Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Edward Catholic Church, Palm Beach, Florida
Nuptial Mass of Kevin Corkery and Paulina Padilla
May 15, 2021
Rev 19:1.5-9, Ps 112, Rom 8:31-35.37-39, Mk 10:6-9
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following text guided todays’ homily:
There is great significance, in both sacred and secular contexts, to the fact that your wedding, Kevin and Paulina, is taking place on May 15.
In the sacred context, May 15 is the liturgical feast of Saint Isidore the Farmer, whose marriage to Santa Maria de la Cabeza has been a model for more than 900 years of how spouses are meant to help each other grow in holiness and how the family is meant to be an image of God through becoming truly a loving communion of persons, patterning their very marriage after the love of God. The purpose of every sacramental marriage is for husband and wife to help each other to enter more deeply into the love and life of God that is eternal. The ultimate aim is heaven. From this day forward, each year when you celebrate the anniversary of your marriage on May 15, I hope that, beyond giving flowers or gifts or sharing a great meal, you will come to daily Mass to thank God for the gift of your marriage and there celebrate with the whole Church the feast of Saint Isidore, using it as an opportunity to recommit yourself to imitate wholeheartedly and perseveringly in your marriage the virtues that helped make Saint Isidore, Santa Maria and their marriage holy.
In the secular context, May 15 is International Family Day, an observance proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations to be marked for the first time in 1994 during the International Year of the Family. It is meant to be a day on which we focus on how, as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms, “the family is the natural and fundamental group unity of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State” (16.3), and do so in the context of changing economic and social structures that are affecting the stability and structure of the family in different parts of the world.
Five years ago, in his exhortation on the family, “The Joy of Love” (Amoris Laetitia), Pope Francis said that the “welfare of the family is decisive for the future of the world and that of the Church” (31). Yet he noted that there are many shadows threatening the family that we can’t ignore.
He mentioned the “growing danger represented by an extreme individualism,” the “fast pace of life” that hinders “permanent decisions,” a limited or even false notion of freedom that “degenerates into an inability to give oneself generously to others,” a mindset that treats the ideal of a exclusive and stable marriage as “inconvenient” “tiresome” and an “entrapment … that could hamper the achievement of one’s personal goals” (33-34).
These dangers are multiplied, he continued, by what he calls a “legal deconstruction” of the family due to a gender ideology that “denies the difference and reciprocity in nature of a man and a woman and envisages a society without sexual differences thereby eliminating the anthropological basis of the family” and making human identity “the choice of the individual [that] can also change over time” (53, 56).
He concluded by saying that no sane person can think that the “weakening of the family as that natural society founded on marriage will prove beneficial to society as a whole” but rather that the undermining of marriage and the family “poses a threat to the mature growth of individuals, the cultivation of community values and the moral progress of cities and countries” (52).
Every Christian sacramental marriage, including the one who will receive and minister today, Kevin and Paulina, is meant to be a response to those cultural trends about the family. The family is indeed fundamental building block of the Church and society and our ecclesial and social edifices are only as strong as their familial foundation. The fact that your marriage is taking place on the International Day of Families, and that every anniversary you will celebrate will take place on it, is meant to be an annual reminder of your spousal mission and vocation, to build yourself securely on the rock of Christ, so that you may be a strong pillar for the Church and the world. The Church and the world thirst for what Pope Francis calls “the Gospel of the Family” and the Church needs your help to proclaim that message concretely in the way you respond to God’s grace to live your marriage as God intends.
How do your marriage, your family, become strong so that it can be a firm foundation for the Church and civilization? During the celebration of the Year of the Family in 1994, the first year the International Day of Families was observed, St. John Paul II gave an answer. He noted that the family is “at the center of the great struggle between good and evil, between life and death, between love and all that is opposed to love. To the family is entrusted the task of striving, first and foremost, to unleash the forces of good, the source of which is found in Christ the Redeemer of man. Every family unit,” he said, “needs to make these forces their own so that …the family will be ‘strong with the strength of God.’”
To be a strong pillar, the family must build itself on Jesus Christ, the “stone rejected by the builders that has become the cornerstone” (Ps 118:22; Mt 21:42). Jesus gave a parable in which he said that there are two types of people, those who build their lives on rock and those who build on sand. The wise men and women who build on rock, he stated, are those who hear his words and act on them. When the rains fall, the floods come, and the winds blow and buffet against their house, they remain standing, because they have been built firmly on him (Mt 7:24-27).
What does it mean to build on Christ and his word, so as to be strong with the strength of God?
The first thing is to trust in God’s grace, on his help in good times and in bad, in sickness and health, in poverty and prosperity, all the days of your married life. You chose for the second reading of your nuptial Mass St. Paul’s powerful passage in his Letter to the Romans in which he declares, “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?” If God the Father loved us enough to allow his Son to be crucified for us, everything else we will ask of him is, in comparison, small. St. Paul goes on to say that no matter what challenges we may have to endure in life, nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus Our Lord.” You told me, Kevin, that this passage was “one of my favorite readings growing up with my parents and with the Bible. God is someone who loves and protects. Regardless of life or death, God’s love matters.” It sure does. Nothing can separate us from it. The problem is that many of us take that love for granted, we don’t prioritize it, we don’t depend on it in things both big and small. Make that love your foundation so that you can be share it with each other, with your children, with the Church and with the world.
The second thing that’s necessary is to take the word of God about marriage seriously. In the Gospel you chose, Jesus told us, “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.” In an age in which human beings want to redefine marriage to make it whatever they want it to be, at a time in which so many are building relationships not on rock but on sand, Jesus reminds us that in the beginning God made them male and female; and for this reason he leaves not a random assortment of men or women, but a mother and a father; and clings, not to whomever he is attracted, but to a wife, a woman to whom he will commit for life; and he joins them in a one-flesh union that culminates in children, who are the fusion of the bodily love of the mom and dad. Jesus concludes by proclaiming the indissolubility of marriage, that what God has joined, no one — not even all the family court magistrates in the world combined — can separate. You told me, Paulina, that you love this passage, that you find it “beautiful.” Kevin, you added, that it’s “short and sweet. It’s outspoken. God made them male and female.” And you said, “there are duties that flow from this.” There are indeed: duties to cling to each in love, even and especially on hard days when you need to forgive each other; duties of openness to life; duties to defend the meaning of marriage when others are confused, and to do so not solely by words, but also, and very importantly, by the witness of what marriage truly is in God’s plans. Build your life on this short and sweet, beautiful message.
To do so, you need to manifest how marriage cannot be a husbandless or wifeless institution. It is meant to be a bond in which the complementary gifts of man and woman both shine and grow. If your Nuptial Mass were not taking place in the Easter Season, you told me, Paulina, that you would have wanted to have as the Old Testament reading the extraordinary passage from Proverbs 31, in which the sacred author, inspired by the Holy Spirit, reminds us that the value of a worthy wife is “far beyond pearls,” an “unfailing prize” to a husband who entrusts his heart to her. She brings good. She’s hardworking. She reaches out her hands to the poor and extends her arms to the needy. She fears the Lord. You told me, Paulina, “It talks about the woman I want to be.”
That passage is complemented by the Responsorial Psalm you chose, which proclaims that blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who takes great delight in God’s commandments, whose righteousness is firm, who is generous, merciful and just, who is open-handed and gives to the poor, who conducts his affairs with justice, who has no fear of evil news, because with a firm heart he trusts in the Lord. Kevin, you me that this is the “example of the man I should be with Paulina and with God.”
That is, I’m happy to say, and happy to have you say, the type of people you strive to be with each other. In the beginning, God created man and woman as a “fitting helper” for each other. To be strong with the strength of God, we need not only God’s grace, but we need each other’s support. I rejoice that you have already been that type of support.
Kevin you told me, “Paulina helped me get rid of some bad habits and helped me to become a much better version of myself. … She helped me quit smoking and even entirely quit drinking along with me when she helped me realize my bad habit.” You added, “She always goes out of her way to make sure we spend good quality time together and, on top of that, is constantly showing acts of service.” You concluded that her example of support “makes me choose her needs and her best interest over any material thing in the world and even over myself.” It sounds a little like Proverbs 31!
Paulina, you told me, “I knew Kevin was the one because he was different from all the other young men I had met. He treated me with kindness and generosity. He always made sacrifices for me and I knew that I would do the same. He lit my heart in times of darkness. When I was feeling sad, he was there to support me. He never tried to change me but always encouraged me to be better. I love Kevin’s humility, his loyalty, his sense of service, his tenderness and his zeal.” It sounds a lot like Psalm 112!
To become this man, to become this woman, to become strong with the strength of God, you need prayer. Saint Isidore and Santa Maria were distinguished by their familial prayer. Today’s first reading from the Book of Revelation describes the prayer of the Church on earth and in heaven, when a voice from around God’s throne says, “Praise our God, all you his servants, and you who revere him, small and great,” and a great multitude of believers shout out, “Alleluia! Salvation, glory and might belong to our God. … Alleluia! The Lord has established his kingdom. … Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory.” As the Venerable Father Patrick Peyton and Saint Mother Teresa both proclaimed, “The family that prays together, stays together.”
You both told me how thankful you are that you grew up in families that not only prayed together but made prayer one of the most important aspects of family life. Paulina, you told me with gratitude, “There was one essential principle at the root of our family growing up: our faith. We are greatly rooted in and united by our faith. Growing up praying the Bible with my father every morning on my way to school helped me incorporate the word of God in my daily life, even until now.” Kevin, you said to me, “My parents have shown me that there are always many ways in which one can show their love for another,” but one that stuck out was their example of prayer as individuals, as a couple and as a family. You said, “They are the perfect example of a good marriage in which both help each other come closer to God.”
God is calling you to pray just as you saw your parents pray, to build on that great foundation they have given you, so that in all things you will not only “stay together” but “praise our God” and “revere him” with joy and gladness, so that you will always be connected to the love of God. This is the way that you will become that woman more precious than pearls and that blessed man who will show the world the witness of marriage as God intended it from the beginning.
Your familial prayer should take the form of the Holy Rosary, which St. John Paul II called the great prayer “of and for the family.” It should take the form of praying Sacred Scripture together as a family, so that your home may be a true Domestic Church in which God’s voice echoes. But most of all, it should take the form of a Eucharistic life.
I finish every marriage homily — as Tom and Kate, Jack and Sarah already know — by mentioning that there’s great significance to the fact that Catholic couples are married in the context of a Mass. 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 in acts of love. This is the means by which Christ will regularly strengthen you, Paulina and Kevin, with the strength of God. This is the way by which you will receive within Christ’s love for you and become more capable of strengthening each other with a love that says, “This is my body, given for you.” This is the channel Jesus provides to help you to become, like Saints Isidore and Maria de la Cabeza, an “unfailing prize” of a wife and a man whose righteousness will be remember forever.
Today around this marriage bed of Christ’s union with the Church and with you, your family, your friends, St. Joseph, the Blessed Mother all the saints and angels 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, make it strong with the strength of God, and bring it to completion in the eternal nuptial feast of heaven. We pray that he will never stop blessing you with his holy, spousal love and, through the way that you live this holy sacrament from this day forward, never to stop blessing us all.
The readings for today’s Mass were:
A Reading from the Book of Revelation (Rev 19:1.5-9)
After this I 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.”
Ps 112:1-9 — Blessed The Man Who Greatly Delights in the Lord’s Commands
Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who greatly delights in his commandments!
His descendants will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed.
Wealth and riches are in his house; and his righteousness endures for ever.
Light rises in the darkness for the upright; the LORD is gracious, merciful, and righteous.
It is well with the man who deals generously and lends, who conducts his affairs with justice.
For the righteous will never be moved; he will be remembered for ever.
He is not afraid of evil tidings; his heart is firm, trusting in the LORD.
His heart is steady, he will not be afraid, until he sees his desire on his adversaries.
He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures for ever;
his might shall be exalted in glory
A Reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans (Rom 8:31-35.37-39)
What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him? Who will bring a charge against God’s chosen ones? It is God who acquits us. Who will condemn? It is Christ [Jesus] who died, rather, was raised, who also is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
A Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Mark (Mk 10:6-9)
But 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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