Fr. Roger J. Landry
Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul, Philadelphia, PA
Nuptial Mass for Tyler Anthony Dobbs and Isabel Annette Nelson
Extraordinary Form Missa Pro Sponsis
July 20, 2019
Eph 5:22-33, Mt 19:3-6
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following text guided today’s homily:
In the back of this beautiful sanctuary, in between the three stained glass windows of the apse, there are two mosaics, the one on the left with St. Peter’s holding the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and standing before the Basilica built over his tomb in the Vatican, and the one on the right of St. Paul, holding his characteristic sword of the spirit and the scroll signifying his many epistles, before the Basilica of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls in Rome built over the borrowed grave in which the first century Christians placed his body.
Those images are very important context for today’s celebration.
On the day Tyler proposed to Isabel, April 2, 2018, they were together in Rome. Tyler was on fellowship and Isabel had come for a lengthy visit. On the day after Easter, they began by going to Mass at St. Paul’s Basilica and praying at his tomb. After Mass, they journeyed to St. Peter’s Basilica, where they prayed the Regina Caeli with Pope Francis and tens of thousands of Rome who had come to St. Peter’s Square on La Pasquetta, literally “little Easter,” the national holiday Italians celebrate on Easter Monday. That night Tyler took Isabel to the rooftop terrace of the Atlante Star Hotel, with its famous view of the dome of St. Peter’s. Tyler proposed and Isabel accepted. Tyler wanted to ground their future life together in the faith of the Catholic Church, built on Peter, propagated by Paul, and lived and died for by both. He wanted to do so in the radiance of Christ’s Easter light, because in the Sacrament of Marriage, the risen Christ, the Bridegroom of the Church, comes to abide with them and help them learn how to love each other as he has loved them first. He also wanted to propose in a way that would explicitly link proposal to their wedding day, since after having visited this Cathedral Basilica together four months earlier, in December 2017, they decided that should the day of their marriage come, they would want it to take place in this Church dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul and holding within the tabernacle the Real Presence of that Risen Christ.
And so, here we are, 475 days after the proposal, fulfilling their hopes. And in their Cathedral Basilica, the two greatest apostles have a special message for Tyler and Isabel and for every couple with the vocation to the Sacrament of Matrimony.
Saints Peter and Paul lived through the incredible upgrade Christ gave to the reality of marriage, willed from the beginning in the bond between Adam and Eve as (what St. John Paul II once called) the “primordial sacrament,” where the loving union between husband, wife and child would be the visible sign of the loving communion of persons who is the Blessed Trinity. Marriage from the beginning would be the foremost expression of the image of God. As Genesis said, and Jesus alludes in today’s Gospel passage, “God made man in his own image. In the image of God, he made them.” But as exalted as the connection of marriage to God was in the beginning, Jesus was going to do something even greater, raising marriage up to the dignity of a Sacrament, a sign and means of intimate communion with Him.
Peter and Paul, however, each needed some time to embrace this reality.
Peter was present in today’s Gospel when Jesus spoke about the indissolubility of marriage, that after God has joined a man and a woman in marriage, no human being, not even all of the judges and tribunals on earth combined, can separate them. Jesus went on to double-down on the unbreakable bond of marriage, saying, “I tell you, whoever divorces his wife … and marries another commits adultery.” Hearing that, Peter and the other disciples exclaimed, “If that is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” The commitment of marriage, he saw, was so great — in fact, lifelong — and would be so difficult for a husband and a wife, left on their own, to keep, that he thought it better not to wed. Rather than something to unite them to God, marriage had great potential to divide from him and each other. For that reason, he said that it would be more expedient to remain single rather than risk that outcome.
St. Paul, likewise, when he wrote his First Letter to the Corinthians, one of his earliest epistles, didn’t have a high regard for marriage’s capacity to make us better Christians. He wrote that wished everyone to be as he was, unmarried, and he encouraged those who had not married or who were widows to remain as they were. While marrying, he said, was certainly not a sin, and was advisable for those who could “not exercise self-control,” he said that marriage would lead to “affliction” and “anxieties” rather than peace and joy. He said that unmarried men or women can be “anxious about the things of the Lord” whereas spouses are necessarily “anxious about the things of the world, how he may please his wife” or “how she may please her husband.” Because life is short, he didn’t want them to be “divided” in love and life but rather able to adhere to the Lord “without distraction.”
Neither Peter nor Paul initially could perceive the difference the Risen Christ had made to marriage when in Cana of Galilee he changed the “water” of human married love to the “wine” of his own divine spousal love. By the end of their lives, however, they had begun to see in Christian couples the revolution Jesus the Bridegroom was making. We see evidence of it in the epistle we heard earlier, St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, which was written at least a decade after the First Letter to the Corinthians. By this point, Paul had begun to grasp that true Christian sacramental marriage, rather than being a distraction and a remedy for concupiscence, was a means of Christ-like love. Husbands and wives were called to be mutually submissive to each other out of reverence for Christ, whom they know dwells in the other by means of the Sacraments. St. Paul challenged husbands to “love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for herto sanctify her,” which means that marriage helps husbands to be willing to die for their wives out of love, just like Christ did for the Church. He summoned wives to strive to love their husbands the way they would love the Lord Jesus, with a willingness to die for him, just as Peter and Paul would and so many saints and martyrs would throughout the centuries die for Christ. The sacramental marriage between a man and a woman, he summarized, is based on, and enters into Christ’s very bond to the Church. St. Paul said that Genesis’ words about marriage cited by Jesus in today’s Gospel, “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,” point to a “great mystery” that refers first and foremost to “Christ and the church.” Sacramental reflection, rather than a distraction from God, is an efficacious image of God’s saving love and the most holy way possible of responding to it. This dramatic metamorphosis in St. Paul we see elsewhere as well. St. Paul begins to see marriage as one of the best means to grow in true Christian love, the love he says is patient, kind, not jealous, arrogant, rude, or quick-tempered, that doesn’t brood over injuries or wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth, that bears and endures all things, that never fails to believe and hope in God and in each other. It is hard to be patient and kind for better and worse, in sickness and health, in poverty and prosperity all ones days. It takes real love never to be rude or brood over injury. It requires a capacity to die to oneself for the sake of another to never fail in love. But Paul began to see that all of these attributes, characteristic of Christ’s love, are developed in a truly Christian marriage, and that therefore the bond between a Christian man and woman is indeed a sacrament, a visible sign, of the love between Christ and the Church. Today, Isabel and Tyler, you have not only received a sacrament, but become thatsacrament.
St. Peter similarly experienced a thorough transformation as he began to see the dimension of grace at work among the first generations of Christian spouses. He, too, realized how the sacrament of marriage sanctified spouses and his words to the early Christians encouraged them to unleash this power. In his First Letter, he encouraged Christian wives to live in a way that their husbands “may be won over without a word by their wives’ conductwhen [the husbands] observe your reverent and chaste behavior.” He continued, “Your adornment should not be an external one: braiding the hair, wearing gold jewelry, or dressing in fine clothes,but rather the hidden character of the heart, expressed in the imperishable beauty of a gentle and calm disposition, which is precious in the sight of God.” St. Peter similarly challenged husbands to manly sanctity by “liv[ing] with your wives in understanding, showing honor to [them], since [you] are joint heirs of the gift of life.” He urged them both to “be of one mind, sympathetic, loving toward one another, compassionate, humble” and constantly returning blessings to each other (1 Pet 3:9). His experience with Christian marriage led him from initially thinking it would be inexpedient to viewing it as a divine blessing! Isabel and Tyler, today you are not only receiving God’s blessing, but he has made you a blessing, so that through your love for each other, he might bless us all.
This conversion that Saints Peter and Paul experienced with regard to marriage is truly important for us to ponder, because so many of our contemporaries, including Christians, have lost the sense of the incredible blessing marriage is, not only for individual men and women, but also for all of society and the Church. Today, so many are afraid of marriage. They find the commitment of marriage inconvenient. They deem it a distraction to other, seemingly more important goals. Seeing so many relationships break down, many millennials prefer to keep their options open. They refuse to entrust their future to another. They want 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 demands. 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 and legislatures.
Pope Francis spoke about these hesitations and confusions about marriage when he came to Philadelphia in 2015 and he tried to bring everyone back to Christ and what he reveals to us about the commitments genuine love entails. “Jesus was not a confirmed bachelor,” he said, not far from here on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Rather, “he took the Church as his bride, and made her a people of his own. He laid down his life for those he loved, so that his bride, the Church, could always know that he is God with us, his people, his family.”
Today, Tyler and Isabel, in contrast to the spirit of the age, you are making a public profession about marriage, its nature and its importance. You’re 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 to you to accompany you for richer or poorer, better or worse, in sickness and health all the days of your life. 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 offer 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 overtly affirming that you are seeking to give Godto each other, to help the other grow in God’s image and likeness through the grace and love of the Sacrament of Marriage. You’re ultimately asserting 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 more beautiful even than this Cathedral Basilica, for a Nuptial Banquet that will know no end.
This witness that you are making to the importance of the Sacrament of Matrimony in God’s divine plan is one of the most important aspects of the proclamation of the Gospel today. Just as Jesus sent out the first disciples two-by-two to announce the coming of his kingdom, so today he send the two of you out, together, hand-in-hand, to proclaim by your words and your body language that the Risen Jesus is very much alive, that he continues to call us to receive his love, remain in his love, reciprocate that love, and share that love. How moving it is that you had your wedding rings inscribed with the words of today’s Gospel, as a quiet witness to the world. Your ring, Tyler, says, “What God has joined together,” and yours, Isabel, says, “Let no man put asunder.” The rings only make sense understood together, just like from this point forward, your lives that the rings symbolize only can be fully grasped by understanding your indissoluble one-flesh union. Today we pray that this bond God has made in you will overflow in the way you preserve this indestructible covenant not just a faithful duty but a loving joy. As Saint John Paul II, who preached in this Church on October 3, 1979, once famously wrote, “I have come to understand just how essential [the love of young people] is, how important and how great it is. I think that to a large extent the future of humanity is decided along the paths of this love [that the couple discovers]. … This can be called a great adventure, but it is also a great task.” And that is the adventure and task on which together you are embarking today with God’s help.
All of us rejoice, Isabel and Tyler, at the start you have already gotten to living that great adventure and task of love. It began the first time you laid eyes on each other six years ago in Mecosta, grew when you started dating in Washington DC four summers ago, and intensified throughout your courtship and engagement. You told me, Isabel, how easy you find it to love Tyler: you love how seriously he takes his faith and loves God, how he constantly tries to improve himself, how he is dependable and responsible, generous and kind, creative and intentional, thoughtful, fun, and outgoing. You told me that he has shown his for you in the way he prioritized your time together by arranging for daily phone calls when you were living on different continents several time zones apart, how he introduces you with pride to all his family and friends, how he encourages you to do things you want to or know you should, how he helps you to expand your knowledge and circles. You also stressed that he has inspired you to become a better Christian, more intentional about the faith, and how through praying the Rosary together, attending Mass side-by-side, reciting the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, saying novenas, visiting and venerating the relics of saints, and other means, he has helped you strive for holiness.
Tyler, you were equally effusive about what you love about Isabel and how she has shown you her love. You told me how much you enjoy speaking with her for hours each day about history, literature, politics, theology and about your lives, how sensible and practical she is, how social, fun and hospitable, how maternal she is and great with kids, how awesome a cook she is and a brilliant editor of everything you write. You described how she has so often shown you her love by her willingness to sacrifice for you, postponing the completion of her Master’s degree so that she could come to be with you in Rome, taking up part-time work so as to be free to follow you to whichever law school you decided to attend, even confronting her unease with planes by flying to London and to Rome. You said she ever forgets things you say you might like and surprises you months later and generously never ceases to call to wake you up. You told me how she’s helped you reform various habits and inspired you to cooperate with God’s grace more and more. In short, you summarized, her love for you makes you “desire to be a worthy husband.”
Today the Lord Jesus wants to take this love that you have for each other, Isabel and Tyler, and strengthen it by suffusing it even more with his own spousal love. He wants to do that each day of your married life, on the good days and bad, when you’re feeling great or feeling ill.
And the greatest way God strengthens the love of spouses is here at Mass. It’s so fitting that immediately after the exchange of your marriage vows, you and all of us are now celebrating this Nuptial Mass. There’s great meaning to the fact that over the altar here in this Cathedral Basilica — like at St. Peter’s in the Vatican, St. Paul’s Outside the Walls in Rome, and most of the most historic Churches in Christianity — there’s an exquisite baldachin. The early Christians used to illustrate the reality between the Sacrament of Matrimony and the Sacrament of 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. The Mass is the means by which Christ will regularly renew you, Isabel and Tyler, in the indissoluble one flesh union he has formed of you today. It 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. It is the channel Jesus provides to strengthen you to continue in your courageous witness to the Sacrament of Marriage in its fullness.
Today around this marriage bed of Christ’s union with the Church and with you, your family, your friends, and all the angels and saints 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 marriage of heaven. This is our faith. This is the faith of the Church in the power of Christ working through this Sacrament. How proud we are to profess it, in Christ Jesus our Lord!
The readings for today’s Mass were:
A reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians
Brothers and Sisters: Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body. As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So [also] husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “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.” This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church. In any case, each one of you should love his wife as himself, and the wife should respect her husband.
The continuation of the Holy Gospel according to Matthew
Some Pharisees approached [Jesus], and tested him, saying, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause whatever?” He said in reply, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”
