October 4, 2015
At first I wasn't going to talk about marriage and divorce today, cause every time I do I get in trouble.
But then I thought further and decided I wasn't really a coward at heart.
And besides, the only way to grow in this life is to take chances.
And we sorely need to look at this question as a community.
First, a fact of life. Very simply, marriage is a risk.
You don't need a celibate priest to tell you that; the evidence is all around you.
Sociologists say that about 50% of marriages break up;
But once I've said that, let me add this:
I am not playing a prophet of doom.
Risk—which means exposing yourself to loss or injury, to disadvantage or even destruction—risk is part of human living.
To be alive is to risk. To be single for life is a risk. To be a priest is indeed a risk.
And so I am not surprised that it is risky for a man and a woman to murmur to each other: "I take you . . . to have and to hold . . . for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part."
Not every marriage that opened with those risk-laden phrases has weathered the "worse," has overpowered poverty, has survived sickness of spirit or flesh.
In any and every risk, the critical question is this: Is the risk worth taking?
Is there good reason to believe not absolute certainty, only good reason to believe—that no matter what the years may —bring, however devastating and unexpected, your love will survive it?
Your love. Ah, there's the rub, that elusive word "love."'
Not simply the chemistry that makes for one-night stands; not only the emotion, the feelings that come and go.
Over and above these, the deliberate, ceaseless gift of each to the other, the self-giving that does not disappear when darkness clouds your sky.
You see, God did not forget about marriage once He had set it up, did not leave it to go its merry or merciless way.
Not that God guarantees success in any marriage.
God promises that He will be there—to give strength and solace, courage and constancy, generosity and gentleness.
But, for all God's powerful presence, we remain wonderfully and fearfully human, and God will always respect our freedom, will never force us, never compel us to be wise when we insist on being stupid, compassionate when we are bent on being
selfish, pliant when we are determined to be pigheaded.
And, in his infinitely wise way to ensuring our freedom to choose, God still allows bad thinks to happen to good people
What does this mean? On the one hand, God does not promise any married couple a rose garden, a perpetual paradise of pleasure, heaven on earth.
On the other hand, God does say: "Put your hands in mine, trust me as my own Son did from Nazareth to Calvary, plan your life-together in prayerful oneness with me, and you have good reason to hope for days and years rich in laughter, a life that lends meaning to those less fortunate, a life that makes your acre of God's world Id a place of peace, of justice, of love."
My next point is a story for the ages.
It is a true story.
I first read it several years ago and it still haunts me..
The story stems from a surgeon—a doctor who weds to his scalpel an uncommon gift for what is uniquely human.
He tells of a remarkable experience soon after a delicate operation:
In his words:
I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish.
A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed.
She will be thus from now on.
The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of' her flesh:
Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, 1 had cut the little nerve.
Her young husband is in the room.
He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private.
Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry-mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily?
The young woman speaks.
"Will my mouth always be like this?" she asks.
"Yes," I say. "it will. It is because the nerve was cut."
She nods, and is silent. But the young man smiles.
"I like it," he says. "It is kind of cute."
All at once 1 know who he is.
I understand, and I lower my gaze.
One is not bold in an encounter with a god.
Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers to show her that their kiss still works.
I remember that the gods appeared in ancient Greece as mortals, and I hold my breath and let the wonder in.
" To accommodate to hers." to accommodate to his.
Scotch-tape that to your refrigerator.
The story is symbolic; it tells us more than the words explicitly say.
Here is the endless story of two-in-one, the sensitivity that makes for joy in the very heart of sorrow.
Good friends: I began this homily on a rather negative note— on marriage as a risk.
Let me close on a more positive note—on marriage as a challenge.
Today's celebration challenges all who are married, all who are contemplating marriage
challenges them to live for each other, to live for the less fortunate others who surround them, to live for the Lord who alone can prosper their love.
And, as our good Pope Francis tells us, it calls upon all of us to be compassionate to those whose marriage fails.
As a church and as a people of Christ, we must re-examine the pain that we inflict on those whose marriage has failed.
Who are we to not forgive, to condemn them to lives alone?
I ask this: in all seriousness, we must look at our church and examine whether we are welcoming and forgiving...
Or condemning and vindictive in how we treat them.
In the radiant dawn that our Lord offers all of us every day of our lives,
I invite all of you who are married to join your own hands once again, to thank God for the pleasure and the pain you have shared, to murmur now more intensely than ever "I take you to have and to hold till death do us part."
Today we of Visitation/Francis de Sales along with our Lord invite you to love again as once you loved before,
to prove that through all the bittersweet of the years your "kiss still works.''
Go ahead, all of you who are married, join hands as the rest of us pray over you.
Lord God and Creator,
we bless and praise your name.
In the beginning you made man and woman,
so that they might enter a communion of life and love.
You likewise blessed the union of these children of yours
so that they might reflect the union of Christ with his church.
Look with kindness on them today.
Amid the joys and struggles of their life
you have preserved the union between them;
renew their marriage covenant,
increase your love in them,
and strengthen their bond of peace,
so that they may always rejoice in the gift of your blessings.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
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