You Are Entering a Great Mystery
A Wedding Homily
I’ve married somewhere between 25 and 30 couples; but, to date, this is the first wedding I’ve had that has been covered by the Catholic news media. Jess and Ben, not only did you make the cover of the Catholic Review; you made me search out and read a copy of the Catholic Review because I wanted to know what you had to say about being married in the Church. Of course, I also wanted to make sure you didn’t talk me up too much, because as I’ve told you, and as I told the reporter, weddings are not my favorite part of the job, and I’m not looking to have more of them than I must.
But I should qualify that. Weddings in themselves are just fine. I’ve teared up at nearly every bride I’ve seen walk down the aisle—except at my cousin’s wedding last July who insisted on getting married outside in Ocean City on a summer day that ended up being over 100 degrees. That day it was sweat, not tears, rolling down my face.
In any case, I love weddings because marriage is a sacrament of the Church given to us by Christ. The moment when a couple exchanges consent and becomes one flesh in an unbreakable bond is a beautiful moment beyond compare.
What I don’t love about weddings is the process of preparation. It might surprise you, but, for the priest, marriage prep is usually a pretty uncomfortable song and dance. No matter how much I preface our first meeting with asking them to be honest about their faith, how often they come to Church, or whether they even believe any of this stuff, I almost always get the sense that I’m just being told what they think the priest wants to hear. The result is that our conversations, while pleasant, usually remain superficial; and I simply pray that some seed I’ve been able to plant somewhere along the way in that shallow soil might beat the odds, take root, and bear fruit somewhere later down the line.
But then come along couples like Jess and Ben—couples who are rightly featured in the Catholic Review—because they get it. In our first meeting, Ben told me, when it comes to marriage prep, he was looking for “the real deal.” After half a dozen meetings, I hope you both can say that you got it—but I also hope you realize you got what you got because I let you drive. I would set the topic, but you carried the conversation. You brought up what you had already been talking about as a couple. You pulled in what you had been reading or listening to about married life. You made reference to insights that came to you in prayer. I never needed to come in with an outline, with discussion questions, with assigned readings, and I didn’t need to give you homework assignments. You both were the best students, because you understood yourselves to be your own teachers. I had the grace to just be the facilitator—to affirm what I heard, to ask some questions, to connect some dots, to make some suggestions, and to encourage you as you worked out for yourselves what marriage is and what it means to you. It has been a tremendous grace for me to walk alongside you for the past year and a half; and if every couple approached the sacrament of marriage as you have, not only would I delight in celebrating weddings start to finish, but there would be much grace in them and in the Church. So, I hope you got “the real deal” because you are the “real deal.” May the example you have set be an inspiration for many.
Now, while I’ve said a whole bunch of nice things about Jess & Ben, let me also say that part of the reason why our experience of marriage prep was what it was is that, with these two, it’s hard to get a word in edgewise. So, now that I have the floor and the microphone and (presumably) your attention, let me take this last opportunity, before you enter into this great sacrament, to teach you something about what Saint Paul calls a “great mystery.”
The first reading from Sirach and the second reading from Ephesians put you up to a mighty challenge as husband and wife. A good wife, Sirach tells us, is to be gracious, thoughtful, governed in her speech, virtuous, modest, chaste, temperate, and radiant. That’s quite a tall order. A good husband, Ephesians tells us, in fewer words, is to love his wife, “even as Christ loved the Church,” which means that he too must be like Christ in every way.
So, what we have here is a double-commandment to pursue virtue. Now, everyone is supposed to strive to be virtuous, since the virtues are those habitual capacities for good that make us good humans. But as husband and wife, Scripture teaches us, that your virtue is not merely for yourselves, or even the common good of all, but for each other and the family you raise. A good wife, again Sirach tells us, “brings joy to her husband… delights her husband… [and] puts flesh on his bones.” A good husband, again Ephesians tells us, loves his wife as his own body.
All that you are, and all that you become, is supposed to be directed to your spouse. Now, all that might sound well and good, but there’s a catch. Because of the sacrament that you receive today, you will never become who you are unless you find yourself in your spouse. What I mean is that you are about to give up your right to self-mastery and self-determination. Are you ready to do that?
Because, if what’s about to happen doesn’t, then Jess becomes Jess by striving to be the best Jess that she can be; and Ben becomes Ben by striving to be the best Ben he can be. But from here out, as you become flesh, there will no longer be two individuals, but one couple living in Christ, who will find themselves exclusively in the other.
Why?
The “great mystery” of marriage of which Saint Paul speaks turns on the relationship between Christ and the Church. There is no distinction between Jesus and his Body; and in a few moments, there will be, by analogy, no distinction between the two of you that allows any part of you to remain outside the domain of the other.
So, for Jess to become Jess, she needs to give herself away entirely to Ben; and for Ben to become Ben, he needs to give himself away entirely to Jess. And to the extent that each of you do that, with the Lord’s help, you will become the person he has created you to be. And to the extent that you don’t, you won’t. And so I ask you again, are you ready?
Of course you are.
Because you already knew that. You knew that not because we covered it in our sessions. You knew that not because you read Fulton Sheen. You knew that because you love the Lord and already know that what he has done for you—what he has done for us—he commands you to do also in memory of him.
To be honest with you, I worry about most of the couples I marry, when I know, despite whatever they tell me, chances are high they’re not coming to Mass every Sunday. I worry because the bar is set high, and the stakes for reaching it are high, and there is simply no possible way to reach that high bar without the firmest and deepest reliance on the Eucharist.
Why?
If the sacrament of marriage demands you to give yourself away in love, then how better to learn what that means and to receive the grace necessary to accomplish it than by entering into the “great mystery” in which Christ gave us a perpetual memorial of his love for us on that night when he took bread and wine and gave them as his Body and Blood? May I suggest that every time you celebrate the Eucharist and hear Christ say those words anew that you repeat them in your heart, thinking of your spouse: This is my body, which will be given up for you. This is my blood, which will be poured out for you.
Embrace the sacrament of marriage eucharistically—see your life as a pleasing sacrifice offered for the sake of the other—and your marriage will be taken by the Lord Jesus in his holy and venerable hands, lifted up to God the most Merciful Father, and shared with many for the life of the world.
Jess and Ben, I don’t worry about you. You have things to work on, and you know what those things are are, but you also know what’s most important. You know that what is about to happen is your vocation—what God has created you to be—and you know that God is faithful to his promises and rewards those who seek him. In whatever comes in your married life together, bring it all before the Lord; and may God who has begun this good work in you bring it to completion, as each of you becomes, with the family you make and raise together, all that God wants for you in the great mystery of his love.
Homily given June 15, 2024 in the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception, Mount St. Mary’s University.