Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Edward Roman Catholic Church, Palm Beach, FL
Nuptial Mass of Sean “Jack” Corkery and Sarah Peterson
July 3, 2019
Sir 26:1-4.13-26, Ps 103, 1 Jn 4:7-12, Mt 5:1-12
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following text guided today’s homily:
July 3 in the Church’s liturgical calendar is the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle. He is known most commonly, and most unfortunately, by the title “Doubting Thomas” for expressing his incredulity at the news from his fellow apostles that, on the evening of Easter while Thomas absent from their hideout in the Upper Room, Jesus had appeared to them risen from the dead. Thomas wanted proof. He wanted to touch Jesus’ wounds. He wanted to ensure that what the apostles’ saw was not some phantasm but the Jesus he knew had been crucified the previous Friday. Even though Jesus had told Thomas and the other apostles three times that he would be betrayed, tortured, crucified and raised on the third day, and even though those first three verbs had all been fulfilled, Thomas just couldn’t yet accept the fourth. Jesus mercifully returned, invited Thomas to probe his pierced hands and side, and made the exodus from unbelief to faith. Thomas responded with a profound profession of the Risen Lord’s divinity, “My Lord and my God,” words that so many in the Church continue to echo as Jesus is elevated each day at the altar. Jesus told Thomas that he was blessed because he had seen him, but said blessed even more would be those who haven’t seen but believed.
The same Jesus who appeared to Thomas and changed him from Doubting Thomas to Saint Thomas comes here today to St. Edward’s Church in Palm Beach to work a miracle in the life of Jack Corkery and Sarah Peterson. Sarah teaches her second graders at St. Timothy’s that a sacrament is a sign and means of intimate communion with God, or, more classically, an external sign instituted by Christ to confer the grace it signifies. In the Sacrament of Matrimony, Jesus, our Lord and our God, not only unites a Christian man and woman in one flesh but unites them more intimately with him. The Church has always understood the deeper significance of the miracle Jesus did at the wedding feast of Cana as elevating the water of the natural love a man and a woman have for each other into the wine of his own divine love and life. Our Lord and God makes of a couple a Sacrament, a visible sign of his own spousal union with the Church and of the loving communion of persons who is the Blessed Trinity. This is the wondrous reality of the Sacrament of Matrimony! This is what the Risen Lord Jesus is going to do today to, for and within you, Sarah and Jack. Jesus the Bridegroom will make a covenant not just between you but with you, promising that he will be with you always, in good times and bad, in sickness and health, in poverty and prosperity, for as long as you both shall live and ultimately into eternity. Through what you receive today, Jesus wants to make you saints and help you help each other to come to rejoice forever at the eternal wedding banquet of heaven.
But we are living at a time when many in our culture and even in the Church respond to this awesome reality of the Sacrament of Matrimony as doubting Thomases. They desacralize marriage and almost everything about it. This mentality thinks that it’s a mere coincidence that you met each other through a mutual friend from College in January 2018 at a salsa dancing club, or that your first date just happened to occur on St. Valentine’s day, rather than part of a divine plan. They treat the whole reality of marriage and human love as if God is at most an optional accessory. Marriage is understood as a merely human institution based on human love, attraction and feelings. No longer are even children considered an intrinsic part of marriage, because when we lose the sense of how marriage participates in the ongoing work of the Creator, the transcendent purpose of procreation is obscured. And the process of desacralization has led to marriage being viewed fundamentally as a civil exchange of rights and responsibilities rather than a holy covenant, as something that lasts only as long as two shall love rather than live, even as a wifeless or husbandless union of any mutually-attracted two adults.
In the midst of a world in which so many no longer see what marriage really is, in which scores of young people no longer feel inspired enough to marry, in which even Catholics, seeing so many marriages breakdown, no longer believe that the incredible things the Church teaches about marriage are really true, today the Risen Lord Jesus is joining the two of you, Jack and Sarah, and sending you out hand-in-hand to evangelize your friends and contemporaries by showing them the beautiful reality of marriage in the divine plan. He wants first to help you believe in the full reality of what he can, wants to, and will do in you through this sacred bond and, second, to help you help others go from unbelieving to faith. This is your vocation as a Catholic married couple. This is your mission.
In the readings you chose for your Nuptial Mass today, you have already begun to fulfill this mission. In the Gospel, you asked us all to listen to the way Jesus teaches to live. His message has always been, and will always be, countercultural. In a world that seeks after money, that places its faith, hope and love in material positions and in things that can be bought, Jesus tells us that the truly blessed are those who are poor in spirit, who treasure his kingdom above all. In a world that relies on force, that bullies its way to power, Jesus tells us that real happiness comes from being meek, from making peace, from being merciful. In a world addicted to the lust of the flesh, in which as a consequence so many hearts, lives and families are broken, Jesus proclaims the importance of purity of heart that sees God and loves him in others. In a world in which a global indifference to others is metastasizing, Jesus says that the path to happiness is compassion and mourning and to hunger and thirst for justice and holiness. At a time when people crazy publicity, idolize celebrities, and yearn to be popular and members of the so-called “in” crowd, Jesus says we will be blessed, rather, when we’re insulted, persecuted and calumniated because of our love for him. These are not easy words. The reality to which they point is likewise difficult to live. But they are the path Jesus himself lived and the one on which he calls us to follow him. In the face of many who doubt like Thomas that the way Jesus indicates is the way to true and lasting happiness, you are called in your marriage to show faithfully the validation of Jesus’ wisdom.
Likewise in the second reading you chose from St. John’s First Letter, you are aspiring to show the world something crucial about the love that is at the heart of marriage, the family, and human life. We are all moved, Jack and Sarah, by the love you show for each other. When I asked you, Jack, when you love about Sarah, you responded immediately, “I love how kind and warm she is. I have never once seen her get angry.” You told me how she has helped keep you in line, to be disciplined about your spiritual life and health, to be more prioritized about things in general, and has made you a better and more responsible man. Sarah, for you, is the fulfillment of the words of Sirach in today’s first reading: she is worthy, firm in virtue, a gift of the Lord who contents your heart, makes you smile and brings you joy. Sarah, when I asked you about what you love about Jack, you told me, “Jack truly cares. I’m so comfortable with him. His sense of humor is incredible. He’s always making me smile.” You said that his decision to go to law school at night, and the hard work that involves, has inspired you to apply for your Master’s program.
But as grateful and inspired as you are by the love the other has for you, you recognize that marriage rests on an even greater love. “In this is love,” St. John tells us in the second reading, “not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an expiation for our sins.” God’s love precedes human love and is its source. God so loved us that he sent his only begotten Son to take on our human nature, to live, suffer and die for us to redeem us, and to rise in order to raise us up. Matrimonial love is not grounded in human sentiment but in divine action. “Beloved,” St. John continues, “if God so loved us, we must also love one another.” That’s why Jesus can call us to love one another as he as loved us, because his love actually abides in us and makes it possible for us to love by his standard. And this is part, St. John implies, of the sacramentality of marriage. “No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us and his love is brought to perfection in us.” We can’t see God and his love directly in this world, he was saying, but we can glimpse it when we see others truly loving like God loves. That Christ-like love is the visible sign of God’s love. To love like God loves means to be willing to sacrifice out of love. St. Paul calls husbands in his Letter to the Ephesians (Eph 5:21-33) to love their wives like Christ loved the Church, which means, if necessary, even to be crucified as Christ was. That type of ultimate willingness translates into a promptness to sacrifice on much smaller things. Similarly St. Paul calls wives to love their husbands like the love the Lord, to reverence them, to receive and reciprocate their total self-giving. That’s ultimately the love God wants to see be brought to completion in a marriage. That’s the love he wants to help to bring to completion in you. In the face of many who doubt like Thomas that the way Jesus loves is possible, you are called in your marriage to become the visible sign of Jesus’ love in the world. He wants you to believe in it and tohelp our disbelieving world to believe in it.
And the place where the Lord Jesus wants to strengthen you to love like that is here at Mass. There’s great meaning to the fact that you exchange your vows in the context of the Mass. The Mass is not just liturgical garnish, but at the heart of Christian marriage. Just like ancient beds were covered by canopies, so many of the most beautiful ancient Churches in Christianity, like St. Peter’s in Rome, have exquisite baldachins over the altar, to communicate that the altar is the marriage bed of the union between Christ the Bridegroom and his Bride, the Church. It’s here on the altar that we, the Church, receive within the body and blood of Jesus, the divine Bridegroom, becoming one-flesh with him and are made capable to bear fruit with him in acts of love. This is where Jesus wants to renew you weekly, even daily, Jack and Sarah, in your one-flesh conjugal union. This is where he wants to fill you with his love so that that love may be brought to perfection in you as you love each other according to the measure with which he loves you. This is where the Risen Lord Jesus, rather than inviting you to probe his wounds, desires to enter within you seeking to heal your wounds. This is where he hopes you will cry out with faith, “My Lord and my God” and recognize that, just as you believe in his power working through this Sacrament, you will likewise have faith in his power at work within you in the Sacrament of Matrimony.
Today around this marriage bed of Christ’s spousal union, Msgr. Klinzing, your parents, family and friends join me in praying that the Lord who prepared you both for this day from before you were born and brought you together here to this altar will continue to bring the holy vocation and mission he has given you to completion. We pray with you, through the intercession of Saint Thomas, that the Lord will bless you who have not seen but believed with every spiritual blessing in the heavens and through you and your holy matrimony never stop blessing us all.
The readings for today’s Mass were:
A reading from the Book of Sirach
Happy the husband of a good wife, twice-lengthened are his days; A worthy wife brings joy to her husband, peaceful and full is his life. A good wife is a generous gift bestowed upon him who fears the LORD; Be he rich or poor, his heart is content, and a smile is ever on his face. A gracious wife delights her husband, her thoughtfulness puts flesh on his bones; A gift from the LORD is her governed speech, and her firm virtue is of surpassing worth. Choicest of blessings is a modest wife, priceless her chaste person. Like the sun rising in the LORD’s heavens, the beauty of a virtuous wife is the radiance of her home.
Responsorial Psalm — The Lord is king and merciful
Bless the LORD, my soul; all my being, bless his holy name! Bless the LORD, my soul; do not forget all the gifts of God.
Merciful and gracious is the LORD, slow to anger, abounding in kindness. As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on the faithful.
But the LORD’s kindness is forever, toward the faithful from age to age. He favors the children’s children of those who keep his covenant, who take care to fulfill its precepts.
A reading from the First Letter of St. John
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us.
A reading from the Holy Gospel According to Mark
When he saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him. He began to teach them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you [falsely] because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
