My Brother Got Married on My Other Brother's Birthday
A Wedding Homily
Maybe some of you know that today our brother Evan celebrates his 24th birthday. Liam and Ali wanted to do something nice for him on his big day, so they gave him this opportunity to shave and put on a tie and go out in public with his shirt tucked in—just to remind him that adult life is possible, and maybe not the worst thing in the world.
I have been trying to think back on the experience of being in my early 20s and asking myself what kind of advice I would have wanted to receive on my 24th birthday. I remember that for most people life in your early 20s is still pretty unsettled, and that the experience of being unsettled causes all kinds of problems: anxiety, a sense of restlessness, thinking that your life lacks meaning, feeling that your life is unfulfilled. The hard part about life in your early 20s is that you are old enough to want to get serious about life but too young to have a grip on what makes life meaningful. Maybe you hope that a good career or some great vacations will resolve your unsettledness, but careers and vacations and having a good time are just not enough to help us become settled, fulfilled persons.
We want a solution to our problems, and so many of us start to think that finding our vocation will make our lives settled and fulfilled and meaningful. We start to dream. Maybe some of us think about religious life, but most people start to dream about marriage—dreams about finding the love of a lifetime, dreams about raising a family, dreams about a perfect home and a well-trained dog and a nice yard. Maybe the dreams get wildly specific, imagining the day you start working at a local business down the street from your parent’s house and meet someone on the staff there and go out on a date and things get serious and you fall in love and you stay together through graduate school programs and new jobs and major life decisions like the purchase of a truck and you wake up every day so grateful that your older brother gave you your first real job in a crab house because otherwise you probably wouldn’t have taken a job at the seafood market where you met the love of your life and now you are no longer in your early 20s wondering what to do with your future but in your late 20s and about to get married and life is good because your dreams really are coming true.
It is good to dream, and it is even better when dreams come true. But what I want to say is that the advice I would have wanted to receive when I was in my early 20s and dreaming all kinds of dreams about finding meaning and fulfillment in life is that no vocation—not even the vocation of marriage—is a solution to your problems. The problems with which you struggle before marriage will be the same problems with which you struggle after your wedding.
Do you experience anxiety? Well, the day after your wedding you’ll just have more about which to be anxious.
Do you suffer from a vice like anger or lust or avarice or sloth? Those vices are not going anywhere just because you found a spouse.
Married people still experience loneliness. Married people get restless. Married people still want to live lives that are meaningful and fulfilled and want more from life than the satisfaction that family provides. Marriage is not a solution to your problems in life but today most people seem to think that it is and then when the realities of marriage fail to meet expectations, life gets hard; relationships get hard.
If there is any sense to what I have said so far, then I think we need answers to two questions: (1) what really will make life meaningful and fulfilled and settled for us? and (2) what is marriage?
We can work out an answer to the first question easily enough. The only reality that makes life meaningful and fulfilled is living a good life. Maybe that seems like a strange thing to say. But we know on the authority of scripture and tradition that no single person or group of persons or anything of this world is going to satisfy our deepest longings in life. We are hardwired for God. You can spend a lifetime trying to fill your life with people or hobbies or career ambitions and you can spend your years trying to distract yourself from the restlessness in your heart by watching football and going to the beach and throwing parties, but nothing of this world will satisfy those deepest longings. You are made for God, and you must own that fact if you want to live a life that is meaningful and fulfilled.
The fun fact about God, however, is that he made you for life in this world. What that means is that while it is right to say that only God will fulfill you and satisfy those deepest longings of your heart, the place where God wants you to live in a relationship with him is right here in this world—and he wants you to live in a relationship with him through the lives of other people. The consequence of God’s plan for you is that you need to live in this world and make good choices and perform good actions and share a friendship with him that radiates out into the innumerable relationships that give deeper meaning to your life.
That kind of framework for your life means that the only reality that makes life meaningful is living a good life and becoming a good person. The stuff of this world is not enough for you, but neither is God alone enough for you—not exactly. You need to make good choices and perform good actions and so form good habits that make you into a person of great virtue who passionately wants what is true and good and beautiful in the world and possesses the power and skills and wisdom needed to know what is right and to do what is right. If you live that kind of a life—a life of virtue grounded in a friendship with God—you will live a good life and you will become a good person and you will live a life that is as meaningful and fulfilled as a human life can be.
Maybe we now have an answer to the question about what makes life meaningful and fulfilled for us. But we still need to find answer to the question: what is marriage?
What I want to say is that marriage is the place where you make your stand in this life and do the work of becoming a good person. Your weaknesses and your flaws and your character defects and the struggles of your interior life are not going anywhere because you got married but now because you have committed yourself to a spouse in front of Christ and his Church you know exactly where and how you will spend the rest of your life becoming proficient at the art of living well. The gift of a vocation is knowing with clarity and purpose exactly where you belong and how you are called to live—and now you can spend the rest of your life getting better at living well. Your choices will now be of a certain kind because you are married. The good actions you perform will now be of a certain kind because you are married. The desires that you nurture and the virtues that you develop will now be of a certain kind because you are married. Marriage is the place where you will make your stand in this life and do the work of becoming a good person.
You ought to be so excited, Liam and Ali. There is no greater joy in life than living well, living a life of virtue grounded in a relationship with God, and because of your vocation in life you will get the opportunity to become good at living well in the company of your best friend and the family you will raise. You will hold each other accountable, and you will challenge each other to grow in virtue and holiness and you will experience the elation that comes from witnessing the person you love the most become a better person because of your shared life together. Your vocation to marriage is a gift and you must cherish it.
To get back to my original question: when I was in my early 20s, I wish I knew that living a good life and becoming a good person is the only way to find meaning and fulfillment in life. I wish I knew in those unsettled years that a vocation is not a solution to your problems but rather the place in life where you will do the work of growing in virtue and relationship with God. It is good to dream, and it is even better when dreams come true. But becoming a good person is what makes life meaningful and fulfilled, and you, Liam and Ali, will get to work on that wonderfully human project together. Your vocation is a gift.
I want to conclude by giving you a final piece of advice, maybe something else I wish I knew or took more seriously when I was younger: there are many virtues, each of them necessary for living a good life and becoming a good person, but the greatest of the virtues is charity. In fact, the virtue of charity is so remarkable that we believe its origin is found in God, and not in this world. The supernatural virtue of charity is given to you at baptism, but marriage, your vocation, is where charity will become most realized and activated in your life.
I use the word ‘charity’ intentionally, because though the words ‘charity’ and ‘love’ signify the same reality (sacrificing for the good of someone else), talk of charity usually calls to mind images of outreach to the poor or the sick or to anyone in need. Love is what you find in a marriage, but charity is more social and ordered toward the good of people you really don’t know.
Your marriage ought to be a source of profound growth in charity for each of you. I use the word ‘charity’ intentionally. Your marriage, really, is not for you and does not belong to you. And it is still saying too little to say that your marriage is for your family and belongs to your family. Your marriage is for the Church and for the world, and your marriage belongs to Christ.
You might expect that the final words that the Church will speak to you at the celebration of a wedding ceremony would be about the two of you, your love, your holiness, or maybe about the family you will raise. And there are many words and prayers offered during today’s wedding ceremony that are about the two of you, your love, your holiness, and the family you will raise. You should pay attention and listen to these words and prayers.
But the final words that the Church will speak to you today are not really about the two of you. These final words are really about those who suffer in the world, those who do not have food or a home or a job or who are sick or alone or in prison. And the prayer of final blessing for today’s wedding ceremony asks that the two of you, through your marriage, sacrifice for the good of those who suffer in the world. The prayer reads:
May you be witnesses in the world to God's charity, so that the afflicted and needy who have known your kindness may one day receive you thankfully into the eternal dwelling of God.
There is no mention in those words of your love or your family. The prayer of final blessing is an invitation to become proficient at the art of living well because living well requires the possession of virtue and the greatest of virtues is charity: literally the possession of the love of God in your life so that you might be a witness to the love of God in the world. Your marriage will make that kind of life possible for the two of you.
Are you excited? You should be. What more could you want from life than the opportunity to help the person you love the most become more like God? That question might sound absurd to you but that is the promise you are making today. And if you get marriage right, your life will become settled and meaningful and fulfilled, and you will know true happiness and you will want for nothing. Maybe you did not know that kind of life was possible four or five years ago. Most people in their early 20s are not thinking these kinds of thoughts. But that kind of life is possible, and you know it now, and you will spend your lives together helping each other to get life right. Your vocation is a gift.
Homily preached on Saturday, January 6th at the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception, Mount St. Mary’s Seminary and University