By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami
Archbishop Thomas Wenski preached this homily at the vigil Mass for the fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, celebrated Feb. 3, 2018 at St. Mary Cathedral. The Mass honored couples marking one, 25, 50 and more years of marriage.
There are some people that are always incorrigibly cheerful – happy, upbeat, no matter what. Well, Job whom we hear from in today’s first reading, was not one of those people.
I think all of us have heard something about Job – he was rich, prosperous, everything going right for him and very faithful to God. The devil tells God, you think Job is so good? Why wouldn’t he be since you’ve given him so much? Take away from him all your gifts and you’ll see he’ll curse you. So, God permitted calamity to befall Job. He loses everything – wife, family, friends, riches. He is full of sores and pain but he doesn’t curse God. He questions him, “Why is this happening to me?” And when some so-called friends tell him that he must have done something wrong for all these bad things to have happened to him, he insists on his innocence but he doesn’t doubt God’s love for him. Job wants to know why he suffers. And so do we. God doesn’t say that he won’t tell Job – eventually. But God didn’t give him any answers. We too want to know why bad things happen to us, and God will probably tell us but maybe not on this side of eternity. And so, as we deal with the disappointments and trials of this life, we need a strong dose of the patience of Job. trusting – as we sang in the responsorial psalm - that the Lord does heal the brokenhearted. And this is precisely what we see in today’s Gospel: Jesus curing the sick and casting out demons.
None of us would want to be tested to the extent that Job was tested. But all of us should want to have the “patience of Job.” Patience is a great virtue for each of us to develop.
If you’re patient you don’t answer that angry email with an angrier one. You wait and maybe then you don’t say something or write something you can’t take back. Patience helps you de-escalate tense situations. I read once –and I forget the source right now – but I read that “patience with others is charity; patience with oneself is hope; and patience with God is faith. Faith is having patience with God when it seems he keeps us waiting for answers to our prayers.
Pray for the patience of Job – so that you’ll get through, as he did, the drudgery of life, and pray to grow in love by being patient with others, to grow in hope by being patient with yourself and to grow in faith by being patient with God.
Of course, today we honor a group of very patient men and women. (Before Mass, when I was taking pictures with our anniversary couples, I told one wife: “You must be a very patient woman to be married all these years,” and her husband said, “Tell me about it.”)
Today, we honor all of you who are celebrating significant milestones in your years of married life, especially those of you celebrating your silver, golden and even diamond anniversaries. We want to recognize your courage in embracing the commitment of marriage – and, of course, your patience with one another over these many years.
Your life together "for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health” is a beautiful witness that God who is love made us, male and female, in his own image and likeness and in doing so God put into the humanity of man and woman the vocation – and thus the capacity and the responsibility – of love and communion.
Today, so many people – and society itself –are confused about the meaning of marriage and family. The hopes that people place in marriage are increasingly fragile in our age of easy divorce. Too many people, especially among our young, are cynical about the possibilities of entering into a joyful marriage that will endure until death.
But, as you know, getting married does not end problems. This life is a "valley of tears" and for us – just like Job – there is no escaping the trials and tests of life. But being married means you can face those problems together. As Pope Francis told a group of newlyweds a few years ago, “Living together within the bonds of holy matrimony is an art… a patient, beautiful and fascinating journey.”
That journey, the pope told those young couples, can be summarized in three words: “please, thank you, and sorry.” But I am sure that the pope didn't say anything that you don't know already.
In the Second Reading, St. Paul says, “If I preach the Gospel, this is no reason for me to boast, for an obligation has been imposed on me…” Likewise, your witness to the Gospel, the “good news” about marriage is sorely needed today. Today, more than ever, we need your witness about the true “facts of life,” about the ultimate meaning and truth of conjugal life. 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.
The Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy, in “Anna Karenina” says, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” In other words, there are many ways to go wrong; but one way to go right: the way of love. The hopes that people place in marriage are capable of being fulfilled only by acceptance of the Gospel.
That is to say, one cannot just build a marriage and a family on the sands of fleeting emotions. Emotions are like shifting sands – you cannot build anything solid on that; rather, one must build on solid foundations, the solid rock of God's love as revealed to us in the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Just as God's love is solid and stable, the love of a man and wife, a love from which a family is born, must be solid and stable. That solidity and stability comes from the courage to assume a lasting and exclusive commitment, to say “yes” and then to live out the implications of that “yes” day in and day out, “until death do you part.” Just like a house needs a solid foundation, so too marriage needs a solid foundation which Christ’s love gives; but, like a house, a marriage is not built just in a day, and it requires a lot of work and patient cooperation.
As you celebrate your anniversaries, you can look back and see how God's grace was with you, helping you along the way.
We ask you to once again renew the 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 to the “good news” of marriage.
