The Two Greatest People

 

Paying tribute to my parents on their 60th wedding anniversary

05-16-2026

John 16:23b-28 Jesus said to his disciples: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you. Until now you have not asked anything in my name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete. “I have told you this in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures but I will tell you clearly about the Father. On that day you will ask in my name, and I do not tell you that I will ask the Father for you. For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have come to believe that I came from God. I came from the Father and have come into the world. Now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.”

Today is the day that changed my life forever and I wasn’t even there to witness it. On May 16, 1966 my parents, Raichelamma and Antony Konuparampil got married in New Delhi, India. And if you do the math quickly, you can figure out today is their 60th wedding anniversary.

I just want to take a moment and give a shout-out to the two greatest people I have ever known, my mom and dad. Their enduring love for each other not only brought me and my brother and sister into the world, their love taught me the most important lessons of my life.

One lesson my parents’ love taught me was a desire to be a priest. While I was still in the seminary someone asked me what inspired me to be a priest, and immediately without thinking, I replied: “the love of my mom and dad!” That might seem like a paradoxical reply since how can married love inspire a celibate vocation?

But at the root of both marriage and celibacy lies unconditional love. In marriage one’s unconditional love for a spouse, in celibate priesthood one’s unconditional love for the Church. To paraphrase James Carville, the democratic strategist, “It’s the unconditional love, stupid.” Both marriage and priesthood spring from the fountain of unconditional love, namely, God’s love.

Another lesson my parents’ marriage has taught me is that spousal and family love beat at the heart of all existence, all creation. The whole reason God created the cosmos was to share his divine love with others, just like a husband and wife want to share their love with their children.

Indeed, their children are literally the embodiment of mom and dad’s love. I am a walking testament of my parents’ unconditional love. Their love should be as inseparable as trying to cut me into two pieces. The unconditional love of marriage explains why God created: to share his love.

But that same spousal love gives context to why God the Son came to redeem us. As Jesus said in the gospel today: “I came from the Father and have come into the world. Now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.” What did Jesus come into the world to do? St. Paul explained to the Ephesians that Jesus’ love for humanity is best described in terms of a marriage.

Hence he wrote famously in Ephesians 5:25: “Husbands love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her.” In other words, Jesus’ crucifixion and death was in essence a dowry he paid to win the hand of his bride and take her home to heaven. And the sacraments are how Jesus continues to pour out his spousal love from the cross for his Bride. Can you see how marriage unravels the mystery of why God redeemed us?

Another lesson my parents’ 60-year-marriage teaches me is to remember the meaning of marriage in a world on the verge of forgetting its true meaning. Marriage at root is for unity (between two people) and for procreativity (to bring more people into the world), or as Professor Janet Smith says, “for babies and for bonding.”

But everywhere you turn today, people suffer from amnesia about the meaning of marriage. For instance, in 2022, Deborah Hodge married her cat in London so her landlord would not evict her. He could evict a cat, but not a spouse. Last year Chris Cagle proposed to marry his AI chatbot and she predictably said, “Yes!” Now, he didn’t actually marry a computer but he tried to.

My friends, we are living in a world that is growing increasingly disturbed and even dangerous. And the bone at the bottom of the cauldron is the meaning of marriage. And the Catechism teaches what that meaning is, that marriage, like priesthood, is supposed to be about service: service to your spouse, service to your children, service to the wider community, and a service to the cosmos.

As you know, there are 3 sacraments of initiation (Baptism, Confirmation, and Communion), two sacraments of healing (confession and Anointing of the Sick), and two sacraments of service (Holy Orders and Holy Matrimony). And that lesson of service is another lesson my parents’ 60-year marriage has taught me. We are put here on this planet to serve one another: either as one spouse serves another or as a priest and nun serve the world.

Jesus said in Mk 10:45 (the gospel in a nutshell): “For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” That verse in the gospel of Mark sums up the meaning of marriage – namely, service. And marriage, in turn, sums up the meaning of everything else, namely, sharing unconditional love. Happy 60th anniversary, mom and dad, the two greatest people I know.

Praised be Jesus Christ!