Homily for a Wedding

Why do we have families on earth? And why do we have weddings?
My dear bride and groom, relatives, friends, and the entire People of God: The family is God’s own idea, for the good of the man, the woman and the children. The family is an environment for them to flourish, to attain fullness of life. The family is for the man and the woman to cooperate with God in creating God’s people; in procreation. It is an institution; a society; indeed, the first society. It populates the earth, educates the people of the earth, providing a nurturing and nourishing environment, for the man, woman and children. Holy Matrimony is one of the seven sacraments instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ, as we have heard in the readings. It is a sacrament of love and service; the very image of God’s love, for God is love; the image of the Holy Trinity as a perfect relationship; the image of the Holy Family of Joseph, Mary and our Lord Jesus Christ; and the image of Christ and His bride the Church, which is His mystical body. Holy Matrimony is a permanent relationship and covenant for all time, never to be terminated. God forbids divorce, except as He permits it.
God is the good. To the extent that each one of us desires our perfection, we desire God, as St Thomas Aquinas teaches. God has made us for Himself, and our Heart is restless until it rests in God, as St Augustine learnt. It is only God who satisfies our deepest desires and yearnings. Whatever good we have, whatever joy and love we enjoy, we receive it from God, who provides it and is its ultimate source. God is the explanation of why there is something at all, rather than nothing. My dear bride and groom, and all relatives and friends, and the entire community, let us therefore, each one of us, order our lives to God. Let us always conform our thoughts, words, and deeds to God, for God is the source of all goodness and bliss.
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God always intends the good for us. From the beginning, he intended the very best for the man. “It is not good that the man should be alone”, God said. The man should have a helper, who is a partner. This helper who is a partner, is not any living creature which God created from the soil; such as cattle, birds, animals. These did not meet the test of being the man’s helper, who is a partner. In His wisdom, God formed a woman; not from the soil, but from the very body of the man. And not from the head of the man, or the leg or foot, but from the side of the man, translated as the rib. This means the woman is not to boss it over the man, not is the man to step on her as a door mat; but the man and his wife are equal partners, always standing side by side, not in competition, but in complementarity, always completing each other.
And having formed the woman, God Himself presented her to the man. The woman and the man are gift from God to each other. No wonder, when the man saw the woman, he was so pleased and became poetical and musical – “this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”.
In God’s wisdom, the man leaves his mother and father, and clings to his wife, and they become “one flesh”; that is, a team, a unit; they should be of one mind. Leaving father and mother is a fundamental growth stage, signifying the step of the man and woman entrusting themselves completely to each other and to God, as a brand new entity, that has become one flesh.
Our Lord’s interpretation of this creation story, as we heard in the Gospel, is that man and woman come from God the Father, who created them from the beginning. The man is God’s gift to the wife, and the wife is God’s gift to the man. And the children in turn are gift from God.
God made them male and female. Marriage is a union between a natural man and woman; in one permanent union to the exclusion of all others. And because he made them male and female, the man leaves his father and mother, and is joined to his wife, and they become one flesh; this is the natural order of intimate relations.
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The woman came from the man’s side, as he lay asleep. Now, in matrimony, the man in turn is joined to his wife, and they become one flesh. In marriage, the man and the woman return to each other, to be one, as God made them at the beginning; indivisible and not to be separated; never to be divorced. The image of the man asleep, as God creates the woman from his rib, cannot fail to remind us of our Lord Jesus’s pierced heart as he was asleep on the cross, and water and blood flowed out of his heart. The cross is God’s ultimate, self-less, self-offering love. God the Father did not hold anything back, and our Lord Jesus Christ did not hold anything back. In Holy Matrimony, the woman and man offer themselves to God and to each other, in a self-less, self-sacrificing manner.
Marriage is a sacrament of God’s love. It is divine. It is a sacrament of the Trinity, and is meant to reflect that perfect love between the Father and the Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit. My dear bride and groom, relatives and friends, please remember this, and live it, every time you bless yourself and others with a sign of the cross, every time you do anything in God’s name, and you should do everything in God’s name, saying in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The family is a necessary society. The family is necessary for the man and the woman to attain fullness of life. And it is necessary for the children to grow up and attain fullness of life. The Family is the basic unit of society. Good families lead to the common good of society, to flourishing societies. The family is the first school, and the church at home, in which the man and wife live, teach each other and the children, pray together, and live in God’s presence, thanking and praising God without ceasing, through lives of care and deep love.
Lastly, I plead with you to live your live, as husband and wife and as family, in the Church. Let us all journey together, through the Liturgical Year, and through all the Liturgical Seasons, every year of our lives. Remember to come to the sacraments. Remember to be active members of the Church. Let Mother Church nourish you in your lives and in your marriage.
May the Lord bless this word. Amen!