Much Ado about Marriage

Seeing marriage as a sacrament of service

07/17/2019

Psalm 103:1B-2, 3-4, 6-7

R. (8a) The Lord is kind and merciful.

Bless the LORD, O my soul;

and all my being, bless his holy name.

Bless the LORD, O my soul,

and forget not all his benefits.

R. The Lord is kind and merciful.

He pardons all your iniquities,

he heals all your ills.

He redeems your life from destruction,

he crowns you with kindness and compassion.

R. The Lord is kind and merciful.

The LORD secures justice

and the rights of all the oppressed.

He has made known his ways to Moses,

and his deeds to the children of Israel.

R. The Lord is kind and merciful.

If there’s one thing people need to hear these days it is solid marriage advice. Whenever I mention marriage in a homily everyone’s ears perk up, and I get people’s undivided attention. See, you are all laser focused now. Here are three tips of the trade of marriage. A common adage teaches: “It’s the looks that get them but it’s the personality that keeps them.” That’s why I ended up in the priesthood – I’m limited in both categories. But true love has to be deeper than lovely looks or it won’t last. Another joke I heard recently was how to argue successfully with your spouse. The husband said: “I always get the last word in every argument. And those words are: ‘Yes dear’.” Those word will keep you together until death do you part. Or else death may come earlier than you think. I was speaking with the bishop recently and he said the best advice for a newly married couple is: “Be kind. No matter what happens, just be kind.” There’s a lot of wisdom in those words.

Have you ever thought about your relationship with God as a marriage? It may sound silly or maybe even scandalous to think we can marry our Maker and Creator. Who are we poor creatures to think we could attract the attention of God and make him fall madly in love with us like Romeo recklessly pursing Juliet? And yet, the marriage motif runs through the scriptures from beginning to end like a golden thread tying the knot between the primordial story of Adam and Eve’s marriage to the resounding conclusion of Revelation and the marriage of the Lamb and his Bride. No wonder marriage makes everyone sit up and pay attention at Mass. We could almost dare to say marriage even makes God get laser focused.

God seems to heed Bishop Taylor’s advice in Psalm 103, our responsorial today. We repeated hopefully: “The Lord is kind and merciful.” Our infidelity and our sinfulness certainly puts our Lord’s kindness and mercy to the test. But no matter what we do, God continues to be kind. Now that is some great marriage advice for both creature and Creator, two very unlikely spouses.

You know, I find a majority of my time as a priest is spent on marriage ministry. Either I am preparing young couples for marriage, or I am celebrating their marriages (every Saturday!), or I am counseling them in a troubled marriage, or I am working on annulments for failed marriages. And it’s not just me but the whole Church that makes much ado about marriage. Pope St. John Paul II said: “The Church perceives in a more urgent and compelling way her mission to proclaiming to all people the plan of God for marriage and the family” (Familiaris consortio, 3). In other words, if you get marriage wrong, you can’t get much else right. Marriage is like the precarious piece in the Jenga puzzle game that pulling it out causes the tower to tumble down. If we get marriage wrong the whole tower of society tumbles down. That’s why the Church makes much ado about marriage.

One reason so many marriages struggle is we tend to forget that marriage is a sacrament of service just like Holy Orders is a sacrament of service. We all know that ordained priests are called to serve their people. But did you know that marriage provides the grace to be of service to your spouse and children, and that specific service is to help them to get to heaven? The job of one spouse is to get the other spouse to heaven. That service is analogous to the service of priesthood: helping people get to heaven.

However, when spouses believe marriage is the “sacrament of happiness” instead of the sacrament of service, they get things backward. In other words, spouses should help each other to get to heaven first, and as a result happiness becomes the by-product. Spouses should be careful not to think: I want to marry in order to be happy first and getting to heaven is the by-product. If marriage is not first embraced as the sacrament of service, it will never become the sacrament of happiness. Can you see how getting marriage wrong makes it very hard to get much else right?

People always perk up whenever someone sermonizes about the sacrament of marriage. And it’s no surprise that they do because marriage holds the key to both happiness and heaven. And the secret to a successful marriage is to be kind, just like the bishop said, and the Responsorial Psalm sang.

Praised be Jesus Christ!