Fr. Roger J. Landry
Christ the King Catholic Church, Dallas, Texas
Nuptial Mass of Thayer Daniel Wade and Emily Elizabeth Horton
January 7, 2023
Eccl 3:1-8.11-13, Ps 103:1-2.8.13.17-18, 1 Cor 12:31-13:8, Mt 7:21.24-29
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
- When engaged couples are asked for recommendations for the readings for their Nuptial Mass, most for obvious reasons choose those that explicitly relate to marriage or marital love, like God’s plan for man to leave father and mother and cling to his wife and become one flesh, Tobias’ and Sara’s prayer on their wedding night, the beautiful canticle in the Song of Songs to human love as an image of God’s love, or the several other fitting options that are presented to them in the ritual lectionary. But it says a lot about a couple when they ask to go beyond the suggested selections. It generally reveals a broader knowledge of Sacred Scripture. It shows the priority they give to their faith, that just as they would spend some time discussing the lyrics of the song to which they’ll dance for the first time as a married couple at their reception, so they want to give just as much or more care about what they proclaim about their relationship at their wedding Mass. And it also displays something for which they want publicly to praise and thank God, or pray, at the beginning of their married life.
- So I was very pleased, but frankly not surprised, that Thayer and Emily went beyond the ritual and asked that today we would hear from the Book of Ecclesiastes. This is not because they’re fans of the 1965 Byrds’ song Turn, Turn, Turn based on this famous passage. They wanted, rather, to convey a trust in God’s providence, that there is an appointed time, a kairos, for everything — being born, dying, planting, harvesting, building up, tearing down, speaking, staying silent, fighting, reconciling, loving — and that none of these occurrences takes place outside of God. What might seem to some as a perpetual cycle of history’s repeating itself, they see as a providential path with a point: that “God has made everything appropriate to its time” and has, through all of these experiences, “put the timeless into their hearts,” a longing for something permanent, indeed eternal.
- That’s the way they look at what happened December 11, 2021, at a black tie Christmas party in the backyard at Hawthorn House close to Harvard. What to many in the world might just seem a random lucky coincidence between a guy in a tux and a woman in what Thayer called “an absolutely exquisite crimson gown,” they saw as part of a much bigger picture. It’s what makes sense of why previous relationships had ended, why Emily was at Harvard Business School, why Thayer had decided two days before to leave his job and would therefore have the time to court her more easily and to fall in love much more quickly. It’s what allowed them to glimpse God’s hand behind why Thayer had previously met Zach, Courtney and Janet Horton, why he had read a powerful article by Emily on Harbus the central theme of which resonated with what he had long been thinking, and why God had had them wait.
- On that 2021 vigil of Gaudete Sunday, in which the Church cries out its joy to God not only for putting the timeless in human hearts, but for putting himself, the eternal God, into the human race, they began a 392-day journey together with each other and with God to this Church where Christ the King will join them for the rest of their life in one flesh. Today they proclaim hand-in-hand that there is indeed an appointed time for everything, that God has in fact inserted within time a desire for the timeless, and that with all their being, as we sang in the Responsorial Psalm, they want to bless God’s holy name and profess that his kindness and fidelity are forever.
- The Gospel they chose also reveals their faith. Taken from the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Christ the King 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 many 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.
- As the well-trained civil and electrical engineers they respectively are, Emily and Thayer 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. They know that the rains will fall, the floods will come, and the winds will blow and buffet against the house, like the 40 mile per hour winds howling across Nauset Beach last May 7th in Orleans on Cape Cod when Thayer proposed. 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. That’s what they did last May 7th, preceding the proposal with adoration at St. Mary’s in Dedham, the Rosary together on Routes 3 and 6, and confession and Mass at St. Francis Xavier in Hyannis, what Emily would later dub “the most Catholic day ever.” 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. As Thayer told me in the short essays I asked each of them to write as part of marriage preparation, “I have often said to Emily that if we keep the sacraments of Confession and the Eucharist as the bedrock of our relationship, there will be nothing that we cannot handle. Our favorite thing to do together is to attend Mass. We seek to pray together often and will continue to grow in this endeavor. We hope to keep God at the center of everything in our lives.”
- In God’s appointed time, their marriage is taking place on the octave of the death of Pope Benedict XVI. During the last few days as I was in Rome doing media for his funeral, I had a chance to review so many different aspects of the life and teaching of the 264th successor of St. Peter. Pope Benedict dedicated his first and most programmatic encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, to the impact God’s love is meant to have in the life of every Christian. In it he unsurprisingly wrote extensively and beautifully about the importance of marriage. “From the standpoint of creation,” he said, “eros directs [the human person] towards marriage, to a bond that is unique and definitive; thus, and only thus, does it fulfil its deepest purpose. Corresponding to the image of a monotheistic God is monogamous marriage. Marriage based on exclusive and definitive love becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice versa. God’s way of loving becomes the measure of human love.” Emily and Thayer want to build their life on God’s way of loving, and measure their love by God’s standard.
- Pope Benedict continued that for the ancient sages the authentic content of love was to want the same thing and to reject the same thing — literally in Latin, idem velle atque idem nolle. Therefore, Pope Benedict went on, “the love-story between God and [the human person] consists in the very fact that this communion of will increases in a communion of thought and sentiment, and thus our will and God’s will increasingly coincide.” Thayer and Emily recognize that what is happening today is not just a consequence of their mutual desire and attraction, but a response to God’s will, who has give them the vocation to be married to each other. Today they publicly profess with joy what they’ve prayed together thousands of times in the Our Father, “Thy will be done!” And today they resolve and pray that that “communion of thought and sentiment” with God that has brought them together here will continue to grow all the days of their married life.
- The reality is that so many young people today are building their relationships on various forms of sand, with commitments and lifestyles that cannot withstand the storms of life that inevitably blow and buffet against them. Emily and Thayer are doing something different. They are intentionally seeking to build their marriage on the eternal Rock who is the Lord, on his word and his will, on his revelation about human anthropology, love, marriage and family, and on his call to model their bond on his faithful, fruitful and indissoluble commitment to the Church his bride, so that whatever hurricanes and deluges may come, they will not just desperately cry out, “Lord, Lord,” to a spiritual 911 operator but rather turn confidently to a Friend whom they have chosen as their full-time shelter and secure foundation.
- The New Testament epistle they chose for their wedding Mass today, unlike the passage from Ecclesiastes, is a very popular one at weddings. The majority of engaged couples choose it because in it St. Paul focuses not only on the importance of love in human life but on the attributes of love to which every couple aspires. Even though it is a common choice, however, they selected it for a special reason. Last January 29, when Thayer joined Emily for a ski-day after a Harvard Business School section retreat in Stowe, Vermont, they attended Mass together for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time. There, in God’s appointed time, this passage from St. Paul’s first Letter to the Corinthians was read, the only time in three years in which it is proclaimed at Sunday Mass. The previous month Thayer had heard in adoration the Lord say to him about Emily, “Go get her,” and did. When he heard these words of St. Paul, he acted just as decisively. He told me, “This reading struck me as a green light from God to express to Emily later that night what I had begun to realize: I was and am in love with her. On the drive back from Stowe, we began discussing what a wedding and marriage would be for us. A few short weeks later, Emily agreed to officially be my girlfriend (which I suspected was a tacit agreement to get married) and expressed her love for me.”
- In this beautiful passage, St. Paul takes love beyond sentimentality to the types of virtues that make it capable of withstanding the storms of life. St. Paul first describes the type of love we find in Christ, who toward us has shown that love is patient, kind, never jealous, pompous, arrogant or rude, that it’s not self-seeking, quick-tempered, resentful, or negative, but truthful, joyful, faithful, hopeful, supportive, enduring, and ready to give away everything, even one’s life, for the ones loved. St. Paul summons all of us, and especially married couples, to pattern our love on Christ’s.
- In an ambitious age in which people waste time, energy, money and basically their lives seeking after so many ephemeral goals, the apostle urges us, “Strive eagerly for the greatest spiritual gifts,” indicating to us that the “more excellent way” to attain them is by loving others by Christ’s own criteria. St. Paul says that if he spoke powerfully the words of God, if he had faith to move mountains, if he gave his body over in martyrdom — all of which he did — but didn’t have love, he would just be a noise maker and would gain and remain a zero. Likewise, he could say to couples on their wedding today that if they have perfect health, a tremendous social life, great careers, lots of honorary degrees, millions of Facebook friends and Twitter followers, a big family and huge extended family, and everything else that many materially equate with happiness, but don’t have this type of Christ like love, they will lack the most important thing of all. The human person, made in the image and likeness of God who is love, cannot live without love. Love, however, doesn’t mean merely a feeling of attraction. It doesn’t just mean being desired or adored by another. It’s a choice to sacrifice oneself for the good of another. It involves — as Jesus declared during the Last Supper — the willingness to lay down one’s life for another, to sacrifice one’s own interests, preferences, and autonomy for the other’s good. St. Paul makes love concrete in the litany of adjectives he lists. Striving eagerly after the greatest spiritual gifts, seeking to love each other as Christ loves you, Thayer and Emily, means each day resolving, even heroically, to be kind and patient with each other, even when the other tries your patience and isn’t as kind to you as you’d prefer; it means not being jealous but trusting; it means never being pompous, inflated or rude toward the other, but humbly serving each other as a privilege; it means that rather than keeping score over the ways the other has hurt you, you remember the Lord’s mercy and share that same mercy with each other, giving the other a second chance, a third chance, and even a 70 times 7th chance, grasping that it is through mutually forgiving each other that you are helped to become more like God, whose mercy endures forever. The Sacrament of Marriage is a gift of God to a man and a woman to help them continue striving for the greatest spiritual gift of all, so that their lives, like Christ’s, will become a living exegesis on St. Paul’s words and proclaim the beauty of married love according to God’s plan to the multitudes in every age who are tempted to discredit or doubt it.
- We rejoice today that you have discovered in each other someone who has heard these inspired words of St. Paul as words to be done and has been seeking with dedication to make them the rock not only on which to build his or her life, but your relationship. Emily, you told me that Thayer has shown how he loves you, among other ways, by driving seven hours round trip to take you out on a date, by running to the opposite side of the street to ensure he’s on the side of traffic, by sending you flowers and chocolates, and by treating you as a consummate gentleman should. “He treats me,” you said, “with more respect than any sum of prior men had ever thought to treat me. Everything he does is with a sense of devotion that I didn’t know existed in any one human. He tells me how much I mean to him. He always acts with a level of self-giving that I can only hope to emulate. He so quickly, easily, and willingly wants to serve me, and the devotion I feel from him has helped me understand what devotion really means. He makes me want to give everything and to share everything just by virtue of being himself.” You added, “He has helped me with my confidence and bolsters my strength, especially when I am standing up for my faith, [remaining at] my side when he can be physically, and emotionally when he’s not able to be there in person.” More than anything, you said, “Thayer brings me closer to God.”
- Thayer you told me that you were drawn to Emily not principally by “her incredibly beautiful looks” and “her brilliant mind,” but by “her kind and caring nature, her ability to make others feel not just welcome but loved, her ambition for glorifying God by raising children and doing everything else he commands, her dreams for a happy home and happiness in life, [and] her beautiful soul that I can see through the windows of her beautiful eyes.” You mentioned how grateful you are for “the words of encouragement she says, the hugs she gives, and the wisdom she shares as we navigate our callings in life together.” You said, “There is absolutely nothing we cannot talk about, no matter how uncomfortable, something I have never before experienced with any other person.” Basing yourself on St. Paul’s words, you stated, “She is incredibly kind and patient with me. She’s with me through thick and thin, even indulging in experiences I love such as skiing, which may not be a favorite for her. She forgives me when I fall short in life with a forgiveness that is always immediate, complete, and an immense source of peace. In short, Emily shares everything with me, dividing the grief and multiplying the joy.”
- We rejoice that you have discovered in each other what God intended for you to find, a fitting helper given by him to assist you to strive eagerly for the greatest spiritual gift of all, God himself who is love, and follow him in marriage along that “still more excellent way” that “never fails,” the path you told me you have seen faithfully trod in the most important marriage preparation course you have each attended, that in which your parents Geoff and Meg, and Tom and Janet, have been the teachers for, respectively, 32 and 40 years.
- Both of you have expressed that you love each other so much that you want the best for each other, and you both humbly recognize that the most important gifts you will give each other is not a lifetime commitment, a ring, a name, or even yourself. The greatest gift you can give to each other, you’ve said, is God, which is why you have committed yourself even during your engagement to the Rosary, to adoration, to frequent confession and to the Mass. You quoted to me, Thayer, the famous words of St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina: “It would be easier for the world to survive without the sun than to do without Holy Mass.” And you both want to live within the ardent light that radiates from the Eucharistic Jesus.
- Pope Benedict, in his exhortation on the Eucharist entitled The Sacrament of Love, taught, “The Eucharist, as the sacrament of charity, has a particular relationship with the love of man and woman united in marriage. …The Eucharist inexhaustibly strengthens the indissoluble unity and love of every Christian marriage. By the power of the sacrament, the marriage bond is intrinsically linked to the eucharistic unity of Christ the Bridegroom and his Bride, the Church (cf. Eph 5:31-32). The mutual consent that husband and wife exchange in Christ, which establishes them as a community of life and love, also has a eucharistic dimension. Indeed … conjugal love is a sacramental sign of Christ’s love for his Church, a love culminating in the Cross, the expression of his ‘marriage’ with humanity and at the same time the origin and heart of the Eucharist.”
- For that reason it’s so fitting that you are getting married in the context of a Nuptial Mass, that you’re seeking to build your new house on the rock of the Church’s ultimate spiritual foundation, the source, summit, root and center of the Christian life. 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 through acts of love. The Mass is the means by which Christ regularly renews couples in their indissoluble one flesh union. The Mass is the way by which couples strengthen the foundation of their love on the Rock of the incarnate Love of God. It is the place where husband and wife receive within Christ’s love and become more capable of loving each other with the patience, kindness and all the other virtues with which he first loved them. It is the gift by which God puts the timeless not only into your hearts, but into your mouths and souls, so that you may be able to make your lives a commentary on the words of consecration, as you say to each other, “This is my body,” “This is my blood,” “this is all I am and have, given out of love for you.”
- Today, at the time appointed by God to make you one flesh for the rest of your life on earth and to help you strive with eagerness together for the eternal nuptial banquet, your family and friends, Fathers Bernard Marton, Charles Trullols, and I, as well as all the angels and saints, join you in thanking Christ the King for this awesome gift. And we pray that he will bless you with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, and through you and your Christ-like love for each other, never to cease to bless us all.
The readings for today’s Mass were:
A Reading from the Book of Ecclesiastes
There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant. A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to tear down, and a time to build. A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance. A time to scatter stones, and a time to gather them; a time to embrace, and a time to be far from embraces. A time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away. A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to be silent, and a time to speak. A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. He has made everything appropriate to its time, and has put the timeless into their hearts, without men’s ever discovering, from beginning to end, the work which God has done. I recognized that there is nothing better than to be glad and to do well during life. For every man, moreover, to eat and drink and enjoy the fruit of all his labor is a gift of God.
Psalm 103: The Lord is Kind 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. Paul to the Corinthians
Strive eagerly for the greatest spiritual gifts. But I shall show you a still more excellent way. If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing; if tongues, they will cease; if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing.
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.
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