United in God’s Love

A wedding homily for a wonderful couple.

          All-American boy meets Greek-American girl.  They fall in love and get engaged.  He converts to her religion, not because she wanted him to, but because he wanted to be closer to her.  Their families and backgrounds are different, but each complements the other in wonderful ways.  Sound familiar?  Well, it should because that’s the story of Toula Portokalos and Ian Miller in the 2002 box office hit, My Big Fat Greek Wedding.  Whether life imitates art or art imitates life doesn’t matter.  What matters is that you’ve found the secret to a perfect marriage:  you’re united in God’s love.  And that’s what our readings are talking about.

          In our first reading from Genesis, we learn that God created woman to make a suitable partner for man, and that in God’s providence suitable doesn’t mean identical; it means complementary.  In our second reading, Saint Paul reminds us that “God has gifted [us] with diverse gifts and functions”[1] but without love, these gifts are useless.  Our Gospel passage explains why:  love unites us with God and with each other.  “Love is the absolute norm that must govern the exercise of the gifts of the Spirit.”[2]

          Let’s face it, men and women are different.  We’re not meant to be the same; we were created to be different.  “No one person can have all the gifts and perform all the functions.”[3]  No one person can clean up Justin’s mess.  So our goal in life, and especially in marriage, isn’t to conform our being to another person’s; we’re not called to lose our individual identities.  Our goal is to appreciate each other’s differences and use them for mutual benefit.  This fact is particularly evident in marriage.  Think of marriage as a voyage of two ships to the same port.  “Grapple the two vessels together, lash them side by side, and the first storm will smash them to pieces. . . .  But leave the two vessels apart to make their voyage to the same port, each according to its own skill and power, and an unseen life connects them, a magnetism [that] cannot be forced.”[4]  That unseen life, that magnetism, that unifying factor is God’s love.    

          God’s love is the unifying force that allows us to exercise our gifts for the benefit of others.  “The proper movement of love begins with attention to the needs of the other person.”[5]  Love isn’t jealous; it’s not pompous; it doesn’t seek its own interest.  Love is patient; love is kind.  Love respects differences.  As the great American contemplative Thomas Merton said, "The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image."  When we truly love, when we enter together into God’s love, we understand that God created the person we love just as he or she is for a reason.  When we truly love, we join with God in loving the one we love.  It’s always through God that we find unity in love, notwithstanding our differences.  And what God has joined, man cannot divide.

          Loving isn’t always easy.  Life is hard; it involves sickness and death and unimaginably tragic circumstances.  It’s in the challenging times that our differences can become grating and can disrupt our unity.  So it’s especially in the difficult times that we have to challenge ourselves to love, as hard as that may be.  As the poet Kahlil Gibran said, “When love beckons to you, follow him, though his ways are hard and steep.”[6]  If you follow the ways of love, you’ll be united in God’s love in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health because “[love] bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never fails.”

          Jess and Justin:  you are two wonderful, talented, fun people.  It’s been such a blessing for me to meet you and your families – even Greg – and to journey with you over the past year as you prepared for this special day.  In that time, I’ve learned that you have many similarities, and a few differences.  You’re not identical, but you complement each other in wonderful ways.  What has impressed me most about you as a couple is how much you appreciate your differences.  Nearly every time I pointed out differences identified in the FOCCUS survey, I’d quickly learn that you were already aware of them, and that you’d worked out how to use them for your mutual benefit as a couple.  You’ve found the formula for a perfect marriage:  You are united in God’s love.  I think the only issue that isn’t fully resolved is Justin’s iTunes obsession.  And the only advice I can give you on that one, Jess, is to “Let it go, let it go . . . .”  Sorry, wrong movie.  Well, if that fails, follow Gus Portokalos’ advice in My Big Fat Greek Wedding:  Put a little Windex on him, it cures everything.

Readings:  Genesis 2: 18-24; Psalm 33; 1 Corinthians 12: 31-13: 8a; John 17: 20-26.

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[1] Maria A. Pascuzzi, “The First Letter to the Corinthians,” New Collegeville Bible Commentary (Collegeville, Liturgical Press, 2009) at 532.

[2] Id.

[3] Id.

[4] Rabbi Marc Gellman, “Jesus’ Miracle,” MSNBC.com, December 21, 2005. 

[5] J. Paul Sampley, “The First Letter to the Corinthians,” The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. X (Nashville, Abingdon Press, 2002) at 952. 

[6] Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1983) p. 11.