Fr. Roger J. Landry
Basilica of Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Manhattan
Nuptial Mass of Liam Andrew Coulter and Zoe Tarasiewicz
May 11, 2024
Tob 8:4-8, Ps 112, Rom 12:1-2.9-18, Mt 7:21.24-29
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
- This beautiful day has a divine prehistory. The same Lord who brought Liam and Zoe into existence in cooperation with the love of their parents, the same Lord who gave them to new life in the baptismal fonts of St. Benedict Catholic Church in Seattle and St. Michael the Archangel Church in Levittown, Pennsylvania, implanted within both of them the seed of a burning desire to live up to the prophetic dimension of Baptism, later sealed and strengthened by the Sacrament of Confirmation. With great generosity, after graduating from college, they committed themselves to spreading the Gospel as FOCUS missionaries, trying to bring the light of their love for Jesus to university students wherever they would be sent.
- But God had more in mind for them than the amount of young people they would be able to help grow in their relationship with Jesus and his Bride the Church. God, who cannot be outdone in generosity, was preparing them at the same time for another vocation. Through God’s providence working through a FOCUS regional director, they were assigned together as missionaries at Columbia University, where together they tilled that part of the Lord’s vineyard and, with their teammates, produced much fruit. And through their regular team prayer and holy hours, subway travel, meetings, Masses, meals, retreats, mission trips, SEEK conferences, training sessions, and more, they both began to sense in the other someone more than a fellow missionary. As soon as Zoe was promoted to Regional Director and it was possible for them, technically no longer teammates, to date, they didn’t waste any time. They had their first date a year ago tomorrow. When Liam told me about his intentions, I told him I blessed the idea with both hands and so many others who knew and loved them eagerly cheered. Because of the deep foundation of friendship and mutual esteem they had developed serving Christ and others together, but mainly because of the complementary vocational graces God had given each of them, their relationship flourished. 364 days later, here we are, as we together witness their commitment to take on another missionary task.
- The vocation of Holy Matrimony, like every calling, has a mission. Summoned to be a domestic Church, every Christian marriage and family, like the Church as a whole, more properly does not just “have” a mission, but “is” a mission. Every married couple is meant be what St. John Paul II called “a saved community, … called upon to communicate Christ’s love to their brethren, thus becoming a saving community” (FC 49). Every Christian married couple is meant to be evangelized evangelizers. At the beginning of the Church, as you recall, the Lord Jesus sent out first the 12 apostles and then the 72 disciples in pairs, even though they could have theoretically covered twice as much ground in the same time if he had sent them out solo. But in his plan, Jesus wanted to send us out as pairs, so that people would not only be able to hear from them the good news of the kingdom, but see it in the way that the two apostolic disciples would love each other, forgive each other, pray together, and more. Throughout the history of the Church, as we seek faithfully to carry out the Great Commission Jesus gave us at his Ascension, the Holy Spirit has continued to send out disciples two by two, joined hand in hand in Holy Matrimony. Today, Liam and Zoe are being sent out as matrimonial missionaries of love and life, not just to Austria, but to the whole world. And today we come to ask God to bless them and make their mission of love and life abundantly fruitful.
- To be effective missionaries to others, they, like any couple, must first be missionaries to each other. They must help each other, as Jesus told us in the Gospel they chose for their wedding, to build their life on him the rock. Taken from the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Christ emphasizes that it’s not everyone who calls upon him as Lord, but only those who do the will of his Father in heaven, who build their life on him and what he teaches, who will enter his Kingdom. In the Holy Land at Jesus’ time, there was obviously not the type of heavy construction equipment we use today. Jesus, like St. Joseph, was a tekton, or builder, which meant everything from a carpenter to a cabinetmaker, construction worker, engineer and architect. To build on craggy uneven rocks was challenging and time-consuming, involving lots of measurements, toilsome drilling with hand tools to make even foundations, and other arduous tasks. The people who were not willing patiently to put in that work would turn to dry, flat creek beds at the bottom of valleys where they would try to erect something fast. When the seasonal rains would come, however, the water flowing down from the hills would inundate the creeks, and the flood would take the house, its possessions and sometimes its occupants and wash them away. Zoe and Liam want to build differently. They want to build wisely. They want to construct their home and family life solidly on the rock of God’s word and the person of Christ the indestructible Cornerstone. Because they have common sense and maturity, they know that the rains will fall, the floods will come, and the winds will blow and buffet against every house and apartment where they’ll live. They know that they will experience not just sunny days, not just richer, healthier, and better times, but also poorer, sicker and worse ones, and they want to build their common existence solidly on the bedrock of deep faith. Together they want to build their future life on the Lord’s revelation about marriage. They want to construct it on a life of prayer and Christ’s work in the Sacraments. They want to erect it on Christ’s command to love each other as he has loved them first.
- And we rejoice that they indeed have already been missionaries to each other, helping to strengthen each other’s faith on Christ the rock, for the last three years. Liam told me about Zoe in marriage preparation, “She challenges me to grow like no other woman [ever has]. I see a desire in her heart to pursue God that is hard to come by. … I love her love of God. She strives to please God and to serve Him in all things. I love her desire to make God known to others through her sharing of the faith. … I love that she is not afraid to call me higher. She has inspired me to live a more disciplined and ordered life. She has also helped me through her encouragement to do hard things. She has also motivated me to be more sacrificial with my time [as] I have seen how she sacrifices her time for the sake of others, and I realized that I desire to do the same. She has helped me to grow in gentleness.” He concluded, “I love how joyful she is and her love of life,” and thanked God for show she has enriched him with that joy and love.
- Zoe, you told me during our sessions that Liam “is a great missionary” and has had a similar impact on helping you to ground yourself ever more in your relationship with God. You recounted how impressed and moved you have been by his humility, how “he owns his weaknesses and mistakes better than most people I know and is able to receive feedback and criticism in order to grow. He is always striving to be a better and holier man.” You added that you love his “pursuit of the true and good. … He chooses, by his intellect and will, to do the thing that is right, even if it is challenging or uncomfortable. He is very generous and challenges and inspires me to be more generous. I love that Liam comes off as a tough guy, but when you get to know him, he is deep, thoughtful, and has a big heart. I love Liam’s ability to connect with people [and how] intentional [he is] about maintaining relationships. He is a hard worker, persevering, motivated, very intelligent and confident. He’s not afraid of conflict, especially when we have disagreements or issues, and helps us to work through them. … He has inspired me to be more generous through his own generosity with others, and to be more intentional in maintaining relationships, … to be more uncompromising in pursuing the good. He has also inspired me to grow in my relationship with and devotion to Our Lady through the Rosary. We encourage each other to persevere in prayer, grow in virtue, and follow God’s call even when it is hard.”
- In short, you have been helping each other already to experience a little bit of the advice St. Paul gives every missionary disciple, and every married couple, in today’s second reading to know how to build their mutual existence on the solid foundation of Jesus the Cornerstone. The great apostle urges you, “Let your love be sincere,” and then gives a list of behaviors so that your love will for each other will be as sincere as Christ’s love for you: to hate what is evil and hold onto what is good; to love each other with mutual affection; to anticipate each other in showing honor, the love and honor you will publicly profess in a few minutes you wish to give each other for the rest of your life; to help each other to be fervent and zealous in serving the Lord through serving each other as you would serve Christ in the flesh; to rejoice together in the hope Christ places in you even on days you might be tempted to complain or despair; to endure in affliction even in the midst of the sorrows and contradictions that inevitably accompany every marriage; to persevere in prayer, knowing that God is with you listening and responding; to have the same regard for each other, not looking down on each other, but always being concerned for what is noble; and to live at peace to the extent possible, never letting the sun go down on your anger, and seeking to abide together with the Prince of Peace even after quarrels. With sincere love like this, you will strengthen each other in your commitment as followers of Christ and as evangelizers.
- This brings us to the other point that St. Paul gives you and all of us in the second reading: the context in which you are being sent out to proclaim and live the Gospel is not easy. It’s not easy on the campuses of Columbia, Brown, Vermont, Boston University. It won’t be easy in Vienna. Wherever you end up over the course of your marriage, in most places it will be challenging. But it wasn’t easy for St. Paul and the first wave of missionary disciples either. As you prepare to transmit to others as a married couple something of the total self-giving love of God, what St. Paul calls offering “your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God,” the apostle tells you, “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.” Your self-giving love for each other, your conforming yourself to Christ in marriage with all your mind, heart, soul and strength, is a witness, a Gospel, that the world very much needs to hear and to see lived. Marriage today is a courageous and counter-cultural act. So many in our age 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 millennials and Gen-Zers 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 changing reality whose meaning can be defined or redefined by the parties themselves, the popular culture or the courts. You’re making a public act, in contrast to the spirit of this age, that marriagemeans something, and something essential to human happiness and flourishing. Your witness to the beauty of human love in the divine plan is one of the most powerful lessons both of you, individually and together, have given as missionaries at Columbia and beyond. Today you’re professing that you’re entering into not 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 all the days of your life. You’re openly declaring your faith 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 last name, or even the gift of yourself, however faithful, fruitful, free and total; rather, you’re plainly affirming that 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 remain in God’s love and enter fully into his joy. You’re stating that you want your bond truly to be a holy matrimony, one that will lead you, hand-in-hand, we pray, down the nave of a sanctuary for more beautiful than this, the golden streets of the heavenly Jerusalem (Rev 21:21), for a Nuptial Banquet that will know no end. And you are making a joint commitment as missionaries to help others, especially the young, not to be conformed to this age either, but to be transformed by the way Jesus seeks to renew our minds, so that we might discern what God’s will is in every circumstance and choose what is good, pleasing, perfect, loving and life-giving, what will lead them together with us, we pray, to happiness, holiness and heaven.
- During this Mass, you’ve asked to add two elements that signify your faith and the help you’re asking God so that you will better construct your life on him and live up to your vocation as matrimonial missionaries in sacramental communion. Toward the end of Mass, you will process together as husband and wife to the Altar of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Daughter of Zion who teaches us how to be faithful disciples of her Son, the woman God the Father chose to be the mother of his Son and Jesus himself from the Cross chose to be our Mother, the one who brought Christ to Saints Elizabeth and John the Baptist and has continued to bring the message of love and mercy to Guadalupe, Lourdes, Fatima and more, the loving Lady who interceded with her Son for the couple in Cana of Galilee for his first miracle and who doubtless is interceding for you now. You will also entrust yourself to her maternal intercession a prayer of consecration you both have composed. You will present her flowers, asking for her prayers that the divine grace her Son bestows will truly flourish in your marriage. We join you in those heartfelt, filial prayers.
- The second element you wanted to incorporate is that when you profess your vows, you will be holding in your hands a crucifix you asked me to bless for your new home, one that will be on the altar today as the Divine Bridegroom descends. Making your vows embracing Christ on the Cross is a prophetic witness that, as you enter into the covenant of marriage, you do so strengthened by Christ’s cruciform love for you, as you beg him to help you love each other by that same standard. St. Paul called all Christian husbands to love their wives “as Christ loved the Church and handed and handed himself over for her to sanctify her” (Eph 5:25), to seek in marriage to say to each other, “This is my body given for you,” making your married life a commentary on the words of consecration. It’s a challenge of course to commit oneself until death no matter what comes. It requires great faith in God, in each other, and in God’s capacity to draw good, even love, from difficulties, economic hardships, problems with veils in wedding processions, suffering and even death. But as you hold the Cross, you recognize that God the Father drew the greatest good of all time — his Son’s resurrection and our salvation — from the greatest evil of Jesus’ crucifixion and that he, similarly, will make all things work out for the good for those who love him, as both of you do (Rom 8:28). As you make these vows to each other and to and before God, we pray that you will model your married life on the mystery of the Lord’s Cross and see in the cross the deepest expression of the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord for you and a sign of hope that he will help you become capable of loving each other to that sacred extreme.
- At every Mass, we Catholics believe we enter liturgically in time into the eternal events of Jesus’ once-and-for-all sacrifice from the Upper Room and Calvary for us and our salvation. This is where we experience the renewal of our minds and commit ourselves to put on the mind of Christ as we hear and heed the Word of God. This is where we seek to build our life on the living Christ as he sacramentally comes down on the altar for us. This is where the early Christians used to build canopies over altars to symbolize that the altar is the marriage bed where the union between Christ and his Bride the Church is consummated, as the Bride of Christ receives within herself the Body and Blood of Christ the Bridegroom, and is capacitated to live filled with the spousal love of God.
- The altar is indeed the marriage bed where generations of Catholic couples, in imitation of Tobias and Sarah, have prayed not just on their wedding day but throughout their marriage, that the Lord may pour out his mercy upon them, deliver them from every evil, and strengthen them in the noble purpose of Christian marriage as long as they both shall live. It’s where married couples say together “Amen, Amen!,” that beautiful Hebrew verb for “uphold” or “support,” confessing overtly that they will make Christ and his divine mercy given for us in the Eucharist, the efficacious sign of his inseparable love, the true foundation of their life. Today, around this marriage bed, we all join you in praying, that God, who has waited for this day since the foundation of the world, will bless you with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, and through you, the love of God you radiate, and the matrimonial mission of life and love he gives you today, bless us all.
The readings for today’s Mass were:
A Reading from the Book of Tobit
Tobiah arose from bed and said to his wife,
“My love, get up. Let us pray and beg our Lord to have mercy on us and to grant us deliverance.”
She got up, and they started to pray and beg that deliverance might be theirs.
He began with these words:
“Blessed are you, O God of our fathers;
praised be your name forever and ever.
Let the heavens and all your creation praise you forever.
You made Adam and you gave him his wife Eve to be his help and support;
and from these two the human race descended.
You said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone; let us make him a partner like himself.’
Now, Lord, you know that I take this wife of mine not because of lust, but for a noble purpose.
Call down your mercy on me and on her, and allow us to live together to a happy old age.”
They said together, “Amen, amen,”
The Word of the Lord.
Responsorial Psalm: Happy are those who fear the Lord
Happy are those who fear the LORD, who greatly delight in God’s commands.
Their descendants shall be mighty in the land, a generation upright and blessed.
Wealth and riches shall be in their homes; their prosperity shall endure forever.
They shine through the darkness, a light for the upright; they are gracious, merciful, and just.
They shall never be shaken; the just shall be remembered forever.
They shall not fear an ill report; their hearts are steadfast, trusting the LORD.
Their hearts are tranquil, without fear, till at last they look down on their foes.
Lavishly they give to the poor; their prosperity shall endure forever; their horn shall be exalted in honor.
A Reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans
I urge you therefore, brothers and sisters, 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.
The Word of the Lord.
A Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’
will enter the kingdom of heaven,
but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.
Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them
will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.
The rain fell, the floods came,
and the winds blew and buffeted the house.
But it did not collapse;
it had been set solidly on rock.
And everyone who listens to these words of mine
but does not act on them
will be like a fool who built his house on sand.
The rain fell, the floods came,
and the winds blew and buffeted the house.
And it collapsed and was completely ruined.”
When Jesus finished these words,
the crowds were astonished at his teaching,
for he taught them as one having authority,
and not as their scribes.
The Gospel of the Lord.
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