By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami
Archbishop Thomas Wenski preached this homily Feb. 14 at St. Mary Cathedral, during the annual archdiocesan celebration of married love. In attendance were 240 couples marking 25, 50 and more years of marriage.
God is Love. This is the fundamental truth that the Gospel proclaims to the entire world. It is the heart of the “good news” of salvation.
We were created in the image and likeness of this God who is love � as we read in the Book of Genesis, “male and female” he made us. Understanding that we are made in the image and likeness of God � who is Love - can help us to understand why God put into the humanity of man and woman the vocation � and thus the capacity and the responsibility � of love and communion.
The word “love” is, of course, frequently used and misused. Most commonly, it represents what the ancient Greeks called “Eros”; that is, the erotic love between a man and a woman. But the Church, from her earliest days, proposed a new vision of self-sacrificial love expressed in the word “agape.” The natural human love between a man and a woman is a beautiful and sacred thing but it needs discipline and maturity, it needs ‘agape’ if it is to attain its true dignity and purpose. Thus, marriage � as Holy Scriptures testify � “is a unique and privileged sign of the union of Christ with his people and of God with his Creation and (marriage) can only serve as that sign when a man and a woman are solemnly joined together in a permanent union.” (Reclaiming Marriage, Catholics and Evangelicals Together)
Today, we honor you who celebrate this year significant anniversaries of your being joined together on the day you married each other “for better or for worse.” And we celebrate with you that, with the help of God’s grace, your love for each other has endured the trials and tests of time.
A society that identifies the two parties in marriage as spouse 1 and spouse 2 has lost sight of a deep truth of human nature. Your love � “a unique and privileged sign of the union of Christ with his people” � is a witness, a witness that is sorely needed today when so many people � and society itself �are confused about the meaning of marriage and family.
Today, more than ever, we need your witness about the true “facts of life,” about the ultimate meaning and truth of conjugal life. The coming together of a man and a woman in a binding union of mutual support we call marriage deserves to be celebrated � for it is one of the glories of the human race.
The many years you have shared together � and certainly no one can pretend that they were always easy or that there will be no difficult days ahead � but those many years have given you experience � but more than experience, they have given you wisdom. You must share that wisdom if young people today are to discover the beauty of the vocation to love. For too many of the young today are cynical about the possibilities of entering into a joyful marriage that will endure until death.
Although our vocation is to love, our capacity for love was wounded since that original sin of Adam and Eve. Sin weakens our will and sin clouds our understanding. We see the results of human sin in the sexual revolution of the last 50 years and “the damage it has done to marriage and the family: widespread divorce, the dramatic increase of out of wedlock births, the casual acceptance of premarital sex and cohabitation; and a contraceptive mentality which insists that sex has an arbitrary relation to procreation.” Because sin has wounded us, thus making the gift of oneself to another difficult, marriage has always been “hard work” � requiring much sacrifice, patience and perseverance on the part of both husband and wife; it has also required much grace � the help that God gives to those who ask him for it.
In today’s Gospel we see Jesus cure a leper. Jesus’ miracles are suggestive of more than just his power over physical illness. They reveal Jesus’ commitment to a broken and fragile community: He cures the leprosy of the body and so he can cure the leprosy of the soul, which is sin. We are in need of grace to be healed of the wounds of sin. Only God’s sanctifying grace can overcome the hardness of heart that led Moses to permit divorce. Only through the redemptive power of Christ’s paschal sacrifice was marriage restored according God’s plan from the beginning, and thus was raised by Christ himself to the dignity of a sacrament.
Or as St. Paul tells us in today’s second reading: “�whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.” St. Irenaeus � a martyr of the second century � said: “The glory of God is man fully alive; moreover man’s life is the vision of God.” Love � perfect love � truly makes us fully alive. For this reason we gather today at this “agape,” this celebration of the self-sacrificial love of Jesus Christ which is the Holy Mass. Here, we come wounded but seeking wholeness from the Physician of souls and bodies, Jesus Christ. And we are confident in the power of his grace symbolized by the new wine that Jesus gave at the wedding feast of Cana. The new wine of grace blesses the love between a man and a woman joined in the sacrament of marriage, making them more fully alive in Christ so that in their love for one another and for their children they might witness to hope.
We ask you to once again renew this commitment that you made to each other so long ago, a commitment that has been tested and refined over the years, and a commitment that is now blessed and enriched by the wisdom of age. And we thank you for your witness.
