Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Elizabeth Seton Catholic Church, Keller, TX
Nuptial Mass of Rijo Thomas Philip and Megan Elizabeth McCleneghen
May 5, 2018
Tob 8:4-8, Ps 103, Rom 12:1-2.9-18, Jn 15:9-17
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following text guided today’s homily:
The Path to Joy
Today the Church on earth unites with the Church in heaven to celebrate the vocation to marriage of Rijo Thomas Philip and Megan Elizabeth McCleneghen and to participate in the Nuptial Mass in which God, through the Sacrament of Matrimony, will unite them in one flesh as husband and wife for the rest of their life.
It’s a day of great joy. Joy for them. Joy for all of us, their family and friends. Joy for God and for all the saints at the Nuptial Banquet in heaven who see in today’s sacrament a means by which God will nourish Megan’s and Rijo’s vocation to holiness and strengthen them in the mission he has given them, as a couple, to radiate in the world through their spousal and familial love an image of God’s love for all of us.
In the Gospel we just heard, which Megan and Rijo chose for their wedding, Jesus speaks about joy. He says he wants his joy to be in us and our joy to be brought to perfection. Jesus wants to fill us with his happiness so that our human longing for happiness will be fulfilled. The means he gives us is by remaining in his love. He tells us, “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love.” That’s an incredible statement. Jesus loves each of us as perfectly as the Father loves him. He loves us with the infinite intensity with which the Persons of the Blessed Trinity love each other. How can we not be filled with joy when we are loved this way by God? But then Jesus gives us a command, even a plea.
“Remain in my love.” This first points to the fact that we don’t have to earn his love. It’s already a given. It precedes our actions. God has loved us even from before the foundation of the world. Our task is to abide in it. To remain is an action verb. It’s the result of a choice. To remain in this sense does not mean just to stay where we are or do nothing; rather it’s to choose to open ourselves up to God’s love, in our prayer, in our relationships, in our work, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, in poverty and prosperity, all our days. Jesus tells us that to remain in his love we need to keep his commandments because his commandments train us to remain in, receive and reciprocate his love. We can’t remain in God’s love — both from him and for him — when we worship idols, or abuse his name, or make no time for him even on the day we call the Lord’s. We can’t remain in his love when we dishonor those through whom he gave us life, when we take another’s life or hate them, when we use others for our gratification, when we steal from them, deceive them or resent when God blesses them.
Remaining in Jesus’ love as a married couple
What Jesus says to all of us about remaining in his love so that his joy may be in us and our joy made complete is particularly significant for Christian married couples. St. Francis de Sales once challenged young Christian spouses to seek to relive the mystery of the Wedding Feast of Cana each day. That young couple invited Jesus and Mary his mother to their wedding and it was through their presence that not only did they save the reception by converting 180 gallons of water into precious wine — the equivalent of 240 bottles — but he also elevated the “water” of their natural love into the “wine” of his divine love, something that obviously points to the way that Jesus would later transform wine into his blood so that his outpoured love would be able to flow literally through our veins.
St. Francis de Sales urged all couples to remain in Jesus’ love by inviting Jesus into their home, their prayer, their labors, their joys and sorrows, their disagreements and reconciliations, into the entirety of their married life. He noted that many marriages struggle and some fail because rather than inviting Jesus, Mary and the saints into their marriage, many couples invite Adonis and Venus, the pagan gods of eros, or bring in the golden calf through the worship of money and material things. They invite the standards and ways of the world rather than those of God and the friends of God. Jesus wishes couples to remain in his love and he is always ready, eager and indeed desirous to receive the invitation to come not just to their wedding and reception but to remain in the couple’s life full-time, 24/7, for as long as they both shall live.
To call to live in God’s love from the beginning
To remain in the love of the Trinity, the love that the Father has for the Son with which the Son loves us, is at the heart of the vocation and mission of Christian marriage. In the beginning of time, as we see depicted in the Book of Genesis and hear repeated in today’s reading from the Book of Tobit, 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, he wasn’t happy. 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,” and so 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 finally experienced joy, exclaiming, “This is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!,” a Hebrew idiom saying that they share strengths and weaknesses. They were to be one flesh. As the text ends, we’re told that 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 in the Book of Genesis is that God, who is love, has created the human person in his image and likeness. He has created the human person in love and for love. And because no one can love in a vacuum, God could not be solitary, because there needed to be a Lover and a Beloved and in God the love between them was so strong as to take on personality. For that reason, in creating the human person, 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, Rijo and Megan, marriage 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.
The Redemption of that call to remain in God’s love
Even after the Fall, when our capacity for love — both receiving it and giving it — was wounded, God’s love was not exhausted. He came to redeem human love. And that redemption has a spousal key. Through the Prophet Isaiah, God told us, “As a young man marries a virgin, your Builder shall marry you; and as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride so shall your God rejoice in you” (Is 62:5). Hosea echoed that same prophecy, when God proclaimed through him, “I will espouse you to me forever. I will espouse you in right and in justice, in love and in mercy; I will espouse you in fidelity, and you shall know the Lord (Hos 2:21-22). When Second Person of the Blessed Trinity took on our human nature, Jesus identified himself as the Bridegroom (Mk 2:19; Jn 2:9) to fulfill those prophecies. To remain in Jesus’ love is to participate in his own spousal love, to share in and reflect this great loving covenant between God and his people. That’s why St. Paul would write in his Letter to the Ephesians, “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,” St. Paul said, “This is a great mystery, and I speak in reference to Christ and the church” (Eph 5:31-32). In other words, the marriage between Christians is an image of Christ’s marriage to the Church of his disciples, and not the other way around. The bond between Christ and the Church is the model for Christian marriage, not vice versa. Because Christ is always faithful to us, Christian spouses are called to fidelity. Because he will never divorce us, Christian marriage is by nature indissoluble. Because his love for us is fruitful and overflows into deeds of love, Christian married love is fruitful and called literally to “make love.” Christ’s standard is to become the Christian standard. This is what the Thali (pendant) and Manthrakodi (saree), which you will receive later, Megan, symbolize according to the Syro-Malabar tradition. They depict how Christ adorns and clothes his Bride the Church with his glory, with his love, with himself; in Rijo’s placing the blessed Thali around your neck and the blessed Manthrakodi over your head, he is showing that he is giving you not just his love and commitment, but ministering to you Christ’s own love for the Church. And as you receive it, you are showing not only your love for Rijo the bridegroom but the Church’s love for Christ the Bridegroom..
How you have sought to remain in Christ’s love
We rejoice, Megan and Rijo, that over the course of your life until now, helped by your family and friends, by the Church through the parishes you grew up in, through seminary programs, and through the Regnum Christi movement, respectively, you have always sought to remain in Christ’s love. What an important remote marriage preparation class those experiences have been from your earliest days! We rejoice that you have sought to build your relationship on remaining in the love of the Lord, having your first date include a Mass at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, DC; praying together each day you are together; making novenas together; strengthening each other in so many concrete ways to live the Gospel more wholeheartedly; and even making the proposal before the image of the betrothal of Mary and Joseph at the Cathedral. The other’s faith, the other’s desire to remain in the love of the Lord, was what attracted you to each other even more than the other’s physical and intellectual gifts. You told me, Megan, during marriage preparation, that on the day Rijo first asked you out, you sensed that he would be a “good and fellow pilgrim on the journey to heaven,” knowing that heaven is the goal of human life and the end of Christian marriage. You told me, Rijo, that you knew Megan was the “right one” by being overwhelmed by the way she strived for holiness, by her natural and supernatural virtues, by her beauty inside and out.
That love was concretized and strengthened over the course of your engagement. Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel, “Love one another as I have loved you,” and we know that he loved us with the greatest love, laying down his life for us. True love is sacrificial. True love is merciful. True love is a total gift of self out of love for the other as other. And the way each of you has enfleshed those words of Christ about the greatest love of all has allowed you to dwell in Christ’s love even more profoundly as you experience it mediated through each other.
Megan, you told me: “I saw Rijo make incredible sacrifices to stay in DC so we could keep dating, work long hours to get back into the medical field for the sake of our future and offer to apply to residency anywhere that would make me feel comfortable and continue to transition well. He did this all the while with a smile on his face, never making me feel like I ‘owed him’ something in return for the great care and sacrificial love he was showing me. I also [saw his sacrificial love] when we started to have disagreements and he repeatedly came to meet me and reconcile, even when I was tempted to withdraw and run away.”
Rijo you told me about love of the woman who will become your wife today: “Megan cares for me so well, and she inspires me to be a better man and to give thanks and praise to God. She desires to spend so much of her time with me and tries to love me through the ways that she knows I best receive love. She helps me to recognize (often indirectly) ways that I can be selfish, self-centered, proud, quick-to-anger, impatient, and lacking in some other qualities of love, and she inspires me to be better. She makes me want to be a better man and to love as best as I am able with the grace of God. I enjoy sharing my life with her, all that I am and have. I hope to love her as Christ loves the Church.”
Those are some of the ways in which Jesus’ greater love has been making your love greater. In today’s second reading, St. Paul calls you to “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 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 despair; to endure in affliction even in the midst of the sorrows that come in every marriage; to persevere in prayer, knowing that Jesus says to you today in the Gospel that if you remain in his love you can ask the Father anything and he will grant it; 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 be able to remain in the Lord’s love, so that his Trinitarian love may be in you and your joy will be complete and contagious.
How you, through marriage, are called to draw others to know of and remain in love of God
You both know that your marriage is not just about you. Any vocation in the Church, like the vocation to marriage, always comes with a mission, and your mission is to transmit to others something of the total self giving love of God. St. Paul today urges you “to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God,” calling that your “spiritual worship,” or translated more literally from the Greek, the “only worship that makes sense.” He 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, is a Gospel, that the world very much needs to hear and to see lived.
That’s what makes what you are doing in getting married here at this stunningly beautiful Church of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton is a courageous and counter-cultural act. Today, 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 so many relationships break down, many millennials and iGens 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 or the popular culture or the courts.
You’re making a public act, in contrast to the spirit of this age, that marriage means something, and something essential to human happiness and flourishing. 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 publicly professing 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 a blessed pendant or saree, or even the gift of yourself, however faithful, fruitful, free and total; rather, you’re publicly affirming that that you are seeking to give Godto 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 professing 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, down the golden streets of the heavenly Jerusalem (Rev 21:21), for a Nuptial Banquet that will know no end.
The Eucharistic Means God Gives to Have His Love Abide in You and You in Him
Please let me finish with a thought about the importance of the fact that your wedding is taking place within the context of the Holy Mass. Most of the beautiful ancient Churches in Christianity, like St. Peter’s in the Vatican, have exquisite baldachinos or canopies over the main altar. The early Christians used to illustrate the reality between marriage and the Eucharist in their architecture, covering the altars with a baldachino just like ancient Jewish beds were covered with the same chuppah or canopy underneath which they had exchanged their consent. They did this to communicate that the altar is the marriage bed of the union between Christ the Bridegroom and his Bride, the Church. They were teaching in stone and bronze that it’s here on this altar that we, the Bride of Christ, in the supreme act of love, receive within ourselves, we believe, the body and blood of Jesus, the divine Bridegroom, becoming one-flesh with him and made capable of bearing fruit with him in acts of love.
By coming to together to this marriage bed is the means by which couples are able to renew their flesh union. This is the way through which you, Megan and Rijo, will receive within Christ’s love for you, his greater love, and become more capable of sharing that loving each other with the love of Christ you receive here. This is the gift Christ gives so that you can live a truly Eucharistic marriage capable of saying to each other sincerely, “This is my body, given for you.” This is the means Jesus provides to strengthen you to continue in your courageous and counter-cultural witness to the sacrament of marriage.
Today around this marriage bed of Christ’s union with you and your holy union with each other, we make the prayer with and for you that Tobias and Sarah prayed on the day of the wedding as they knelt together at their bedside, the prayer we find in the first reading you chose. Here we praise God for the gift of marriage from the beginning. Here we call down upon you his mercy. Here we ask Him to consecrate your marriage to a noble purpose as you take each other not only of lust but out of Christ-like love. Here ultimately, before this marriage bed, we, your family and your friends, join you in praying that the Lord who has given you the vocation of marriage will continue to bring this holy vocation he has given you to completion, so that you may remain in his love, so that his joy may be in you, and so that your joy be made complete. And we also pray that by remaining and growing in the love of God as you grow in love of each other, your love will become so contagious that through it God will never stop blessing us all!
The readings for today’s Mass were:
A reading from the Book of Tobit
When Sarah’s parents left the bedroom and closed the door behind them, Tobiah rose from bed and said to his wife, “My sister, come, let us pray and beg our Lord to grant us mercy and protection.”She got up, and they started to pray and beg that they might be protected. He began with these words: “Blessed are you, O God of our ancestors; blessed be your name forever and ever!Let the heavens and all your creation bless you forever.You made Adam, and you made his wife Eve to be his helper and support; and from these two the human race has come. You said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone; let us make him a helper like himself.’Now, not with lust, but with fidelity I take this kinswoman as my wife. Send down your mercy on me and on her, and grant that we may grow old together. Bless us with children.” They said together, “Amen, amen!”
Responsorial Psalm — The Lord is Kind and Merciful (Ps 103)
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. 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
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 St. John
As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another
