Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Anthony of Padua Parish, New Bedford, MA
Nuptial Mass for Louis Alexander Duncan and Cassandra Marie Borges
Extraordinary Form
June 27, 2020
Eph 5:22-33, Mt 19:3-6
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following text guided today’s homily:
The beautiful reality we’re celebrating today of God’s uniting Louis Alexander Duncan and Cassandra Marie Borges a faithful, fruitful and indissoluble bond has a long prehistory, one that goes back beyond Louis’ proposal to Cassandra on April 21, 2019 at the lip of a pond in Whispering Willows Park in Conyngham, Pennsylvania, a short distance from the Duncan home. It goes back well before their first date, December 21, 2017, in Providence, RI. It extends past the first time they communicated two months earlier, on October 15, when Cassandra signed up for Catholic Match and Louis messaged her, or beyond October 13, when Louis signed up for that online Catholic dating service. It goes back even further than when their parents, Marlin and Patricia, Deacon Ed and Ann, got the joy-filled news to expect them 27 years ago. The prehistory to their wedding extends back to even before God said, “Let there be light,” And to understand the significance and beauty of this day, we need to see where it fits into God’s plan for them and for the world.
When Jesus, in the Gospel we just heard, was 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 the 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 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, Louis and Cassandra, 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 have not only received a Sacrament. Today you have become a Sacrament, a visible sign, as St. John Paul II used to say, pointing to the invisible reality of the Trinitarian loving communion of persons. You have been called, chosen and commissioned by God to be not just a living reminder of the fruitful, faithful, indissoluble love of God and to reflect efficaciously in your own marriage Christ’s love for his bride the Church, but to preach that Gospel of human love in the divine plan, in words and in body language, for as long as you both shall live.
But while your marriage has that long and awesome prehistory, there is, as you’ve both mentioned to me, great significance to the milestone dates of your relationship. I’d like to spend some time on each of them, not just for your sake, but for the benefit of us all.
The first date is October 13, the anniversary of the last apparition of Our Lady in Fatima in 1917. “Our Lady of Fatima,” you told me, Louis, “truly had a strong hand” in your relationship. Your family always had had a deep devotion to Our Lady of Fatima and had tried to live the message she entrusted to us to pray and sacrifice for the conversion of sinners and to consecrate ourselves and the world to her Immaculate Heart. A few weeks before you signed up on Catholic Match, you committed to go on a pilgrimage to Fatima with your family along with others close to the Catholic organization America Needs Fatima. You said you were going with the express purpose of asking Our Lady’s guidance to help you find a “good Catholic girl” and a “good job.” After committing to make the pilgrimage, you took advantage of a discount you found and on October 13, the exact centenary of Our Lady’s final apparition, you signed up for Catholic Match. Our Lady, whose shrine you would soon visit, interceded for both of the intentions you had entrusted to her and in very short time not only found you a good job but, as all the parishioners here at this parish can heartily attest, a “good Catholic girl,” one from a family that, like all faithful Portuguese Catholics, has a profound love for Nossa Senhora de Fátima.
When most Catholics think about the apparition of Our Lady on October 13, we focus on the remarkable “Miracle of the Sun” that, in addition to drying immediately the drenched clothing of 70,000 people, converted many journalists, lukewarm Catholics and even communists present. It was the fulfillment of the long-awaited sign Our Lady had promised the shepherd children to give. There was another aspect to that sign, however. Mary appeared with together with St. Joseph holding the child Jesus as the baby Jesus was blessing the people. Sister Lucia dos Santos, the pastorinha who remained in the world after her cousins, Saints Francisco and Jacinta Marto were embraced by Jesus into eternal life, commented in her book Calls from the Message of Fatima, about why she believes Mary appeared in that way. Her words that have only grown in relevance since she wrote them.
“In times such as the present,” she stated, “when the family often seems misunderstood in the form in which it was established by God, and is assailed by doctrines that are erroneous and contrary to the purposes for which the Divine Creator instituted it, surely God wished to address to us a reminder of the purpose for which He established the family in the world?” By Mary’s appearing together with the other members of the Holy Family, a sign was being given to the world of the importance of the family. Sr. Lucia continued, “God entrusted to the family the sacred mission of co-operating with Him in the work of creation, … a sacred mission that makes two beings become one in union so close that it does not admit of separation. It is from this union that God wishes to produce other beings… God ordained it to be,” she said referring to Genesis, and “Jesus Christ confirmed and endorsed in Matthew 19: 4-6, in the face of human efforts, at that time, to pull in the opposite direction.” She concluded, “Hence, in the Message of Fatima, God calls on us to turn our eyes to the Holy Family of Nazareth, into which He chose to be born, and to grow in grace and stature, in order to present to us a model to imitate, as our footsteps tread the path of our pilgrimage to Heaven.”
Sr. Lucia’s appreciation for the centrality and importance of marriage in the message of Our Lady of Fatima only deepened with time. Cardinal Carlo Caffarra in 2008 revealed the contents of a correspondence he had with Sr. Lucia back in the early 1980s when he had asked for her prayers as he, at John Paul II’s request, was trying to establish the John Paul II Institute for the Study of Marriage and Family in Rome, where I attended and had Cardinal Caffarra as a brilliant professor. He didn’t expect an answer from Sr. Lucia, but a few weeks later, she wrote back a lengthy, signed letter that is treasured in the Institute’s archives. She wrote, “The final battle between the Lord and the kingdom of Satan will be about Marriage and the Family.” She continued, “Whoever works for the sanctity of Marriage and the Family will always be fought against and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue.” But she encouraged him, “Be not afraid,” because, “Our Lady has already crushed his head.”
Mr. and Mrs. Duncan — I’m happy to be the first to say that publicly! — today, hand-in-hand, you take up together with Our Lady that sacred battle for holy marriage. So many of your contemporaries are afraid of making a commitment — especially a commitment that is for better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness or health, all the days of one’s life. Seeing so many relationships break down, many prefer to keep their options open, they refuse to entrust their future to another. They seek to receive some of the comfort and benefits that come from relationships that in many outward ways resemble marriage but without giving themselves totally to what God desires and true love entails. Many others are confused about what marriage is, with some thinking it’s just romantic symbolism, or a piece of paper, or a temporary union for as long as two shall love, or a husband-less or wife-less reality whose meaning can be defined or redefined by the parties themselves, or the popular culture, or the courts.
Today, in contrast to the spirit of the age, you are making a public profession about marriage, its nature and importance. You’re openly proclaiming that you’re entering not into a contract but a covenant, a sacred commitment not just to each other but to God, consecrating your love in a special way within the love of the God who created you, brought you together, and who today is making a sacred commitment to you to accompany you in good times and bad, in poverty and prosperity, in fitness and frailty for as long as you live. You’re brazenly declaring that you desire not just to make the other happy, but to be God’s instrument to help make the other holy. You’re avowing that the gift you ultimately want to give each other is not merely a beautiful ring, or the exchange of a last name, or even the gift of yourself, however faithful, fruitful, free and total; but you’re overtly affirming that you are seeking to give God to each other, to help the other grow in God’s image and likeness, to assist the other with you to build your life on the indestructible foundation of faith in Christ. You’re asserting that you want your bond to be one that will lead you, hand-in-hand, we pray, down the nave of a sanctuary more beautiful than St. Anthony’s, for a Nuptial Banquet that will know no end. Our Lady of Fatima, to whom you consecrate yourselves today as a married couple, and whom you have been constantly invoking throughout your engagement as you have prayed the Rosary together almost every day, is praying for you, just like she prayed for the young couple in Cana of Galilee.
The second date is October 15, 2017 when you Cassandra, joined Catholic Match and Louis wasted no time in reaching out to you. October 15 is the Feast of St. Teresa of Avila and you told me that “Our Lady of Fatima and Saint Teresa of Avila” are the “two patrons” of your relationship and now marriage. Saint Teresa of Avila is first and foremost one of the greatest teachers in the history of the Church on the art of prayer and doubtless is praying for you that you may truly excel as a married couple in your making your home a domestic Church, a true house of prayer, where God is welcomed, adored and loved. Among the teachers of mystical theology, however, St. Teresa is known for her experience and writings on the meaning of “spiritual marriage,” by which she uses the human reality of marriage to try to express the ineffable way by which God seeks to unite us to him, through prayer and Christian life in this world, and in the communion of saints in heaven. The characteristics of that advanced union with God are a great guide to how to live a true loving communion of marriage with each other and together with God. The characteristics of spiritual marriage, she said, are a “self-forgetfulness so complete” that one is totally focused on the other; a “great desire to suffer” out of love for the beloved, leading to the readiness to bear any Cross and a “constant tranquility” in doing so; a “marked detachment” from all the things of the world so that one can cling to God with “tender love”; a “loss of fear” in which we grow in “strength” to serve God and others; and finally the almost constant awareness and “presence” of God the Bridegroom. These virtues characteristic of the end of prayer are a road map for a holy marriage. Jesus promised that when two or more are gathered in his name to pray, he will be in their midst. Continue to pray together, for the family that does, stays together. And count on the help of St. Teresa from above, that through your marriage today you might come, in this world and the next, to the transforming union of the spiritual marriage about which she teaches.
The third date is April 21, 2019, when you, Louis, proposed close to a quiet favorite spot near the pond at Whispering Willows Park. It was Easter Sunday and, to Cassandra’s initial confusion and uneasiness, you anxiously pulled her away from the wonderful time you were having with your family at home. As you, Louis, were getting ready to propose, Cassandra was unaware of what was about to happen, and spent a few emotional moments interrogating you why you had pulled her away from the others, something from her upbringing that she thought couples should never do. In the midst of that barrage, you dropped to a knee and silenced her by asking her to share the rest of her life with you. With tears of joy, she immediately said yes. You hastily put the ring on her finger, took in the moment with awed, grateful and happy silence, and returned to break the good news of great joy to your family and, via Skype, to Cassandra’s here in New Bedford.
It’s significant that you chose Easter Sunday, because marriage, like any Sacrament, is meant to help you enter more deeply into a communion with Jesus risen from the dead. Marriage, of course, involves great sacrifice, dying to oneself and one’s preferences in many respects for the sake of the other and your new family. St. Paul, in his Letter to the Ephesians that we heard earlier, called husbands to love their wives just as Christ loved the Church and laid down his life to make her holy, which is a call to be willing to be crucified out of love for each other. As Cassandra processed down the aisle, she had her eyes fixed on you, Louis, and missed all of the Stations of the Cross, but every bride passes them and eventually in marriage must live them. In your vows, today, you signed up to be with each other, not just in good times, health, and prosperity, but also in bad times, sickness and poverty. You told me, Louis, that the Duncan Clan motto is Disce pati, literally “learn to suffer!” But as much as sufferings borne out of love are part of every Christian life and marriage, because they are part of our cooperation with Christ’s redeeming plan, the even greater reality is the presence of the Risen Lord Jesus in the marriage bond, bringing “newness of life” to every aspect of it. In this Sacrament, you enter into the entirety of the Paschal Mystery, Jesus’ suffering and death, yes, but also his resurrection, which takes the sting out of our suffering and even our own death, provided that we keep that communion. The witness that the world needs most about marriage is not about fidelity, indissolubility, or fruitfulness, as important as all of these are. The most important witness is to the presence of the risen Lord in your married life, and the joy that comes from his being with you always until the end of time. The world needs the witness of your joy not only today on the day of your marriage, and not only on the days, we pray, of the birth and baptisms of your children, the first Communions, marriages, ordinations, professions of vows, and other happy moments, but also on the most difficult days, when the worse, sicker, poorer are particularly painful. That joy is a sign of God’s presence and a particularly powerful proclamation of the Gospel. It’s like the joy of the martyrs that through the centuries converted so many of their guards and onlookers. The Risen Lord Jesus has come into the world, and comes today, so that his joy might be in you and your joy might be complete (Jn 15:11). So rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice! (Phil 4:4).
The last date we’ll focus on is today, June 27. It is the feast of Saint Cyril of Alexandria, who passed into eternal life on this day in the year 444. He was a great preacher about Our Lady as Mother of God, of the importance of prayer, and of the way Christ’s resurrection penetrates and uplifts all aspects of human life. He is also a very important Father of the Church with regard to marriage. He wrote, “Christ blessed marriage in accordance with the economy by which he became man and … went to the wedding in Cana of Galilee.” By the “economy by which he became man,” St. Cyril means the incarnation. He said that Jesus “had no need of temporal birth … for his own nature. No, he meant to bless the very origin of our existence, through a woman’s giving birth to him united with flesh.” He could have entered the world as an adult, but chose to enter just like we enter the world, in the midst of a marriage. In doing so, Christ was calling specific attention to the importance of marriage not just in Creation but in Redemption. And when Christ went to the Wedding Feast of Cana, St. Cyril said, in words that would become famous in Christian theology, Jesus raised the good and natural institution of marriage, seen in the bond of Adam and Eve, to the dignity of a Sacrament, an intimate sign and means of communion with God. Jesus, St. Cyril stressed, “personally blessed marriage by … responding to the invitation to leave for Cana in Galilee along with the holy apostles.” While it seems, he said, that Jesus came “without set purpose,” he in fact came “to work miracles rather than to feast with them.” His first miracle was to raise the water of marriage, itself a gift, to the wine of a sacrament. Christ comes today to work that miracle in you.
He did so first before Mass began, in the Rite of Matrimony. But he intensifies that miraculous work here on the altar, which is where you will be able continuously to renew your vows to each other and to Him. This is where what God has taught you through all these significant dates until now converge. That why it’s so fitting that immediately after the exchange of your marriage vows, you and all of us are now celebrating this Nuptial Mass. There’s great meaning to the fact that over the altar in so many of the most historic Churches in Christianity, there’s an exquisite baldachin. The early Christians used to illustrate the reality between marriage and the Mass in their architecture, covering the altars with a canopy just like ancient beds were covered, to communicate that the altar is the marriage bed of the union between Christ the Bridegroom and his Bride, the Church. Catholics believe that it’s here on this altar that we, the Bride of Christ, in the supreme act of love, receive within ourselves, the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus, the divine Bridegroom, becoming one-flesh with him and being made capable of bearing fruit with him in acts of love. This is the means by which Christ will regularly renew you, Louis and Cassandra Duncan, in the indissoluble one flesh union he has formed of you today. This is the way by which you will receive within Christ’s love for you and become more capable of sharing that love with each other. This is the channel Jesus provides to make of your marriage a truly holy family.
Today around this marriage bed of Christ’s union with the Church and with you, your family, your friends, Our Lady of Fatima, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Anthony of Padua, and all the angels and saints join me in praying that the Lord who has begun this good work in you and brought you here to this altar will nourish your sacred vocation and bring it to completion in the eternal nuptial feast of heaven. We ask the Divine Bridegroom never to stop blessing you with his holy, spousal love and, through the way that you share that love with each other, never to stop blessing us all. Praised be Jesus Christ!
The readings for today’s Mass were:
A reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians
Brothers and Sisters: Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body. As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So [also] husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “For this reason a man shall leave [his] father and [his] mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church. In any case, each one of you should love his wife as himself, and the wife should respect her husband.
The continuation of the Holy Gospel according to Matthew
Some Pharisees approached [Jesus], and tested him, saying, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause whatever?” He said in reply, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and said, ‘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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