Fr. Roger J. Landry
Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Knoxville, Tennessee
Nuptial Mass of Kyle McGregor Chipman and Natalie Cape Hermes
August 24, 2024
Tob 8:4-8, Ps 34, Rom 12:1-2.9-18, Mt 5:13-16
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
- It’s such a great joy and privilege to be here today in this exquisitely beautiful new Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, the mother Church of the Diocese of Knoxville, in which the mystery of Jesus’ sacred humanity as well as of the fusion of his human and divine love, represented by his heart on fire and crowned with thorns, is celebrated and proclaimed. It was in the old Cathedral, just to our northwest, that Natalie’s parents Bill and Victoria were married and where they made a joint commitment, just like Kyle and Natalie will soon echo, to receive children lovingly from God and raise them according to the law of Christ and his Church. Today we celebrate how they, faithful to that promise, indeed received Natalie as a gift from God on April 21, 1997, brought her to be baptized on the 40th day of her life, and have raised her according to Christ’s law of love for God and others, giving her in essence a domestic marriage preparation course that has prepared her for the lifetime commitment she will make to Kyle here today. We likewise celebrate how Kyle’s parents, Dana and Karen, similarly raised him to build his life on Christ as a solid rock so that he, too, could freely and wholeheartedly give his life out of love for Natalie in response to a divine call. We all share their joy in the virtuous Christian man he has become and in the husband he will become today.
- There are no coincidences in God, and hence it’s anything but random that God will join you, Natalie and Kyle, in one flesh for the rest of our life on August 24th. Every anniversary you will celebrate — your first, we pray your 50th, and perhaps even your 75th and beyond — will take place on the Feast of the Apostle Saint Bartholomew. On those anniversaries, beyond giving flowers or gifts or sharing a great meal, I hope that you will come to Mass, with the children we pray God will give you, to thank God for the gift of your marriage, to receive his blessing, and there celebrate with the whole Church the feast of this great apostle. Therefore, it is fitting, that you develop, starting today, a great devotion to St Bartholomew, since he, by God’s design, is going to be a central part in your marriage and family moving forward.
- Here in the incredibly beautiful dome of the Cathedral, we see the image of Christ the Sacred Heart with his hands raised in blessing upon us all. To his right, we see our Lady. To her right, we behold St. John, who was with her at the foot of the Cross. To St. John’s right, we have St. James the Greater, so important in the life of Natalie, because two years ago, with Kyle’s support and encouragement, she fulfilled a lifelong dream to make a life-changing pilgrimage, the Camino de Santiago, to St. James’ tomb in Spain. And to St. James’ right, we have today’s heavenly honoree, St. Bartholomew, vested in a burgundy cape and teal blue tunic. He is depicted with a sharp, uplifted knife in his right hand and, in his left, his skin and face, significant of the way he was martyred, having been flayed alive in ancient Armenia as he sought to share the Gospel of the Lord Jesus. Just as Christ is often shown risen from the dead carrying, as a light burden, his Cross as a sign of victory, so St. Bartholomew is showed exalting the instrument and result of his torture, as he awaits in Jesus the resurrection of his body. His death revealed what he proclaimed by his life: that his skin was totally in the game, that he was Jesus’ from his head to his heart to his dermis. In the Gospel for his feast day, which was proclaimed here at the Cathedral at the 8:05 Mass this morning, Jesus praised Bartholomew — as Matthew, Mark and Luke call him in Aramaic in relation to his Father, Talmai — but whom St. John calls by his first name Nathaniel, as a “true child of Israel in whom there is no guile,” no duplicity, deception, or dishonesty. Jesus, whom Isaiah would prophesy as someone in whom “no deceit was in his mouth” (Is 53:9), recognized Bartholomew as a man praised by the Psalms: “Happy are those … in whose spirit there is no deceit” (32:2) and lauded him for being forthright, honest, open, plainspoken, straightforward, upfront, earnest, innocent, and unpretentious. This candor, this lack of deception, is an attribute that should be able to be said not just about authentic Israelites but about every Christians. The feast of St. Bartholomew every year is an opportunity for us to make a greater commitment to truth-telling, to live by the truth that sets us free, and to commit to following Christ as the incarnate Truth, Way, and Life (Jn 14:6).
- That’s why it’s noteworthy, Kyle and Natalie, that God inspired you to want to have proclaimed as the epistle at your wedding Mass St. Paul’s words to the first Christians in Rome in which he said, “Let your love be sincere.” Sincerity doesn’t just mean “from the heart,” but it means truthful, pure, unmixed and unadulterated, free from pretense and falsehood. That’s what your Christian and marital love ought to be, and that’s why St. Paul then gives a list of behaviors to help you keep your love for each other as sincere as Christ’s love for you: to love sincerely, he stresses, means to hate what is evil and hold onto what is good; to care each other with mutual affection; to anticipate each other in showing honor, the love and honor you will publicly profess in a few minutes you wish to give each other for the rest of your life; to help each other to be fervent and zealous in serving the Lord; to rejoice together in the hope Christ places in you even on days you might be tempted to complain; to endure in affliction even in the midst of the sorrows and contradictions that inevitably accompany every marriage; to persevere in prayer, knowing that God is with you listening and responding; to have the same high regard for each other, never looking down on each other, but always 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. Just like with St. Bartholomew, Christ wants to praise you for your honesty, for the sincerity of your love in speech and in your behavior.
- That’s not the only connection, however, between today’s feast, your second reading and the marriage you will form in just a few minutes. At the beginning of the passage, St. Paul urges you, “by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.” In Greek, the text is even clearer, when he says that the only worship that makes sense, that’s logical, is, like St. Bartholomew, to give all, to offer your bodies, even your skin, to hold nothing back, to make your life a commentary on the words of consecration in which you say to each other, “This is my body, this is my blood, this is my heart, my hands, my feet, my sweat, my bones, and my everything and all, given out of love for you.” For you to be capable of such an exchange of self-gifts in love, the apostle tells you, “Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.” Christ wants to renew you by helping you to put on his own mind, so that you may always discern what God is asking, what is truly good, pleasing to him, perfect and right. Your marriage is, therefore, meant to be a sign of the renewal of minds, of hearts, and of lives that Christ wants to work in the world.
- Most of us who are here know and rejoice that your love is sincere. You are both so earnest and, as we saw last night in the toasts at the rehearsal dinner, infectiously make it easier for each other and for your family and friends truly to be themselves around you. We see in you what for centuries the Church has seen in Tobias and Sarah in the first reading you chose, when, on their wedding night, Tobias and Sarah prayed together. “Lord,” Tobias said, “you know that I take this wife of mine not because of lust, but for a noble purpose.” He had no ulterior motive. He wasn’t receiving her because of fallen carnal desire or even normal and natural physical attraction, but for the noble purpose accordance with God’s plan for her and for him. Together they praised God and asked for his mercy that they might fulfill his will and live together to a happy old age. They finished the prayer by saying together, “Amen. Amen,” the Hebrew word that means “to uphold” or “to support,” indicating that they wanted to build their whole life on the foundation of God, his mercy, and his noble purpose for each of them and as a couple. That’s what we all believe and celebrate that you’re doing today.
- That witness of sincere love for God and each other, that desire each of you has to fulfill God’s will and to attain the noble purpose he has jointly given you, is what brings us to the Gospel you have chosen, in which Jesus calls you to a double-vocation: to be the “salt of the earth” and the “light of the world.” These rich Biblical metaphors describe various aspects of the mission of every follower of Jesus, like St. Barthlomew, but they are particularly fitting to describe the crucial, joint task of Christian married couples today. Sincere love for God and others, Jesus indicates, involves both salt and light.
- Salt had three purposes in the ancient world, light two. The most well-known purpose of salt, like today, was to give flavor, to improve the taste of what is bland. The second purpose was as a preservative; in an era without refrigeration, in a place like the Holy Land where temperatures in the summer can regularly reach 125 degrees Fahrenheit, salt was essential for preserving fish and meat. The third purpose was as a fire starter, something that is still used in various impoverished countries today: salt is mixed with animal waste and lit on fire for cooking and heating, much like those in the developed world occasionally use wood and charcoal. And so we see from this analogy that Christian marriages are meant to bring good taste and flavor, joy and vivacity to their surroundings. They’re meant to prevent the persons around them, and their culture, from corrosion and preserve the good. And they’re meant to be catalysts through whom Christ can light a fire on the earth.
- We rejoice, Kyle and Natalie, that you already have had a great head start on putting Christ’s words about being salt of the earth into practice. You both told me with gratitude how much flavor the other has brought to your life, how you’ve helped preserve the other’s faith and helped it grow, and how your relationship has ignited both of you to deeper things.
- During marriage preparation, Kyle, you sang Natalie’s praises. “One unexpected joy of my relationship with Natalie,” you told me, “has been learning from her example how to balance young adult pressures and stillconsistently prioritize faith and faith She has reignited my faith by consistently inviting me to Mass and social gatherings, by guiding me with genuine enthusiasm through specific Catholic practices likeadoration, confession, reading scripture and a daily commitment to prayer.” You said, “What I love most aboutNatalie is that she is always oriented towards love. Where I choose frustration, she chooses patience and forgiveness; when I default to cynicism, she makes an active choice towards hope; when I tend towards despondency, she rejuvenates herself. She is always oriented towards giving and being a force for good. She uses her talent for gift-giving to demonstrate love. I really enjoy receiving her thoughtful small care packages and art that remind me she is often thinking of me and seeking connection. She is always reflecting on how she can use her gifts and resources to help others, demonstrated by her work in education with under-resourcedcommunities that extends beyond the classroom to after-school activities and one-on-one support of students. This has helped me re-examine my own gifts, and I am excited for us to find opportunities to give together in our marriage and as a family. She is a wonderful friend to others. She is constantly brainstorming gifts or spontaneous acts of kindness to make others feel special out of a spirit of pure selflessness.”
- Natalie, in marriage preparation, you were just as effusive about how Kyle has been salt in your life. You stated, “Kyle is so balanced and naturally I admire his thoughtfulness, humility and intelligence. He is extremely generous and a wise and rational risk-taker. I love the way he is present to those around him and seeks first toknow others, not to be known by them. He is a great listener and is very understanding, assuming the best in others. He is comfortable in his own skin and not easily angered. I am so thankful for the way that Kyle has only ever responded patiently and lovingly towards me. He takes my emotions, experiences, and thoughts seriously. He loves the people I love and tries to understand and appreciate my occasionally niche interests. He hasinspired me to live less in my head, and to make real decisions about my life, encouraging me to take action onthings I desire to change about my life. He has helped me and inspired me to make job changes and encouragedme to say yes to following the desires of my heart, like walking the Camino, which I never would have never without his encouragement and help.”
- This three-fold salt you are for each other Jesus wants you to be together for many others. To do that, he says, you must ensure that your salt “does not lose its taste.” Chemists tell us that salt loses its flavor when it becomes denatured, when the cations separate from the anions, the sodium from the chloride. Human beings lose their sacred saltiness when become separated from God and each other. To keep your saltiness intact, you must increase your bond not just with each other but together with God. As the great servant of God, Venerable Father Patrick Peyton, and after him, Saint Teresa of Calcutta, made famous: “The family that prays together, stays together.” The Lord is calling you to pray together, Natalie and Kyle, so that your salt might help flavor, preserve and spiritually ignite the earth.
- The Lord Jesus also calls you to be the “light of the world.” Light, two thousand years ago and still today, has two fundamental purposes: to illumine and to warm. Christians are called to bring the light of Christ’s truth and the warmth of his love to others. Because of our communion with the One who said he is the “Light of the World,” we’re called to be lighthouses for others in the midst of stormy seas, as well as hearths that can rekindle those worn out by the coldness of a sometimes brutally harsh world. Jesus tells you at the end of this Gospel never to hide this light. “A city set on a mountain,” he said, “cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. Just so,” he concluded, “your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.” Every sacramentally married couple is meant to give the witness of this light. In an age in which many in secular society are trying to pressure believers to hide their Christian faith, especially the Biblical teaching about man, woman, love, sex, marriage and family under a bushel basket, you’re meant to be part of Christ’s response to those trends. Today, bucking that pressure, you are responding to Christ’s call to be live openly and unabashedly in his light. You are making a conspicuous profession about the gift and importance of marriage and the family in the divine plan. You are 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 in return, to accompany you for as long as you live. You’re overtly 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 give each other is not just a beautiful ring, or the exchange of a last name, or even the gift of yourself, however faithful, fruitful, free and total. You’re openly affirming that you are seeking to give God to each other, to help the other grow in God’s image and likeness, to assist the other to build your common life together on the indestructible foundation of Christ the Cornerstone. Our world today needs this light and this salt. It needs to believe in love, not as the world defines it, not as the courts define it, not as popular music croons or raps it, but as God has made it. It needs to believe in marriage, in lifetime commitment, in fidelity, in mutual sacrifice, and in the blessing of children. It needs to believe ultimately in God, and to come to faith. For that, it needs the witness most of all Christian spouses and families who show them the difference God makes in daily life. This is what it means to be salt and light. This is the vocation to which God is calling you and will help you to live!
- And to help you become the Salt of the Earth and the Light of the World, the greatest means we have is Jesus’ self-giving in the Holy Eucharist. There’s great meaning to the fact that you are getting married in the context of the Mass, because there’s a deep connection between the Sacrament of Marriage and the Mass. In this beautiful new Cathedral, just like in so many of the most historic Churches in Christianity, there’s 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 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, wood or 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.
- Catholics believe that every time a sacramentally married couple comes to Mass together, they are essentially renewing and strengthening before the altar their one flesh union, receiving Christ’s love for them and becoming equipped from within to love each other by that same love. This is where husband and wife learn how to make their love for each other ever more sincere and, like St. Bartholomew, how to go all in. This is where they are transformed by the renewal of their minds, so that they may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect. This is where best they, together, bless the Lord at all times and magnify and exalt his name. This is where Christ keeps their salt salty and their light radiant. This is where they implore the Lord to pour out his mercy upon them, deliver them from every evil, and strengthen them in the noble purpose of Christian marriage as long as they both shall live. This is where they proclaim together “Amen, Amen!,” openly confessing that they will make Christ and his divine mercy the true foundation of their life. This is where everything in your life, from the first time you met in the Fall of 2020 in Charlotte, from the proposal last September 1 in Riverside Park in New York, even your beautiful wedding today, has been leading. This is where in just a few minutes your joint Camino will begin, not a Camino de Santiago, but a Camino del Cielo, a pilgrimage hand-in-hand through life meant to finish not in northwestern Spain but in the heavenly Jerusalem!
- Today around this marriage bed of Christ’s union with the Church and with you, Natalie and Kyle, your family, friends, the Blessed Mother, St. Joseph, St. Bartholomew 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 nuptial feast of heaven. We ask the Divine Bridegroom, with his incandescent sacred heart, never to stop blessing you with his holy, spousal, cruciform love and, through the way that you share that salty and resplendent love with each other, never to stop blessing us all!
The readings for today’s Mass were:
A Reading from the Book of Tobit
When the girl’s parents left the bedroom and closed the door behind them, Tobiah arose from bed and said to his wife, “My love, get up. Let us pray and beg our Lord to have mercy on us and to grant us deliverance.” She got up, and they started to pray and beg that deliverance might be theirs. He began with these words: “Blessed are you, O God of our fathers; praised be your name forever and ever. Let the heavens and all your creation praise you forever. You made Adam and you gave him his wife Eve to be his help and support; and from these two the human race descended. You said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone; let us make him a partner like himself.’ Now, Lord, you know that I take this wife of mine not because of lust, but for a noble purpose. Call down your mercy on me and on her, and allow us to live together to a happy old age.” They said together, “Amen, amen,”
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.
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 Matthew
Jesus said to his disciples, “You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.
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