Marriage Sermons
Doing What Christ Tells Us About Marriage
Sermon by Father Roger J. Landry
Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts
1) Today we are present at the most famous wedding of all time.
It wasn't the wedding of Mark Antony and Cleopatra in the Roman
empire. It wasn't the nuptials of Prince Charles and Lady Diana.
It's not even the wedding of Ben Affleck and J-Lo, if that ever
takes place. The most famous wedding of all time is one in which
we do not even know the names of the Bride and Groom. It's the
one that took place in Cana in Galilee, and it's the most famous
wedding because Jesus Christ was there -- and what happened at
that wedding has been remembered by Christians ever since.
2) The liturgical remembrance of the wedding of Cana causes us
to remember what Christ has done for marriage. God created this
institution in the beginning as one of the greatest blessings a
human being could share, and like everything in creation, God
pronounced it good. But Christ did something more during his
earthly life. He took this institution, good and created by him
from the beginning, and raised it to the dignity of a sacrament,
something that would also confer HIS OWN LIFE, and bring us
closer to him, closer to happiness, closer to holiness, closer
to heaven. Through the sacrament of marriage, which Christians
can receive, Christ remains with the couple just as assuredly as
he was with the couple in Cana. Marriage is part of God's plan
for creation and part of God's plan for our salvation and we
must treasure marriage and defend it whenever it comes under
attack.
3) We are now in the midst of a heated debate about what
marriage is. For God, it is very clear what marriage is. When
Christ was asked by a lawyer about whether divorce was possible,
Jesus gave a clear teaching about the real meaning of marriage
that is as relevant to the debate about whether homosexuals can
marry as it was to the subject of divorce-and-remarriage. If
Jesus were to testify up on Beacon Hill before our legislators
about the meaning of marriage, I think he could use the very
same words that he used in St. Matthew's Gospel. Listen to him
with fresh ears: "?Have you not read that in the beginning God
"made them MALE AND FEMALE,? and said, "For this reason a man
shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his WIFE, and
the two shall become one flesh?? So they are no longer two, but
one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one
separate."
4) In this teaching of Jesus -- who is the Truth incarnate, who
is our Creator and knows how and for what the human person is
made, who loved all of us enough to die out of love for us -- we
see four things that are relevant to our debate:
a) "In the beginning, God made them male and female" -- There is
great meaning to our masculinity and femininity in God's plan.
God didn't clone Adam, but made Eve, who was equal to him in
dignity, but complementary.
b) "For this reason a man shall leave his mother and father and
cling to his wife" -- God's plan is not that a man leave his
parents and cling to whomever he wants, but to cling to a wife.
c) 'the two shall become one flesh" -- This refers more than
merely to their sharing a bed together and temporarily joining
their bodies physically in the act of making love, because that
act is just temporary. God wanted from the beginning a more
permanent union, 'so they are no longer two, but one flesh." The
way this occurs is in a child, who is the PERDURING UNION of the
flesh and the man and the woman and blessed by God with the
infusion of an immortal soul. This one flesh union in children
"made in love" is for Christ, our Creator and Savior, part of
the essence of marriage.
d) "What God has joined together, man must not divide" -- This
refers not just to a particular couple joined by God in
marriage, but to the union planned by the Creator for a man and
a woman in marriage. To try to divide man and woman in the
institution of marriage by opening marriage up to two men or two
women is clearly contrary to God's plan for marriage and for man
and woman.
5) God created marriage in a particular way from the beginning
for our own happiness as well as for our salvation, to teach us
how to love according to the nature he gave us. But he also had
something else in mind in creating marriage the way he did. He
wanted to use marriage as an analogy to communicate his own love
for us his people. We see this in the first reading from Isaiah:
"As a young man marries a young woman, so shall your builder
marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so
shall your God rejoice over you." God's love for us is likened
to a husband's love for his new bride. When Jesus came, he took
this image of heterosexual spousal love even further, calling
himself the Bridegroom who was fulfilling Isaiah's prophecy. St.
Paul based all of God's teachings about marriage on Christ's
spousal love for his Bride, the Church: "Husbands love your
wives as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her to
make her holy" (Eph 5:25). Human heterosexual spousal love was
created by God to reflect God's own love for his people. To
change the meaning of marriage to encompass homosexual "unions"
will not only do damage to individual men and women with
same-sex attractions, to others and to society as a whole, but
it will gradually incapacitate our ability to understand the
meaning of all creation and God's love for us, of which
traditional marriage is the highest reflection.
6) In the face of the assault on the meaning of marriage in our
Commonwealth, what does Christ want from us? He wants us to be
his voice, repeating his words and passing on his teaching,
which is always given to us out of love for our true good. In
the first reading, Isaiah said that he was unable to "keep
silent" or 'to rest" for the sake of Zion and Jerusalem. God is
asking of us a similar zeal in speaking boldly in defense of Him
and his plan for marriage.
7) At the wedding feast of Cana, we see what God can do when we
are zealous. Jesus could have worked the miracle from scratch.
He who created all the seas could easily have created wine out
of nothing to fill the empty water jars. Be he didn't want to do
it alone. He wanted to involve his creatures. So he told the
servants to fill the jars with water. We might not understand
today what a challenge that task was. It wasn't as if the
servants would have had a hose to fill up those six,
thirty-gallon jars. They would have had to have gone to the one
well in ancient Cana and carry the water back from there. Even
if there were ten servants, even if they had two-gallon
containers or sacks to fill up, they would have to have made at
least nine trips back and forth to the city center to get all
the water. Yet they did it with enthusiasm, as we see in the
very important detail St. John gives us: 'they filled them to
the brim!" The Lord took their efforts and incorporated them
into an incredible miracle. He did the same thing later with the
miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish. He who
created all the fish of the sea could easily have worked that
miracle from scratch to feed the multitudes, but he didn't. He
asked the apostles what food they had to start with and they
brought to him a young boy, with five loaves and two fish --
starting material that would not be enough to feed even an
average family here on the Cape. But the Lord took that meager
offering and used it to feed over five-thousand families.
8) Someone here this morning might be asking himself, "What
really can I do on my own to stop this assault on marriage?"
Isolated, our individual efforts might accomplish very little.
Together, our efforts might make a very substantial impact. But
united with the Lord who is calling us to this effort, there's
no limit to how much of an impact they can make.
9) In the second reading, St. Paul teaches us that the Holy
Spirit gives us a variety of gifts and notes that there are a
variety of services in building up God's kingdom. Moved by one
and the same Spirit, each of us is called to use those gifts in
rendering that service to the kingdom. With regard to the
defense of God's institution of marriage as the union of one man
and one woman in our Commonwealth, the whole mystical body of
Christ is called to act in concert, all of us using our own
gifts given to us by God for the effort. For some of us, that
will be the gift of speaking with others, to friends and
legislators, to persuade them to get involved and do the right
thing before it is too late. For others it will be the gift of
writing, in sending clear letters to our legislators and to the
editors of various newspapers. For our bishops and priests, it
will be the service preaching the truth about marriage and
leading Christ's people to this truth at this very challenging
time. For lawyers, it will be to use their skills and education
in showing, from a legal point of view, how ridiculous the SJC
decision was and in crafting the language and fighting the legal
battles necessary to defend marriage. For psychologists,
psychiatrists, doctors, scholars and social workers, the Lord
wants them to use the gifts he has given them to show why
homosexual activity -- and any institutionalization based upon
it -- will harm individuals with same-sex attractions and
society as a whole. For our public servants, especially our
legislators, the Lord calls them to use the gift of their office
to defend the institution of marriage and to defend our
democracy against the oligarchic, unconstitutional
interpretation of the state's constitution by four justices, and
to vote in support of the amendment to defend marriage. The
bottom line is that it's an effort that requires all of our
help. We might think that all we can offer is "five loaves and
two fish," or a small bucket to retrieve water from a well, but
united with the head of the mystical body, Christ, our efforts
can have a dramatic effect.
10) I think back to 1998 in Michigan. Dr. Jack Kevorkian --
"Doctor Death" -- and his supporters were trying to legalize
euthanasia in the state. They brought out the toughest cases
imaginable to try to sway the public to thinking it was a
merciful thing to kill those you love. A few months before the
referendum vote, polls showed that 70% of Michigan residents
supported euthanasia. The Church didn't have much time. But
Cardinal Adam Maida of Detroit and the other bishops of the
state got their act together and, helped by the expertise and
efforts of thousands of Catholic lay people, they started to
teach about the real meaning of life, of death and of suffering.
By the time the referendum was taken, the public had completely
reversed itself, and 70% of Michigan residents voted against
euthanasia.
11) History can repeat itself here in our state. Our bishops
have gotten their act together. Led by Archbishop O?Malley and
Bishop Coleman, they are about to about to do something that has
never been done in our state before, and which I don't think has
ever been done in any state in the history of our nation. They
are sending every Catholic household a letter clearly explaining
the Church's teaching and asking every Catholic to take action
immediately. That's one million letters. Next weekend, some lay
married people will be speaking at every parish in our Diocese
about why it's crucial to contact our legislators and make sure
the marriage amendment passes, for the sake of families
thoughout our state. In two weeks, every priest in the Diocese
will be preaching about this. But the most important agent in
this whole battle is YOU. We need each of the practicing
Catholics to get involved in some way. Our concerted effort --
along with our Protestant brothers and sisters and non-Christian
friends -- has already been making a difference. In December, a
UMass poll showed that only 46% of people supported the Marriage
Affirmation and Protection Amendment. In yesterday's Globe, we
see that now 54% of people support it. But we still have a lot
of work to do.
12) In today's Gospel, Mary advised the servants to "do whatever
[Jesus] tells you," which is about the best advice anyone could
ever give us. Later in his public ministry, Jesus said to those
whom he sent out to proclaim the Gospel, 'those who hear you,
hear me" (Lk 10:16). The successors of the apostles whom Jesus
continues to send out today, the bishops of the state of
Massachusetts, have asked all Catholics in the state to act to
defend the institution of marriage. Jesus is speaking to us
through them and Mary is telling us to do whatever her son tells
us. Now is the time for us to respond like those servants in the
Gospel.
13) None of us chose to be born at this time, in this particular
place, facing this struggle. We might prefer to try to "pass the
buck" to someone else, and get them to stand up to defend the
institution of marriage. But the Lord really doesn't give us
that option. In his eternal Providence, he has put US here NOW.
He is here with us, but he is counting on us not to let him
down. The whole nation is counting on us. The whole Church is
counting on us. A priest friend of mine from Michigan told me
just last week, 'the Church in the Northeast has suffered so
much over the past couple of years and on paper this might seem
like the worst time possible for the Church to be forced to rise
up and defend the institution of marriage. But maybe God, in his
Providence and Love, is going to use this effort to put the
Church in Massachusetts back on the map, and inspire all of us,
everywhere else, to take our commitments before God more
seriously." God's ways are not our ways. Maybe, just maybe, God
wants to bring about a true Massachusetts miracle. But he will
want each of our efforts, just like he did at the wedding feast
in Cana.
14) The upshot of the miracle of the Lord's turning water into
wine was that 'the disciples began to believe in Him." Today at
this Mass, the Lord will pull off a far greater miracle. He will
change not water into wine, but wine into His very own blood.
May this miracle of miracles inspire us to believe ever more in
Him and put into practice his mothers? last words in Sacred
Scripture, "Do whatever he tells you!" Let's get to work. |
