En Garde

A Wedding Homily

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Marriage is always a joy to celebrate.

Marriage reminds us of the first things, the core things, that make us whole and human: hearth and home, faith and family, love and commitment. Through the length and breadth of history, weddings have been a time of celebration, of shared communal joy, because they offer us new life, new beginnings, new adventures and new growth, not just for the couple but for all of us together.

Life and hope and love radiate off of marriage like light and heat from a fire.

And if we’re being honest, it is a relief for us to gather together and hear the bedrock truth that life, real life, is not all about us. It’s not about our preferences, our politics, or our purchases. Real life is all about love—and not love as sentiment, not love as an emotion. Love is not the same thing as feeling in love. Rather, true love is a choice, an act of will, to put the good of another before our own.

That’s what makes marriage the Copernican Revolution of the soul. It’s when our world ceases to revolve around us, what we want, what we need, and turns instead upon a new and brighter star: the needs of those we love. It is a wonderfully human paradox that we do not truly become ourselves until we cease to live for ourselves and instead live for others. It’s then, and only then, that we come to know what it is to be truly alive.

That’s why marriage always entails religious connotations: because it is by nature sacramental and sacrificial. Sacramental, because it embodies for us a promise, a covenant whereby I am yours and you are mine, forever—and we become greater than who we were, greater than the sum of our parts. In marriage, two become one—and then one becomes four, or five, or six, or what-have-you. Thus we participate in God’s own act of Creation, welcoming new life, becoming a new family, a new pillar of the community.

And it is sacrificial because we are laying down our very lives, giving ourselves over entirely, to and for the one we love. As of this moment, Jack, you no longer live for yourself, but you live to care for and protect and provide for Jane and the children you will welcome together. Jane, the exact same goes for you. To love is to give of oneself for the other—and that hurts. Love hurts. But that’s what’s so amazing about it. That’s how you know it’s real. Love frees us from the tyranny of the ego, frees us from ourselves, that we might truly become ourselves.

Now, wait, wait, wait, some will say. True love is not all roses and sweet cream in the gardens. It’s earthier than that, grittier even. Real love means waking up every day and flossing next to the same person for 40 years. Real love means compromising and confessing and forgiving over and over again. It’s true what they say: the more you love someone, the more you want to kill them. For marriage, indeed, is a duel to the death, which no man of honor may decline!

The love you have shared unto now has brought you together, brought you before this altar, so that together you may become one: one family, one home. But this love today will not stand the test of time. Oh, no. Many couples think the passion of young love will hold their marriage together, but it won’t. Yet if you do it right—and you will—then your marriage will hold your love together. And that love won’t be the same as it is today.

Rather, your love will grow and strengthen and mature along with you, aging like a fine wine. It will not be the same 10 years, 20 years, 50 years from now. It will be better. It will be stronger. It will be your love, born of the test of time. Because let’s be honest—marriage? Kids? It’s death and resurrection, every day. You will die, every day, to yourself, and you will rise every morning—with very little sleep—to greet anew the ones you love. And every day will be a new adventure, a new challenge, a new struggle, humble, hearty, chaotic and crazy!

It’s so awful. It’s so wonderful. It’s so real.

This is where the rubber hits the road. This is where life begins. This is where God meets us, in the love of man and wife, in the life of hearth and home.

So hold onto your hats, folks. And let’s do this thing.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.