Fr. Roger J. Landry
Church of the Annunciation, Houston, Texas
Nuptial Ceremony for Ruben Flores and Amanda Pereira
October 16, 2021
Eccl 4:9-12, Ps 112, 1 Cor 12:31-13:8, Mk 10:6-9
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, the Gospel and first few minutes of which are in Spanish, please click below:
The following text, part of which was preached in Spanish, guided the homily:
Nine years ago, Amanda and her parents Lucy and Al, my parents Roger and Midge, about 50 others and I went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. One of the places we were privileged to visit was Cana in Galilee, where Jesus worked his first miracle, at the intercession of his mother, on behalf of a young, newly married couple, who had run out of wine for their eight-day wedding reception. The Church has always looked at the great miracle Jesus worked as more than just a wedding gift to couple, converting 180 gallons of water into precious wine, the equivalent today of 912 750-ml bottles or 76 cases of wine! The Church has understood its deeper significance as Jesus’ elevating the “water” of the natural love between a man and a woman — the primordial “sacrament” or sign of the divine image in the union of Adam and Eve in the beginning — into the “wine” of his divine love and life, a sign and means of intimate supernatural communion with him.
In Cana, it’s customary, after pondering the various elements of miracle, for everyone to pray in gratitude to God for the gift of marriage and the family and for priests to give a special blessing to all married couples, asking God to renew them in their covenant of love with each other and with God. It’s also a place where everyone prays in a special way for those who believe they have the vocation to marry but have not yet met the person with the corresponding vocation. It was that day, after having the privilege to bless Al and Lucy, my own mom and dad, and all of the other married couples present, I asked those who were single but hoping to marry to come forward before the altar. We prayed for God to strengthen them in the grace of patience and hope during the difficult, but indefinite period of waiting. We prayed that God would nourish them during this time with the virtues they would need to be a great future husband or wife. And we prayed for whoever God had given the complementary vocation to marriage, that God would preserve the person free from harm, prepare the person inwardly, make the person strong in faith, and bless that person with the same gift.
Amanda was among those that day before the altar. She told me during marriage preparation, “For the longest time, I would always pray to God, asking Him to let me meet the man that I was meant to marry, a man who was kindhearted, respectful, good, strong and prayerful, someone who would treat me well and with respect. I stayed patient, as patient as I could, because I knew when the time was right, God would bring that person into my life, when I and my future husband were ready to be in a mature, loving relationship.” But that time was long in coming. In Cana, after I had prayerfully given the blessing and everyone had said “Amen” and lifted up their bowed heads, I noticed that Amanda wiped away a small tear, which was a tear of hope, a sign of how intensely she was praying body and soul for whoever that person was.
That day, February 25, 2012, without knowing it explicitly, she and all those present in Cana were praying for you, Ruben, that Jesus bless, preserve, protect and strengthen you. And together with her, all of us here in this beautiful Church of the Annunciation are so grateful that God heard that prayer. Today Amanda’s tears are tears of joy. Today the same Jesus who blessed that couple in Cana of Galilee comes here to bless the two of you. He comes to raise your friendship, your profound and inspiring love for each other, to the dignity of a covenant with each other and with him, in the great gift of the Sacrament of Marriage. And we all come here, with the two of you, to praise and thank him for this gift.
Today in the Gospel Jesus speaks very clearly about the importance of marriage in his divine plan. When asked about the nature of marriage, he took it back to the “beginning,” when God made them “made them male and female.” In the Book of Genesis, when God created Adam, Adam had God all to himself in the garden. All of creation had been made for him to govern. He was perfectly in right relationship with God. Even though he seemed to have everything one could ask for, something — more specifically, someone — was missing. And after God had said in the first six phases of creation, “It was good,” “It was good,” “It was good,” “It was good,” “It was good,” “It was good,” and with the creation of the human person, “It was very good,” God finally thundered, “It is not good…for man to be alone.” So he created Eve, a fitting partner, symbolically out of his side, to show that they stand side-by-side, equal, before him. When Adam saw her, he exclaimed, “Finally this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!,” a Hebrew idiom saying that they shared strengths and weaknesses. As Jesus reiterates in today’s Gospel, this is the reason why a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh in love. The upshot of the Creation account is that God, who is love, has created the human person in his image and likeness … in love and for love. Since no one can love in a vacuum, God could not be solitary, there needed to be a Lover and a Beloved, and in God the eternal love between them was so strong as to take on personality in the Holy Spirit. In creating the human person, therefore, God created not just a “him, male and female” but a “them,” a communion between man and woman, whose love for each other could be so strong as to “make love,” to generate new life, as a fruit of their loving communion of persons. From the first marriage of Adam and Eve, to your marriage today, Ruben and Amanda, matrimony was created by God to be a sacrament of love, to help you to grow to be more and more like God and at the same time more fully human. Today you will not only receive a Sacrament. Today you have become a Sacrament, a visible sign pointing to the invisible reality of the Trinitiarian loving communion of persons. You have been given the vocation by God to be a living reminder of his fruitful, faithful, indissoluble love and to reflect efficaciously in your own marriage Christ’s love for his bride the Church, preaching that Gospel of human love in the divine plan, in words and in body language, for as long as you both shall live.
This truth about the blessing of marriage is also alluded to in the first reading you chose from the Book of Ecclesiastes, when God through the sacred author reminds us, “Two are better than one,” because they can pick each other up, keep each other warm in love, and help each other resist all types of vicissitudes and temptations than can normally wear people down. “A three-ply cord,” the sacred author tells us, “is not easily broken!” Marriage is meant to be this strong three-ply cord. It involves not just the strand of the husband and the strand of the wife but also the strand of God, all intertwined in the tight bond of communion, like by analogy the lazo we will bless and tie around you later, connecting you to each other and to God. It takes “Three to Get Married,” as the great Catholic bishop and preacher Fulton J. Sheen made famous in a book by that title. He wrote, “There is a world of difference between loving self in another self, and giving both self and the other self to the Third Who will keep both in undying love. Without the Love of God, there is danger of love dying of its own too-much; but when each loves the Flame of Love — over and above their two individual sparks which have come from the Flame — then there is not absorption but communion. Then the love of the other becomes a proof that he loves God, for the other is seen in God and cannot be loved apart from Him. … In authentic love, the other is accepted not as a god, but as a gift of God. As a gift of God, the other is unique and irreplaceable, a sacred trust, a mission to be fulfilled. … Love that is only giving, ends in exhaustion; love that is only seeking, perishes in its selfishness. Love that is ever seeking to give and is ever defeated by receiving is the shadow of the Trinity on earth, and therefore a foretaste of heaven.”
True love for each other and for God, generously given and received, is what will make your individual cords strong and your three-ply cord so much stronger still. That’s why the second reading you chose, from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, is so important, because it takes love beyond sentimentality to the types of virtues that make it capable of withstanding the tensions and pulls of daily life. St. Paul gives very practical advice about true love, almost as if he is whispering it into your ear as an open secret. Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way, is not irritable or resentful, does not rejoice in wrongdoings, but rejoices in the truth. For love to be true, it must be patient, kind and gentle, not envious but grateful of the others’ gifts, never rude, even when the other might deserve it. Someone who loves should never insist on your own way, on what “I want” rather than on what the other wants or something that together you both desire or need. When we love truly each other with affection, we should never choose to be irritable or resentful or rejoice in wrongdoing, but should seek to forgive each other readily. If a spouse starts to keep score, or have too strong a memory of the times the other has caused hurt, that will begin to unravel the three-ply cord that binds. What Saint Paul is asking is indeed challenging.It’s hard to be patient and kind for better and worse, in sickness and health, in poverty and prosperity all one’s days. It takes real love never to be rude or brood over injury. It requires a capacity to die to oneself for the sake of another to never fail in love. But you’re off to a good start. It was impressive last night as I sat next to you at Minute Maid Park, as you, Ruben, were cheering for the Astros, and you, Amanda, were rooting for the Red Sox. The fact that both of you would want to go to the playoffs after the rehearsal shows how big a fan each of you is of your respective team. As the momentum of the game swung in each team’s direction, you serenely handled the situation, loving each other more than you loved your respective teams. It’s a good metaphor for how you should handle the far more important disagreements that will come. Always approach them in a similar spirit of superceding love. Remember what St. Paul writes: if one has the faith to move mountains, even if he gives his body over as a martyr to be tortured, but if doesn’t have love, he is and gains nothing. True love, received first from God and then shared with other other, is the only thing that truly endures.
I rejoice that you are already seeking to live by the virtues that St. Paul describes, the good moral habits that true love requires and that God wants to help you develop through the sacrament he gives you today.
Ruben you told me during marriage preparation, “What I love about Amanda is that she has a good heart and we see eye to eye on so many things. She’s very smart, has a good career and enjoys new adventures. She has shown me I’m special to her by taking me to things I enjoy such as going to a basketball game and live concerts, as well as supporting me in prep courses to further my education and career. She has inspired me by the work ethic she has to further my education and career. She’s a very caring person. I knew she was the one when we went on our second date because I could see she had a good heart and head on her shoulders and could see her as a mother to our future children.”
You told me, Amanda, “After our first date, that initial meeting, I knew deep down something was different about Ruben, but it was after our second date, a Friday in Lent where we had to compromise on what type of pizza we would get, that I walked away knowing that the man sitting across the table from me the whole night was my future, that I was looking right at my future. It was in that moment, I knew that this was the person God had made for me from the beginning. I love how he keeps God as the center of our relationship. I love how kind, gentle and respectful Ruben is not just toward me but to everyone. He always cheers me up when I’ve had a stressful day. He listens to me and never interrupts me. He is always respectful and a gentleman when giving advice or having difficult discussions. I love his work ethic, his attitude towards life, how his personality is so down to earth. He’s super smart and never jumps into rash decisions, but is mindful and takes everything into consideration before making a decision. He is always willing to help me, whether it’s with work or something at home, always making quality time for me. He encourages me, compliments me and tells me how proud he is of me. He pushes himself every day to strive for more, to be better, never to settle for less and he pushes me not to settle either, but to try new things and makes me want to explore and be more adventurous. He inspires me to continue to dream and to be a better person by the way he looks at life and treats other people.”
This inspiring gift of love that God has given you in each other is not meant just for yourselves, because every vocation has a mission, and your mission — and the mission of every Christian married couple — is crucial for the world. You are getting married on October 16 and, therefore, every anniversary you celebrate will be shared with another important anniversary in the history of Christianity. It was 43 years ago today that Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Krakow was elected Pope John Paul II. Out of all 266 Popes, he by far has taught the most deeply and extensively about the importance of marriage. Hespent his priestly life and lengthy papacy reminding married couples of how important marriage and family are in God’s plans. “The future of humanity,” he insisted, “passes by way of the family” and “the history of mankind, the history of salvation, passes by way of the family.” John Paul emphasized that the family is “at the center of the great struggle between good and evil, between life and death, between love and all that is opposed to love. To the family is entrusted the task of striving, first and foremost, to unleash the forces of good, the source of which is found in Christ the Redeemer of man. Every family unit needs to make these forces their own so that …the family will be ‘strong with the strength of God.’”
Your vocation to marriage, Amanda and Ruben, is part of God’s response to that great struggle between light and darkness. And God wants to make you strong with his strength, in an indestructible three-ply cord. When asked what he says to young couples, John Paul II replied in his Letter to Families, that they should never forget “The Bridegroom is with you!” Jesus, that Bridegroom, the Good Shepherd, our Redeemer, is indeed with you, filling you with his love so that you can love each other as he has loved you first, and so that let that love overflow in your family, among your friends and within the whole world. I pray that every October 16, as you celebrate your anniversary, you’ll remember St. John Paul II on the anniversary of his election, and be renewed in his prayer that through you God will “unleash the forces of good” that our world today so much needs.
Today as we thank God for hearing your prayer, Amanda, in Cana of Galilee, for arranging for the two of you to meet via Hinge and to start to date, grow as friends, fall in love and recognize in each other a gift of God for life, we ask him to bless you with everything you’ll need in good times and bad, in sickness and health, in poverty and prosperity all the days of your married life. We ask him to help you help each other always to strive eagerly for the greatest spiritual gifts and to make your love truly virtuous and enduring. And through the faithful and passionate way that you receive Christ the Bridegroom’s blessing and accompaniment from this day forward, we ask him never to stop blessing us all.
The readings for today’s Mass were:
A Reading from the Book of Ecclesiastes
Two are better than one: they get a good wage for their labor. If the one falls, the other will lift up his companion. Woe to the solitary man! For if he should fall, he has no one to lift him up. So also, if two sleep together, they keep each other warm. How can one alone keep warm? Where a lone man may be overcome, two together can resist. A three-ply cord is not easily broken.
Responsorial Psalm — Blessed the man who greatly delights in the Lord’s commands.
Blessed the man who fears the Lord,
who takes great delight in his commandments.
His descendants shall be powerful on earth;
the generation of the upright will be blessed.
Riches and wealth are in his house;
his righteousness stands firm forever.
A light rises in the darkness for the upright;
he is generous, merciful, and righteous.
It goes well for the man who deals generously and lends,
who conducts his affairs with justice.
He will never be moved;
forever shall the righteous be remembered.
He has no fear of the evil news.
With a firm heart, he trusts in the Lord.
Lavishly he gives to the poor;
his generosity shall endure forever;
his horn shall be exalted in glory.
A Reading from the First Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians
Strive eagerly for the greatest spiritual gifts. But I shall show you a still more excellent way. If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing; if tongues, they will cease; if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing.
A Reading from the Holy Gospel According to Mark
Jesus said to his disciples, “From the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother [and be joined to his wife], and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”
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