Msgr. Roger J. Landry
St. Patrick’s Church, New Orleans, Louisiana
Nuptial Mass of Kevin William Fischer and Keri Nicole Landeche
December 28, 2024
Gen 2:18-24, Ps 34, Rev 19:1.5-9, Mk 10:6-9
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
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- When a couple chooses to get married during the Christmas Octave, it’s almost impossible not to situate what’s happening within the much larger picture of God’s love for the human race manifested to us in Jesus’ nativity. That’s not just because the couple is married enveloped by poinsettias in a sanctuary containing an exquisite manger scene. It’s not just because during this time of year we are obviously far more focused on the Holy Family, and necessarily ponder how when Jesus, the eternal Son of God, entered the human race, he did so as a little child, entering the world the same way all of us do, in the family, so that his redeeming work would begin in the same place where originally sin had entered, and so that he could help make every family a holy family; that is something the Church universal will ponder in depth tomorrow on the Feast of the Holy Family. The spousal and familial context of a Catholic marriage celebrated during the Christmas octave is actually far bigger than that.
- We get a glimpse of it at the Christmas Vigil, when the Church ponders Isaiah’s words about God’s love that would take flesh in Jesus, the Word-of-God-made-man. God through Isaiah 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 through him the Lord proclaimed, “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). The whole mystery of Christmas not only can be read but has been read from the earliest ages of the Church in a spousal key. The marriage of Christians, your marriage Kevin and Keri, is meant to share in and reflect this great loving covenant between God and his people. That’s why St. Paul wrote in his Letter to the Ephesians that the marriage of Christians participates in and flows from Christ’s spousal covenant. Commenting on the words you chose for today’s first reading from the Book of Genesis that Jesus himself would cite in the Gospel you wanted us to hear, “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 icon, a true image, of Christ’s marriage to the Church, to us, and not the other way around. Everything the Church understands about the Sacrament of Marriage flows from Christ’s and the Church’s sacred bond. Because Christ is faithful to the Church, husbands and wives are called to be faithful to each other. Because Christ will never abandon us, Christian marriage is indissoluble, and therefore what God joins, not even all of the divorce courts on earth can separate. Because Christ’s love for the Church is fruitful, Christian spouses are called to be open to life, to be fruitful and multiply. Christian marriage is the setting where a husband and life learn how to love each just as Christ has loved them. That’s what makes marriage a sacrament, a sign and means of intimate communion with God, something that brings a particular man and woman not just into a one-flesh communion with each other, but as a couple into a holy, indeed one-flesh Eucharistic communion with Christ the Bridegroom.
- Ultimately this profound Christocentric reality of the Sacrament of Marriage is meant to lead to what we witnessed in the passage from the Book of Revelation you wanted all of us today to ponder. It’s a scene from heaven, which Jesus’ whole salvific life, beginning with his virginal conception and birth, made possible. St. John heard a great cry: “The wedding day of the Lamb has come, his bride has made herself ready,” and the angel said to him, “Blessed are those who have been called to the wedding feast of the Lamb.” Heaven is depicted as an eternal wedding banquet. The Lamb, Jesus himself, the Bridegroom, has invited us all to his wedding feast. But he’s called us not as guests, not even as cherished members of the wedding party, but as his eternal Bride. This is the fulfillment of what Christ was born to do. Our Builder wants to marry us, to espouse us faithfully to him, forever! And that loving plan, which begins in this world, will be perfected in eternity. That’s the much larger context of your wedding today, Kevin and Keri. That’s what we’re all called to see, realize and affirm in a particular way in every wedding celebrated during Christmas!
- I’d like to return, however, from these inspiring thoughts about the end of the Christian journey in the heavenly Jerusalem to the earthly Bethlehem and Nazareth and the means God gives us to get there. Specifically, I’d like to turn to the Holy Family and the role Jesus has given them to prepare us for those eternal nuptials. Just as Mary and Joseph were essential to helping Jesus fulfill his mission as Bridegroom of the Church, so they have been likewise at work helping you fulfill your vocation to enter into Jesus’ spousal, redeeming work.
- When Kevin talks about how his and Keri’s relationship began, he name drops and says, “We were introduced to each other by Our Lady of Guadalupe!” Even though they were admitted to the same 2022-23 class of the Leonine Forum in New York — a special program also in Washington, DC, Chicago and Los Angeles to form young adults in Catholic social teaching — they actually, because of rare circumstances, didn’t meet each other in person during the first three classes. They were both inspired, however, to go on the Leonine Forum pilgrimage in January 2023 to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico. Keri’s mom, Toni, had been praying to Our Lady of Guadalupe for years for Keri’s future spouse and now it was going to become clear how attentive Keri’s other mother, and Toni’s, and all of ours, was listening.
- Kevin and Keri were by God’s providence the only two Leonine Fellows from New York on the pilgrimage, so Keri sent Kevin a WhatsApp message out of the blue to ask if he knew flight options. Even though Kevin hadn’t met Keri yet in person, he did remember her name: she was, he told himself, the “cute girl” from the biography and photo sheet the program gives all fellows. He shared his flight information with her and they met for the first time at JFK Airport, where Kevin treated her for breakfast at the Centurion Lounge, which they insist was not their first date. In Mexico, they got to know each other better. Kevin kept trying to spend time with her, saying he was drawn to the cute girl and her childlike joy at learning new things. They eventually discovered that they only lived ten minutes away from each other. Before leaving the Shrine, Keri wrote a note to herself saying that, even though she barely knew Kevin, she thought he was a gift from Our Lady to her many prayers for a husband and that one day she was going to marry Kevin. On the return flight from Mexico City to JFK, Kevin saw that the seat next to him in the comfort-plus section on Delta was unoccupied, and so he asked the stewardess, before anyone else was upgraded, whether, he states, “I could offer the seat to the girl I had a crush on in the back of the plane.” The stewardess smiled and gave Keri the upgrade. They talked nonstop throughout the nonstop flight back. Before they landed, Kevin was similarly convinced Keri was the one for whom he had been longing. Our Lady of Guadalupe had not only brought them together but was helping them, as the fruits of their pilgrimage to her Shrine, to desire to continue to journey together on the pilgrimage of life.
- That’s when St. Joseph began to take the lead. Upon arriving back in New York, Kevin and Keri spent several weeks texting, talking, and giving each other rides for errands or back from Leonine meetings. During this time, Keri with her roommate Gerard Ona was praying a 30-day novena to St. Joseph for their future husbands and Keri was hoping and praying that Kevin would officially ask her out. He did, suggesting they meet on March 19, the Solemnity of St. Joseph, beginning with Mass, in Bronxville, at the Church of St. Joseph. After Mass, they went for another meal, brunch, at a local restaurant. They hit it off so well that many other dates soon followed. It became increasingly clear, not just to them but to everyone else, that they were the fitting helper God had intended for each of them since before he had said “Let there be light!”
- The proposal fittingly happened, by Kevin’s foresight and the help of Keri’s family, at the Healing Chapel of Our Lady of Guadalupe, 32 miles from here, in Keri’s hometown of Luling, right next to the Church of St. Anthony where Keri’s parents, Harold and Toni, were married 37 years ago. They had visited the Chapel, which opened just over three years ago, once before and Kevin found it stunning and holy. They were praying a novena together at the time and Kevin suggested that they pray that day’s novena prayers there. And so, before the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe who had introduced them and who had been interceding for them over the previous 445 days, Kevin reverentially dropped to a knee to propose. Keri replied, “Of course!,” and even though a photographer was there hiding and wanted to take some official shots of the newly engaged couple, she faithfully insisted they do the novena prayers before taking the snapshots. And so the first moments of their engagement likewise featured praying to God through Our Lady of Guadalupe’s intercession for their future. Those prayers have sustained them to this day. And today they and we add to them.
- Thus, it’s fitting, because of the influence of Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Joseph in their relationship up until now, and particularly in view of the consecration of their marriage they will make to Mary after receiving the blessed Fruit of her womb in Holy Communion later, to focus a little bit on how Our Lady, especially through what she said in Guadalupe nearly five centuries ago, wants to help not just all of us as individuals but in particular married couples to live out their life on earth in view of the spousal mission of her Son. I’d like to focus on three lessons Nuestra Señora, la Morenita, teaches us in particular.
- The first is about building a temple. When Mary appeared as a pregnant mestizo Aztec princess to St. Juan Diego on December 9, 1531, she sent him on a mission to Bishop Juan de Zumárraga of Mexico City to have him build a teocalli, a temple, at the spot where she was speaking, so that she could manifest Jesus, her Son, in the Eucharist to everyone and so that she could hear their prayers and intercede for them before him like she did for the young couple in Cana of Galilee. That temple was built and later another much larger one was constructed, and now twenty million pilgrims visit the Shrine each year. Our Lady similarly wants every married couple to build a sanctuary for her the blessed Fruit of her womb in their marriage, where he can be better known, loved, adored, served and shared. From the earliest centuries of Christianity, the marriage of Christians has been called a domestic Church, an ecclesiola or Church-in-miniature. The Christian home is meant to be a house of prayer, where the Word of God resonates, where the love of Christ is received, reciprocated and paid forward, where the faith is transmitted and grows. As she does in Guadalupe, as she did there for both of you, so nuestra Virgencita wants to hear your prayers in your new home in Eastchester. Let her help you together build a teocalli for her Son and let her assist and accompany you, especially through Mass together and the recitation of the Rosary as a family, to enter far more deeply into, and to symbolize for others, the marriage between her Son and the Church.
- The second great lesson Our Lady teaches us in Guadalupe is about enfleshing the mysteries of our faith. I’ve always been amazed by the great miracle that took place on December 12, 1531, which had been secretly asked for by Bishop Zumárraga, for roses from his native Castilla in Spain. Those roses had not yet been planted in Mexico, but on December 12, on the top of Tepeyac Hill in wintry Mexico City, they were wondrously found in full bloom. Those roses were just the beginning of the miracle. When St. Juan Diego at Our Lady’s instruction cut many of them and took them in his tilma to the bishop as the secret sign he had requested in confirmation of her message, he opened them before the bishop. Some fell to the floor, but the others melted into his tilma and formed the identical image of the woman who had been addressing Juan Diego on the mountain. Our Lady, in essence, had come into the Bishop’s presence through Juan Diego’s clothing, through his very life, through his humble, persevering obedience to her wishes. His maguey-fiber cloak has since become the most famous piece of clothing of all time, something that should have disintegrated in about 20 years, but has persevered with this miraculous image for nearly five centuries. We learn from this lesson that Our Lady wishes to have us receive her into our life, into our hearts and minds, indeed into our very clothing. St. John the Evangelist, whose feast the Church celebrated yesterday, after Jesus from the Cross had said to him, “Behold your mother!,” took Mary, he says, “into his home” (Jn 19:27). Mary desires to become just as much a part of a couple’s life as she was part of Jesus’ life, St. Joseph’s life, St. John’s life, and St. Juan Diego’s life. Kevin and Keri, she wants your whole way of being, especially as Catholic spouses, to emulate her own relationship to Jesus, as you let your life, like hers, develop according to the Lord’s word. She wants to help you, like her, become handmaids, servants, of the Lord, to have you imitate her faith, hope and love, to model your own discipleship on hers, your parenthood on hers, your intercession on hers, and your apostolate on hers. She desires to assist you to live in such a way that others in seeing you and in getting to know you might see something of her in you, just as everyone could see something of her in Juan Diego’s winter cloak. This is the second gift she wants to give you, to help your married and familial life become truly Marian so that it can be truly Christian.
- The third lesson is about mission. In Tepeyac, Our Lady gave St. Juan Diego a mission, to go to the bishop to ask him to build a house of worship. After his first failed attempt, Juan Diego, this simple 57-year-old widower who shuffled 15-miles each day to Mass on Saturdays and Sundays, begged her to send someone of prominence so that the Bishop would listen. Our Lady said that she had many people she could send, but she wanted to send him. Little did he know at the time that she would accompany him on his third attempt in his very clothing! He would wear her not on his sleeve but on his coat! And with her help he fulfilled his mission. Sometimes it’s tempting for Christians, like St. Juan Diego, to try to pass the buck of the mission of sharing the faith to others, to think that it’s the job of priests, or religious, or full-time lay evangelists, to share the Gospel, whereas the “average Catholic’s job” is only to support the Church quietly by fidelity, prayer, and sacrifice. But the vocation of marriage has a built in mission: it’s to convince the world of God’s love. St. John Paul II called marriage the primordial sacrament, the external sign of the loving communion of persons who is the Blessed Trinity. It’s also, as St. Paul tells us, meant to be the efficacious sign of loving spousal communion between Jesus and the Church. Catholic couples and Catholic families are supposed to radiate faith in and the love of God. They’re supposed to live differently than the rest, in respect to their priorities, in terms of their prayer, in respect to their openness to life, in terms of taking responsibility as salt, light and leaven, and in terms of passing on the faith, to each other, to children, grandchildren, God-children and others. As Keri said to me in marriage preparation, “Marriage entails a God-given mission, a lifelong public commitment before God and the Church.” Our Lady wants to help you in that mission, just like she helped Juan Diego. If you do, who can say what impact it will make in the Church. Perhaps like in Guadalupe in the 1530s, ten million can become Catholic in just a decade. Perhaps what happens in your marriage can be remembered in 493 years and beyond.
- We all rejoice, Kevin and Keri, that you are already showing the influence of Our Lady in your relationship with each other, that you are desirous of making of your family a domestic Church, that you are trying to enflesh Mary’s virtues, that you are taking seriously your mission to help the other grow in faith and resolving to try together to pass that faith on to any children with whom God will bless you as well as to many others.
- Kevin, you told me about about the type of impact Keri has already had in your life and how she’s helping you to live these Marian lessons. You said, “I know that I am a good talker, conversationalist and storyteller, but when it comes to Keri, I am not able to find the words that describe her or what she means to me. Sure, there are the easy things to say, like I love her because she is kind and caring and so very pretty. But it’s deeper than that. Keri is more than just the answer to my prayers. It’s like there was a part of me missing that left me incomplete, and she is that part. Keri is a gift I know I don’t deserve. I have never felt so loved as I know I am by Keri; it’s a love that encompasses my entire being. From the smallest gestures of kindness to the grandest displays of affection, she has a way of making me feel cherished, valued and deeply loved. Her love has filled a void in my life that I never knew existed. In short, I love everything about Keri… the way she loves God, the way she embraces life with curiosity and wonder, and the way she loves me with a depth and intensity that surpasses all understanding. She is a gift, a blessing, and the love of my life, and I am endlessly thankful to have her by my side.”
- Keri, you told me Kevin has a similar impact on you, and that he, for you, is a rock like Saint Joseph. “Kevin,” you wrote to me during marriage preparation, “has all the qualities and more than I was looking for in a future husband. He is strong and tough but also at the same time sweet, thoughtful, and selfless. He is handsome, smart, kind, courageous, generous, virtuous and humble. From the very beginning, I have felt protected and provided for by him. He eases my anxieties about life’s demands, and I know he will be an amazing husband, father, and leader of our future family. Kevin makes me feel like the luckiest girl in the world. Chivalry is not dead with him. He is such a gentleman and goes above and beyond to make sure my needs are met before his own. He is always striving to be better in his spiritual, personal, and professional life. His gestures did not end in the courting phase, he continues to hold every door for me and pursue me as if we just met. He is the most courageous person I know and not just because he fought in a combat zone. He stands up for his faith when it is not the popular thing to do. He knows who he is and does not shy away from being Catholic in his professional life. His selflessness inspires me daily. He puts himself last and expects nothing in return. He has taught me not to worry about things that are out of my control. Having been in situations where his life has been in danger, he understands that God is in control of everything, and that every day is a gift. He has taught me to be more present and not rush through life. He accepts his crosses and brings them to God. When we have faced difficult situations in our relationship, he reminds us to bring these things before God first and prioritize praying together as a couple. Kevin’s character, discipline, and selflessness have inspired me to become a more virtuous woman.” We rejoice that, through our Lady’s and St. Joseph’s prayers, God has brought you together to help inspire each other in the ways you have, and, by the way you love each other, to inspire all of us.
- One last point. True devotion to Our Lady and to St. Joseph always inexorably leads us to Jesus. The same Jesus whom Mary gestated in her immaculate womb for nine months, the same Jesus whom St. Joseph held in his strong arms, the same Jesus whom the shepherds and wise men, angels and animals, adored in Bethlehem is about to come from heaven to this altar and enter into us. He just looks different. The eternal Son of God did not stop at emptying himself to take on our humanity to be born as a baby in a borrowed cave; he went so far as to become our very food, so that he could make us, like he made our Lady, his teocalli, his holy tabernacle. That’s why there’s great meaning to the fact that Catholic couples get married in the context of the Mass, because there’s a profound and intrinsic connection between the Sacrament of Marriage and the Sacrament of the Mass. In many of the most historic Churches in Christianity, like St. Peter’s in the Vatican, there is over the altar an exquisite baldachin. The early Christians used to illustrate the reality between marriage and the Eucharist in their architecture, covering the altars with a baldachin just like ancient Jewish beds were covered with the chuppah or canopy underneath which they previously exchanged their consent. The early Christians did this to communicate that the altar is the marriage bed of the union between Christ the Bridegroom and his Bride, the Church; that it’s here on this altar that we, the Bride of Christ, in the supreme act of love, receive within ourselves the body and blood of Jesus, the divine Bridegroom, becoming one-flesh with him and being made capable of bearing fruit with him in acts of love.
Today around this marriage bed of Christ’s union with the Church and with you, your family, friends, the Blessed Mother, St. Joseph, St. Pio, St. Therese, the Holy Innocents, 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 mission and bring it to completion in the eternal nuptial feast of heaven. Indeed, as we heard the angel say at the end of today’s second reading, “Blessed are those who have been called to the wedding feast of the Lamb,” before adding, “These words are true. They come from God.” These words are indeed true! Blessed are you, blessed are all of us, to be called to the wedding feast of the Lamb! Blessed are you to be called to enter into that nuptial banquet! Every time you come to Mass together, Christ the Bridegroom seeks to fill you with his spousal love to overflowing, so that you may love each other with the love he has for you, and so that that love may overflow to, we pray, children, to the Church, and to the whole world. We ask the Divine Bridegroom who comes here to join you as one flesh for the rest of your life never to stop blessing you both with his holy, spousal, cruciform love, to bring you together to the eternal wedding feast, and through the way that you share his spousal love, never to stop blessing us all!
The readings for today’s Mass were:
A Reading from the Book of Genesis
The LORD God said: “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him.” So the LORD God formed out of the ground various wild animals and various birds of the air, and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them; whatever the man called each of them would be its name. The man gave names to all the cattle, all the birds of the air, and all the wild animals; but none proved to be the suitable partner for the man. So the LORD God cast a deep sleep on the man, and while he was asleep, he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. The LORD God then built up into a woman the rib that he had taken from the man. When he brought her to the man, the man said: “This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; This one shall be called ‘woman,’ for out of ‘her man’ this one has been taken.” That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body.
Psalm 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 Book of Revelation
I, John, heard what sounded like the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying: “Alleluia! Salvation, glory, and might belong to our God.” A voice coming from the throne said: “Praise our God, all you his servants, [and] you who revere him, small and great.” Then I heard something like the sound of a great multitude or the sound of rushing water or mighty peals of thunder, as they said: “Alleluia! The Lord has established his reign, [our] God, the almighty. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory. For the wedding day of the Lamb has come, his bride has made herself ready. She was allowed to wear a bright, clean linen garment.” (The linen represents the righteous deeds of the holy ones.) Then the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who have been called to the wedding feast of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These words are true; they come from God.”
A Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Mark
Jesus said, “From the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female. 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.”
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