What a Wonderful Fear to Have
A Wedding Homily
There was longer version of my homily (much longer) coming along just fine before I gave up and went back for a fresh start. The problem for me was twofold. First, my priest-mentor at the seminary once told me that the homily is the least important part of the Mass, the only part of the Mass not handed down by God and the Church, so homilies need to be tight and kept out of the way. You see, someone in our class had asked him when is the best time for a restroom break during Mass, and his answer came back immediately: during the homily, that’s when people can leave Mass if they need to leave for some reason.
So, if any of you want to take a break from the liturgy for a few minutes, I just want you to know that right now is your best opportunity and I won’t mind at all.
But the second problem was my real problem: to the extent that a homily is supposed to educate, form, and (if you’re lucky) inspire the faithful, I had a hard time coming up with what there is for me to say today to Megan and Nick. These guys are already educated, formed, and inspired. Megan and Nick do not need more classes or books or lectures or motivational speeches to profess vows and make a lifelong commitment today—they know what they need to know, which means that in many ways they know what they are doing, and in many ways they have no idea what they are doing but they know what they don’t know and accept it and are ready to learn by way of life and experience.
What is there to say to a couple marked by such knowledge and humility? I asked Megan and Nick to give me a definition of marriage in 10 words or less, and here is the answer they gave me: the lifelong commitment between a man and a woman to help each other to heaven. Two facts captured my attention about that answer: first, they used 15 words and not 10; but second, these guys know what marriage is. Marriage is a vocation and that means marriage becomes the way a person lives in Christ and moves toward eternal life. And married couples get to help one another live in Christ for eternity. Megan and Nick know these truths already.
I also asked Megan and Nick to tell me (in 50 words or less) about what the readings for the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart might have to do with the reality of Christian marriage. Here is the answer they gave me:
The readings show how God’s love is unconditional, and it is the same kind of love he calls a married couple to live out with each other and their families. Further, God does not seek recognition for His love, but pours it out generously, desiring all to share in it—so too, marriage builds a home where love is to be given without reserve and that love is allowed to overflow into new lives. In the Gospel, Jesus is the model for love in marriage, true sacrifice—literally pouring out His life for the sake of His bride—this is the call of spouses, to love each other with all they possess for the sake of helping each other to Heaven.
Megan and Nick, that is a beautiful 123-word answer to the question. You already know that marriage is a life lived in imitation of Christ, that marriage as a sacrament becomes a way for divine love to enter the world around us, and that because marriage is a life lived in imitation of Christ, your life together will be defined by the realities of sacrificial love. You know that you will suffer because of your love, the way that Christ suffered for the sake of his love, but that your love is rooted in divine love and so it is true and good and beautiful no matter how hard life gets in one moment or another.
Maybe you guys can understand why putting a homily together for you is a challenge; you possess knowledge beyond your years.
But what I finally realized is that because I am much, much closer to retirement than either of you, maybe there is a chance that I have one piece of wisdom to share with you, the kind of knowledge you can get only by way of experience. And then I started thinking about the answer you guys gave me to another question I asked, a tough question, about what scares you the most about marriage. You told me (in 12 words, not 10): growing complacent in our lives and relationship with each other and God. What a wonderful fear that is to have.
The dictionary says that complacent means: showing smug or uncritical satisfaction with oneself or one's achievements. A complacent person settles for who they are already, stops growing and challenging themselves, and lives under the illusion that already possess whatever good things there are to have in life; there is arrogance and conceit in the life of complacent person, but the kind of arrogance and conceit that is quiet in its corruption, rarely noticed, never brash nor obvious. The complacent person, maybe worst of all, becomes boring and apathetic and detached from the adventure that is human life.
You guys are right to fear complacency, and what I want to do is give you one piece of advice about how to avoid becoming settled, apathetic, conceited, and boring.
Here is my advice: make virtue the measure of your marriage.
Let me make a fast review of the basics of virtue just to make sure we understand each other. A virtue is a habit, an interior formation of your intellect (call it your mind) and your will (call it your desires and your freedom) that makes you want what is good and proficient at getting what is good. The basic idea with virtue is that virtues make you a good person when you possess them, and because you are a good person, you will want what is good and become excellent at doing what is good.
The life of virtue is the life of constant conversion. You acquire virtue by way of grace and nature: God shares his life with you through Christ and the Church, you receive those graces, you make good choices, you perform good actions, again and again and again, and over time, your interior life becomes formed and habituated to want what is good and do what is good because you are good.
There are many, many virtues, but some matter more than others.
Faith, hope, and love are supernatural virtues given to you at baptism. Faith tells you where you need to go (eternal life with God), hope gives you the conviction that you can get there, and love is how you make the journey. These virtues are given to you through Christ at baptism so that you might know God in your life. You need to nourish these virtues and never let them weaken in you. And the most critical of these virtues is love: if you love and remember why you are loving, you will have faith that will move mountains, and your hope will remain strong.
Prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance we call cardinal virtues, and you cannot live well without them. Prudence is the most important, a virtue grounded in knowledge of reality that tells you how to make good choices in tough situations; prudence is the virtue that tells you how to get from A to B, and just to be clear: A is natural death, and B is eternal life with God. Justice comes next, the virtue by which you give to each what they are due, what you owe them, and the scope of justice is enormous: God, and every other person in the world.
Fortitude helps you hold onto what is most good inside of you while you suffer in the world, a clinging in your soul to what is good and true and beautiful when life is hardest; fortitude is the virtue of martyrs, and any good Christian life features some amount of martyrdom. And fortitude is closely connected to another virtue, patience, the natural-supernatural capacity to remain joyful in suffering. Finally, temperance: the possession of an interior harmony that gives orientation to thoughts and desires and passions and emotions so that no one part of you becomes detached from reality and overpowering; temperance keeps you connected to what is real when different parts of you threaten to confuse or disorient.
I say make virtue the measure of your marriage for two reasons. First, because you cannot live well without virtue. We do not talk about virtues today as much as we should, but just because we don’t talk about them does not mean virtues no longer matter. You cannot live well without virtue, and any person who lives well possesses some amount of virtue, even if they have never used words like ‘prudence’ or ‘temperance’ or ‘justice’ or ‘fortitude.’ To live well is to possess virtue, and you will need virtue for your marriage and your family.
The second reason to make virtue the measure of your marriage is that a life spent pursuing virtue is a life that will never become complacent. The fact of the matter is that the perfection of virtue in us takes a lifetime, if it is even possible. You will need decades lived in daily contact with grace to even have a chance of saying at the end of your years: I AM prudent, I AM just, I AM courageous, I AM temperate, I HAVE real faith, real hope, real love. To spend a life pursuing virtue is to never settle, never become boring or apathetic, and to recognize each day that you stand in need of sincere growth and maturation. The person who wants virtue cannot be arrogant or conceited, smug or satisfied.
One final recommendation: do not make the mistake that is common in the world today, of mistaking devotion for the good life. You can fill your life with prayers and liturgies, but that is no guarantee that you will grow in virtue and become good. Many people perform constant exterior acts of devotion while the interior life remains unchanged, unconverted, lacking in virtue, stale and stagnant, living like 21st century pharisees—no more prudent or just or brave or temperate for their prayer, nor filled with faith or hope or love for all the graces they have received. How is that possible? And why? Because while grace alone is certainly sufficient for us, grace cannot work on us without our cooperation. You need to perform the acts of exterior devotion like a beggar, asking the Lord for the spiritual energy you need for the conversion of mind and heart. Your growth in virtue must be rooted in grace, and grace comes from Christ through the Church. Make sure your devotion is sincere and genuine.
Megan and Nick, when I asked you what most excites you about marriage, you told me (in 6 words): sharing life with my best friend. I guess that one was pretty easy to articulate for you, as is right and just. You should be excited to share life with your best friend. And what I want to tell you is that you can (and must) spend your years and decades helping each other become good: possessing all virtue, converted in heart and mind by way of grace and nature.
You guys are getting a chance to help your best friend become the person they are in Christ. You will need your whole lives to make that happen, a life spent pursuing virtue, wanting to be good, rejecting all complacency and apathy. But faith assures us that your marriage possesses an eternal destination, hope assures us that you can get there, and the reality of your love for one another tells us how you are going to make the journey. You can get to where you want to go.
Homily preached on Friday, June 7th at St. Peter the Apostle Roman Catholic Church, Libertytown.