Celebrating Matrimony, 7.
[3] Ibid.
[4] 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.
[5] Ibid., 8.
[6] Saint Bonaventure, Commentary on the Gospel of John, 15.10.
Robert J. Karris, trans. Works of St.
Bonaventure, Vol. XI: Commentary on the Gospel of John (Saint Bonaventure,
New York: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2007), 762.
[7] Dennis Hamm, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture: Philippians, Colossians,
Philemon (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2013), 220.
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