Mi primera boda: Baltazar y Veronica

No quiero robar el centro de atención, pero esta es mi primera boda, en inglés o en español. Espero que estaré a la altura de ministrar a todos ustedes hoy.

A medida que nos reunimos para celebrar la boda de Baltazar y Veronica, hay algo que se destaca en las lecturas que hemos escuchado. En la segunda lectura, San Pablo nos dice que el matrimonio es un "gran misterio", que luego se compara con Cristo y la Iglesia. Ciertamente, hay cosas sobre el matrimonio que puede ser misterioso, pero ¿cómo es el matrimonio en sí mismo un misterio? ¿Es el matrimonio tan difícil de entender que debe ser llamado un misterio?

Debemos entender algo en primer lugar acerca de la palabra misterio, o mystérion como está escrito en el griego original. Esta palabra mysterion no significa necesariamente algo secreto, pero algo que no es aparente, algo que no se aprende por sí mismo sino que se revela para nosotros. El mystérion de la fe católica son esas cosas reveladas por Jesús en sus enseñanzas, pero San Pablo se expande de manera que incluya no sólo las enseñanzas y acciones de Jesús, sino también muchas de las verdades que se desconoce a los paganos, pero ahora revelada por Dios para nuestra salvación.

Entre los misterios que él identifica es el que celebramos hoy, el misterio del matrimonio. En su carta a los Efesios, San Pablo elabora sobre la unión del hombre y la mujer en el matrimonio como un símbolo de la unión de Cristo con su Iglesia. Esta enseñanza eleva el matrimonio de ser sólo sobre el hombre y la mujer a ser acerca de Jesús que está en el corazón del misterio cristiano. También eleva los deberes y responsabilidades del matrimonio para estar en el mismo nivel que las que existen entre Jesús y la Iglesia, como San Pablo enumera.

El misterio del matrimonio se ve en la unión de Jesús con la Iglesia. Muchos tratarán de darnos a Jesús sin la Iglesia, sino que es como si se presentaron un marido y se olvidó la mujer. Jesús está íntimamente unido a la Iglesia que Él estableció, mientras que personalmente presente en esta tierra y por la cual murió en la cruz. La Iglesia está íntimamente unida con Jesús como una novia se unió a su novio. Los dos de ellos no se pueden separar, porque entonces no entenderíamos ellos, ya que existen y ya que estaban destinados a ser.

Así es con el sacramento del matrimonio. El hombre está íntimamente unida a la mujer como Jesús con la Iglesia. San Pablo nos dice, incluso en el pasaje leemos que el hombre es amar a la mujer como a sí mismo, porque así es como Jesús ama a la Iglesia, como parte de su propio ser. La mujer se une al hombre como la Iglesia está unida a Jesús, pues ahora los dos se convierten en uno. El matrimonio, entonces, en la Iglesia no es una simple unión de dos personas, pero es la elevación de los dos para una unión que no tendrá fin, al igual que Jesús nunca abandonará la Iglesia ni la Iglesia separarse de Jesús.

Baltazar y Verónica, en un momento, ustedes van a entrar en este misterio de la unión. Ustedes van a comenzar una nueva vida a partir de este momento, una nueva vida en la que ya no son más que dos personas, pero dos unidos en una sola. No se equivoque habrá dificultades a medida que comienza a vivir este misterio. Puede haber momentos en que ustedes no pueden colocar el otro, e incluso puede haber ocasiones en que le resulta muy difícil amar a su cónyuge, pero el misterio del matrimonio sólo puede ser encontrado a través del amor. San Josemaria Escriva dijo: “Amar es... no albergar más que un solo pensamiento, vivir para la persona amada, no pertenecerse, estar sometido venturosa y libremente, con el alma y el corazón, a una voluntad ajena... y a la vez propia.” El amor que une a los dos de ustedes en el matrimonio debe ser de la misma clase de amor que Jesús tiene por la Iglesia, el amor que lo llevó a aceptar el Cruz. Sólo de esta manera se puede realizar el misterio del matrimonio y encontrar su verdadero significado y su verdadero papel en su salvación.

Pueden ustedes ser bendecido en este día a medida que va esta boda. Que todos días de ustedes sean tan bendito como lo fueron los días de la unión entre la Virgen María y San José, los otros grandes modelos de matrimonio. Que Dios encontrar un lugar para habitar en la casa que ustedes construirán juntos. Pero pueden que sean consciente de la persona que está en el corazón del misterio cristiano, el que ha dado el matrimonio su importancia y su significado. Que Jesús esté siempre en medio de ustedes, incluso en los malos tiempos. Y pueden estar tan unidos en matrimonio que ustedes pueden darse cuenta de la plenitud de este misterio no en esta vida, pero en la vida eterna, donde todos vamos a celebrar en las nupcias de Jesús con su novia la Iglesia.

27th Sunday per annum (OF) - On the Family

If there is one topic which has been at the forefront of disagreements with the Catholic Church in recent years, it is on the subject of marriage and the family.  The recent push to legalize and legitimize so-called homosexual marriage in this country has brought almost violent opposition to Christians in general and to the Church in particular.  We are mocked and lambasted for our beliefs and are proclaimed intolerant, backwards, or unloving.  “If two people love each other,” we are asked, “why can’t that love be formally recognized?”  It is this false premise which shows the weakness of the pro-gay marriage argument and their misunderstanding of the plan God had for humanity from the very beginning.

In our first reading, we hear the account of Genesis on the creation of man and woman.  God reveals to us that we are not meant to be alone.  The poet John Donne wrote that “No man is an island,” and indeed that is rarely how we are meant to exist.  We are meant for community, the simplest and most fundamental community being the family.  In declaring Eve as being “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh,” Adam shows that the two are truly and completely meant for each other and their compatibility.  It is in their differing sexes that Adam and Eve are able to start the human community in the first family.  This community begins with the man and the woman uniting themselves, or, as the Scriptures put it, the two becoming one flesh.

But Our Lord further emphasizes the value of marriage in our Gospel today.  He rebukes the Pharisees and humanity in general in the need for divorce.  It is only in the hardness of our hearts that we are incapable of living out the vocation and the sacrament of marriage.  Speaking as the One who created Adam and Eve, as the One who instituted marriage, Jesus definitively declares for all generations not only the indissolubility of marriage but also defines marriage as between one man and one woman.  He reaffirms the work begun in the garden which was disastrously affected by the fall of the first family.  Man and wife are meant to be united in marriage until death separates the two.  The virulent spread of no-fault divorce within our country has helped to bring about the devaluing of marriage as a lifetime commitment and covenant between the two and has lead to the concept of marriage as only founded upon love.

In fact, those who promote the concept of gay marriage will say use this idea to promote their perversion of marriage.  And the Church certainly affirms the value and importance of love within marriage and the family; no family can subsist without love flowing from and between each of the members.  Yet it is the definition of love which differs between us.  When the Church speaks of love, she holds up the Cross as the definition of love.  In the Cross we see the complete meaning of love found in that famous passage of St. John’s Gospel: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.”  It is the selfless and self-giving love of God which must be the model of love within the family, not the modern definition of love which resides in an emotional connection or a rejoicing in the pleasure found in the other.

This divine love is found most within marriages and the family in the love which brings forth new life.  Jesus proclaims, “Let the little children come to me,” reflecting the command of God to our first parents to “go forth and multiply.”  Each new life brought into the world is brought forth not merely upon the foundation of love between the husband and wife, but also upon the love which is found within God Himself in His great Trinity.  The love which binds and unites the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is what has lead to the existence of the universe and, in particular, the existence of humanity, upon whom God bestows the divine image and likeness.

It is this life-giving act of creative love which separates marriage as founded by God from marriage as declared by modern man.  A marriage founded on imitating the self-giving divine love which seeks the good of the other will bring forth lives of holiness and charity, both in the couple and in their children.  Yet the modern redefinition of marriage as founded on selfish love seeks to use the partner only as a personal good, as an object of pleasure, even if it brings forth new life.  What is most repugnant about homosexual acts in general and the idea of homosexual marriage is to say that no new life can be produced from the act that is committed!  It is only pleasure which is the goal of this modern marriage, and it is the reason why so many of these marriages, heterosexual or homosexual, end so quickly.

Marriage and the family are central to the Church because it is in the family that we see reflected before us the Trinity which loves unto into existence.  To do this requires a great commitment on the part of the couple to imitate the divine love courageously every day.  Hence the seriousness of the Church in marriage preparation: the Church wishes to be certain that the man and the woman understand and accept this task with a willing heart and according to the will of God.  God does not promise that it will be easy, but He promises that He is with each couple united in the bonds of matrimony.  Just as Jesus was made “perfect in suffering,” as the Apostle reminds us in our second reading, so too are the couple made perfect in the joys and the sufferings found within marriage.

If the sanctity of marriage is to be preserved within our families, it must begin with God as being at the heart of it all.  Only in the love found within and flowing from the Trinity can the human family find the source and model of love meant for each of us.  This is found primarily through prayer.  Fr. Patrick Peyton, a religious priest of the early 20th century, coined the phrase, “The family that prays together, stays together.”  Family prayer helps foster unity and concord among each member, most especially the holy rosary.  October being the month of the rosary, let us strive to foster love of God and of the Virgin Mary in our families by praying the rosary as a family.

Let us also strive each day to accept the commitment to love our families as God desires us to love.  Let us seek to right any wrongs we have committed against one another and to heal the wounds we may have fostered against our spouses or our children.  Let us be open every day to the desires of God for our families and seek to fulfill His will for each other. If we are in irregular or unrecognized marriages, let us seek the remedies of the Church so that we may be restored to the purity and holiness God desires for each of us.  The Church certainly recognizes the difficulties of those marriages where a commitment has been under false or wrong pretenses and strives to ease this burden where it is valid.  If you are divorced and remarried outside of the sacrament, come to me and talk with me about it so that we can seek to rectify your life before God.  Let us not fall easily into the wiles of those who seek to redefine marriage for themselves, but let us strive to follow our loving God in all that He desires for us, so that we may be made worthy of joining the entire family of humanity in the glories that await us in the Father’s house.