Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Joseph Church, Farmington, Missouri
Nuptial Mass for Brent Cunningham and Emily Damba
January 2, 2021
Song of Songs 2:8-10.14.16; 8:6-7, Ps 34, Rom 12:1-2.9-18, Jn 17:20-26
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
A Marriage Not Just in Farmington, but in Bethlehem
Today we are marking the ninth day of Christmas and we cannot help but remember, as we look at the beautiful Christmas crèche, that when God took on our humanity so that we might participate in his divinity, when he came — as the first reading prophesied — “springing across the mountains, leaping across the hills” in order to say to the human race, “Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one and come!,” he deliberately chose to do so within a family. He was conceived and born within a family of an already committed husband and wife. He could have come as a 30-year-old adult, or a teenager, or a 90-year-old. He could have chosen to be born of a single mom, or raised by two bachelors or two girl friends, or some other arrangement. He chose, however, to be born within a family comprised by a marriage of a man and a woman. Why? Precisely in order to redeem the family and make the family an instrument of salvation and sanctification. The family, made in the image of God, is meant to be the world’s greatest sign of God as a communion of persons in love, a living representation of the loving union for which Jesus prayed in the Gospel we just heard, a tangible reminder of the love that exists between Christ and his Bride the Church.
That’s why it’s so beautiful and important, Brent and Emily, that you chose to get married within the short Christmas season. Because of that decision, everyone of your anniversaries, like your wedding day, will be marked by poinsettias and Christmas lights, by praesepios and mistletoes, and perhaps, as we’ve experienced over the last couple of days, by snow, ice and cold. But much like Joseph, Mary and the infant Jesus huddled together in love in the cave of Bethlehem, all the elements of the Christmas season including the weather will be an opportunity for you and, we pray, the family with which God blessed you, to draw closer in the domestic Church the Lord is making of you here and now.
And so today in this beautiful Church of St. Joseph, within the Year of St. Joseph to mark the 150th anniversary of his being named patron of the universal Church, during a nuptial Mass in which after Holy Communion you will consecrate yourselves in a particular way to the Blessed Virgin Mary as Queen of the Family, and as Jesus is preparing to make of your love through the Sacrrament of Matrimony something sacred and sanctifying, it is fitting that we ponder a little the lessons you and every couple can learn from the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
Saint John Paul II wrote in his beautiful document on the family 40 years ago, “Through God’s mysterious design, it was in that family that the Son of God spent long years of a hidden life. It is therefore the prototype and example for all Christian families. … Its life was passed in anonymity and silence in a little town in Palestine. It underwent trials of poverty, persecution and exile. It glorified God in an incomparably exalted and pure way. And it will not fail to help Christian families-indeed, all the families in the world-to be faithful to their day-to-day duties, to bear the cares and tribulations of life, to be open and generous to the needs of others, and to fulfill with joy the plan of God in their regard” (Familiaris Consortio, 86). Thanks to the cooperation of Mary and Joseph, the mystery of the incarnation, the reality of Emmanuel, God-with-us, has “come to be profoundly inscribed in the spousal love of husband and wife and, in an indirect way, in the genealogy of every human family. … Thus the family truly takes its place at the very heart of the New Covenant … in which the divine Bridegroom brings about the redemption of all families [and] from [which] Jesus proclaims the ‘Gospel of the Family.’” (Letter to Families, 20).
What he was saying is that what happens in a marriage is not just a love story between a man and a woman. It’s even more deeply a love story between God and the human race. We see in the Holy Family how marriage and the family are a crucial part of the Redemption. Just as sin entered the world through the family of Adam and Eve, so the Redemption happened by means of a family, as the loving and trusting obedience of Mary and Joseph reversed the distrusting disobedience of Eve and Adam. Saint John Paul insisted, “The future of humanity,” “the history of mankind,” and the “history of salvation,” “passes by way of the family” (Letter to Families, 30).The family, he said, 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, Emily and Brent, your divine calling to form a family patterned after the faith, hope, love and virtues of the Jesus, Mary and Joseph, is part of God’s response to that great struggle on which the future of the world hinges.
Becoming Strong with the Strength of God
But we have to ask: How does a family, how will your family, become strong with the strength of God?
Pope Francis reminded us five years ago in his exhortation on the Joy of Love that “no family drops down from heaven perfectly formed; families need constantly to grow and mature in the ability to love. This is a never-ending vocation” (AL 325). Each family needs to work at becoming strong with God’s strength. In the second reading you chose from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, the apostle teaches us about how couples are fortified with the invigorating power of Christ-like love. He urges you, “Let love be sincere; hate what is evil, hold on to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; anticipate one another in showing honor.” He tells you to be zealous in serving the Lord, to persevere in prayer, to be generous in caring for others’ needs, to exercise hospitality, and to the extent possible to live at peace with all.
I rejoice that you’re already striving to help each other become strong in the sincere love that comes from God. It’s very moving and inspiring that one of the things that helped convince each of you that the other was special is that both of you lived the virtue of chastity out of love for God and your future spouse even before you ever met, saving yourself for the one-flesh communion that God alone brings about through marriage. St. Ambrose once said about the virgin martyrs, that virginity is praiseworthy not because it is found in the virgin martyrs, but because it made the virgin martyrs. In other words, the capacity through chastity to say yes out of love for God and true love for others and no to sin made it possible for them to say yes to God and no to sin at the supreme hour. It made them strong with the strength of God. Chastity is possible, joyful and life-giving, as we see in the two of you. And on behalf of the whole Church, we thank you for teaching us that lesson of love throughout your lifelong preparation for this day!
You’ve also told me during our marriage preparation how the others’ love has made you stronger.
Brent, you said to me about Emily that in great part because of her, your relationship with God has never been better and continues to grow. You said she’s helped you work on your prayer life and ways to expand your faith. You also mentioned how you love “how kind she is. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you believe, she will always treat every person she meets with kindness.” That kindness is shown in the way she pours herself into the gifts she gives, both big and small. You stated, “I’ve been very busy with chores since buying our new house, but I’ve noticed recently that tasks I’ve always done are already completed by Emily.” She also encourages you to be adventurous, to go out together and explore. You said above all you love that she is “constantly trying to improve herself and be the best person she can be,” something that “has awoken a desire in me to constantly improve myself in every aspect of my character. She makes me want to grow and be the best man possible for her. … Emily deserves the best version of me.”
Emily, you have told me that Brent has likewise by his virtues helped you grow to become stronger with the strength of God. “Brent was an answer to a prayer,” you told me during marriage preparation. Beyond enjoying his friendship, conversations, humor and values, beyond his taking delight in your what you called your occasional goofiness and what makes you you, his “optimism,” you said, inspires you, “the way he can literally turn any frown upside down,” the way he always cheers you up, how gentle and respectful he is of you, even when you have hard discussions, how he’s always a gentleman to you and everyone around you, how he makes studying, working and doing just about anything more meaningful, how his work ethic, attitude, personality “makes it so easy to want the best for him.” Thanks to his days in the Air Force, you said, he “has a very strong sense of integrity,” something that you told me has definitely strengthened your own integrity, helping you not to give up on a workout or cheat on a fast day or stop in the pursuit of your goals. “He is always willing to help me, even to the point where I think he is doing so much,” you added. “He is cheerful about it, too. He makes it seem as though it is no inconvenience to help me. He drops everything whenever I say I need help, whether it’s with a big or small issue.” He even loves to wash dishes, you noted with joy, because the dishes are your least favorite chore. And while such acts of service are one of his primary love languages, you recounted, he is also great at words of affirmation. “He tells me I’m beautiful everyday at some point — and what makes it special is that he means it every time: I can see in his eyes that no matter what I look like or feel like, he sees me as beautiful.”
Strong Enough to Make A Courageous Commitment
The way you strengthen each other with the strength of the God — just as the Joseph and Mary strengthened each other to fulfill their vocations, to say yes to God, to center their life on Jesus and his saving Mission — is meant to overflow and strengthen the whole Church. In a few minutes, you will say to each other words you’ve waited your whole life to enunciate, that you take each other to be your spouse and promise to be faithful in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, and promise to love and honor each other all the days of your life. Many times couples make those vows looking ahead with rosy eyes to the future, praying that they will have far more happy times than sad and much more wellness than illness. But you’re making them in the midst of a pandemic, during the most serious global malady the world has seen in 100 years, which has brought worse and sicker times for millions, including for engaged couples, whose plans for their weddings have been dramatically altered. While many couples have reluctantly decided to postpone their marriages, you haven’t. By your choice to get married today in the midst of worldwide sickness and worse times, however, you are giving powerful testimony that what you’re about to say to each other about “in sickness and health, for good times and bad,” you really mean. You are dramatically putting into practice your marriage vows from the first day of your spousal coexistence. And that witness to following your vocation to marriage, to pursuing it even if it means downsizing invitation lists, or missing family members who would not be able to make it, or altering other plans or hopes, teaches us all a very important lesson.
What you together are doing today is an important prophetic witness, because, even before the coronavirus, entering into a sacramental marriage has become a courageous and counter-cultural act. So many 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 scores of relationships break down, many people young and old 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. 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, Brent and Emily, in contrast to the spirit of the age, you are making a public profession about marriage and the family, their nature and importance. You are publicly 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 in return, to accompany you for as long as you live. You’re openly 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 just a beautiful ring, or the exchange of last name, or even the gift of yourself, however faithful, fruitful, free and total; 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 to build your life together on the indestructible foundation of faith in Jesus Christ.
We thank you for that witness and we thank God for having chosen you to give that witness, and for today sending you out, hand-in-hand, to announce the Gospel of the Family to a world that so much needs to behold it in all its power and beauty.
Centered on Jesus
To live as a Holy Family means to learn from Mary and Joseph how to center your love and life on Jesus, Emmanuel, God-with-us. For them it involved focusing on the one Mary carried in her womb, the one whom both embraced in swaddling clothes in their arms in Bethlehem, the one whom they fed, bathed and raised in Nazareth. For you it will mean focusing on the same Jesus made truly present for us in the Holy Eucharist.
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 strengthen you, Brent and Emily, with the strength of God. 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 your marriage a truly holy family.
And so what began in line on the first day of medical school orientation when Brent caught sight of a “very cute brunette with short hair” and made her laugh, what grew at Mary Immaculate in Kirksville at Sunday Mass and the receptions afterward, what was nourished on Veteran’s Day and then your first date on November 17, 2018, what was turned into a bonfire last January 25 when you, channeling your inner George Bailey, proposed and said you want to give Emily the stars, the moon and all she ever wanted, come to their culmination here today as you meet Christ at the altar. Through and with your consent, he will fulfill his prayer in the Gospel and your prayers over the past many months and make you one, helping you to keep that loving communion in such a way that through you and your love, you may give witness, as he prayed, that God the Father sent the Son and that the Father loves us just as much as he loves the Son.
It is here where the love with which the Father loves the Son will be in you and Christ in you. It is here where you will learn how to offer your bodies, as St. Paul tells you today, as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship. It is here where you will learn, as we sang in the Psalm, how to taste and see the goodness of the Lord and to bless the Lord at all times with his praise in your mouth. It is here where Christ will fill you with the virtues of Bethlehem and Nazareth.
Today around this marriage bed of Christ’s union with the Church and with you, your family, your friends, St. Joseph, the Blessed Mother all the saints and angels 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 pray that he will never stop blessing you with his holy, spousal love and, through the way that you live out this holy sacrament, never to stop blessing us all.
The readings for the Mass were:
A Reading from the Song of Songs
Hark! my lover — here he comes springing across the mountains, leaping across the hills. My lover is like a gazelle or a young stag. Here he stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, peering through the lattices. My lover speaks; he says to me, “Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one, and come!” “O my dove in the clefts of the rock, in the secret recesses of the cliff, Let me see you, let me hear your voice, For your voice is sweet, and you are lovely.” My lover belongs to me and I to him. He says to me, “Set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm; For stern as death is love, relentless as the nether world is devotion; its flames are a blazing fire. Deep waters cannot quench love, nor floods sweep it away.”
Ps 34 — I will bless the Lord at all times
I will bless the LORD at all times;
praise shall be always in my mouth.
My soul will glory in the LORD
that the poor may hear and be glad.
Magnify the LORD with me;
let us exalt his name together.
I sought the LORD, who answered me,
delivered me from all my fears.
Look to God that you may be radiant with joy
and your faces may not blush for shame.
In my misfortune I called,
the LORD heard and saved me from all distress.
The angel of the LORD, who encamps with them,
delivers all who fear God.
Learn to savor how good the LORD is;
happy are those who take refuge in him.
A Reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans
I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship. Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect. Let love be sincere; hate what is evil, hold on to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; anticipate one another in showing honor. Do not grow slack in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, endure in affliction, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the holy ones, exercise hospitality. Bless those who persecute [you], bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Have the same regard for one another; do not be haughty but associate with the lowly; do not be wise in your own estimation. Do not repay anyone evil for evil; be concerned for what is noble in the sight of all. If possible, on your part, live at peace with all.
A Reading from the Holy Gospel According to John
Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said, “Father, I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me. Father, they are your gift to me. I wish that where I am they also may be with me, that they may see my glory that you gave me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father, the world also does not know you, but I know you, and they know that you sent me. I made known to them your name and I will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.”
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