The Gospel of John, chapter 2, 1-2

Think for a minute about some of the most important days in your life. Most traditional cultures and ancient wisdom mention the day of birth, the day of death, the first day of your career, the day of ordination, or the day of marriage. Today I want to talk about one of those days- the wedding day.

Marriage was always important for a variety of reasons. It marked the beginning of adult life. It was a kind of insurance policy to protect couples in the future. And, perhaps most important, it was a sacred sign of the relationship between God and his people because it reflects a covenant between God and man in one of the most intimate relationships to be found in society. Marriage talk today is almost always about trends and problems. Let’s focus our attention on the spiritual side of this union, the deep togetherness that is itself an image of Christ’s relationship with His flock.

The news media thrive on tragedy. An earthquake is news. A day without a natural disaster is not. A war will make the headlines. A time of peace will not. It is the nature of the media to seek out what is unusual or perhaps wrong and to inform us of it. The trouble is that we may begin to think everything is abnormal since that is all we see and hear on our TV sets and in our newspapers. But this is merely a sensational characterization of what goes on in life, and does not tell the full story.

Marriage is subject to the same sensationalism. The media reports all that is problematic with contemporary marriage : divorce rates, child abuse, sexual deviations, unfaithfulness and more. Yet, at the same time, we must not forget that millions of couples are deeply in love with each other and express that love through lives of devoted self-sacrifice. It is they who reflect the loving union of God and His people. Their unions are a sacrament of a loving God.

In the old marriage ceremony, there is a beautiful admonition which was read to the couple just before they exchanged their vows. One section of it read, “Sacrifice is usually difficult and irksome; only love can make it easy, and perfect love can make it a joy.” Love, then, is more than good feelings. It is the day-in and day-out dying to self and rising to a new life, made possible for us through the Resurrection of Christ. You could say that marriage is the dying of the old self and the rising of the new man and woman .

We cannot afford to be condemnatory of broken marriages today either since the pressures on married couples and families can be almost overwhelming. Think of the economic and personal burdens some families have to bear : the trials of a marriage in which both parents have to work; and the threat to intimacy in a family when a parent must be absent from home for long periods of time. We might long for the simple days of the past when these kinds of obstacles were rare and when the individual family was supported by the extended family of grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins and neighbors.

Yet, many of today’s marriages are a joy to behold. The circumstances might be different from those of the past, and that is how it should be, but the resilience of married couples to remain faithful and fulfilled in spite of changing circumstances is nothing less than miraculous.

Great things can and do happen when married couples allow God’s will to inform and strengthen their relationship. These marriages are things of beauty and uplift our spirits because they are what marriages are meant to be.

The loving union of two people united in an unbreakable bond.

Fr. Hugh Duffy