God bless Amanda and Jake!
In the 1959 Disney classic Sleeping
Beauty, Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather, three good fairies with magic wands
in hand, slide down a ray of sunlight that illuminates the Great Hall of King
Stefan’s palace. They come to present
his newborn daughter, Princess Aurora, with one gift each. Flora gives the Princess the gift of beauty;
Fauna gives her the gift of song. But just as Merryweather is about to bestow
her gift upon the Princess, the evil witch, Maleficent, crashes the party and
lays a curse on Aurora—"before the sun sets on her sixteenth birthday, she
will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die!” Merryweather quickly uses her magic to soften
Maleficent’s curse—Aurora would no longer die but would sleep until true love’s
kiss breaks the spell. Merryweather invokes
the only gift that can give Aurora her Happily Ever After. Amanda and Jake, the readings you’ve chosen for
your wedding today confirm that that very same gift will give you your Happily
Ever After, too.
Today’s readings are all about true love. In our first reading from Genesis, the union
of man and woman created by God in the beginning “is deepened by loving
fidelity, a mutual spirit of service, and growth in friendship.”[1] Saint Paul, in our second reading, offers a
beautiful poetic interlude on the “still more excellent way,” emphasizing
love’s place as the greatest of all spiritual gifts. And in our Gospel, “the
heart of Jesus’ moral teaching is one simple commandment: love one another as I
love you.”[2]
So what’s so great about love? Well, “in Christianity, love is the reason, the
means, and the end of life. God is love,
and love is life’s driving force. God
has created out of love, has sent his son into the world out of love, and in
the end, that Love, and all that Love has loved, return to the Creator to live
eternally.”[3]
Just think about it. If God is love, and God is eternal, then love
endures all things, just like Saint Paul tells us. If God is love, and God is all powerful, then
love never fails, just like Saint Paul tells us. That’s what’s so great about love.
You know, it’s easy for us to get caught up
in an icky-sweet, fairy tale notion of love, but that’s not the kind of love
that our readings are talking about.
That’s not God’s love. The love we’re
talking about “can’t be reduced to a
feeling or emotion that comes and goes over time. . . . It bears burdens, patiently suffers injuries,
restrains pride, and isn’t self-assertive or over sensitive.”[4]
Sure, Jake’s cute and all, but it’s going to take a lot more than youthful
infatuation to live with him for the rest of your life. God’s love is the only love that will sustain
you through the ups and downs of marriage. It’s the only love that will keep you forever
faithful (Semper Fi!). It’s the
only love that will put up with Amanda’s stompy leg or Jake leaving his dishes
in the sink. It’s the only love that
will give you the complete joy that Jesus promises in our Gospel—your Happily
Ever After.
Amanda and Jake, it’s been such a blessing to journey with you to this
very special day. You made my job easy—I
barely had to speak at all. I would just
say hello, sit back, and you two would pretty much talk non-stop for the next hour—Amanda
in her rapid-fire, percussive patter that I could barely understand, and Jake
in a series of primordial groans accompanied by unusual facial contortions that
I never understood. Whether you’re
actually prepared for marriage or not, I have no idea, but it was very
entertaining. You also win the prize as
the couple that gave me the most homily material during marriage prep—and the
most material that I can’t use in a homily.
I did learn a little bit about you, though. I learned that Amanda’s a great cook and that
Jake thinks that the breakfast of champions is apple pie à la mode chased down with mimosas. I learned that Jake’s idea of a perfect day
is lying in bed all day in his Baby Yoda t-shirt under a weighted blanket and
that Amanda has a cosmetics addiction. The
Sleeping Beauty theme for this homily is no coincidence—Sleeping and
Beauty.
Most importantly, I learned that you love each other very much. Amanda
loves that Jake is a really, really, really good listener. I think that’s how many reallys she used, but
she said it so fast that I couldn’t keep up.
Jake loves Amanda’s nurturing, caring nature and that she patiently puts
up with his morons. I’ll let you figure out who they are. Your love for each other isn’t just an
icky-sweet, fairy tale kind of love (there’s a little of that, though). The love you share that I’ve had the
privilege to witness over the past year is true love—it’s God’s love. It’s a love that will sustain your marriage
for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. So I have no doubt that when you exchange true
love’s kiss at the end of this ceremony, you will awake to a magical new life together
and live Happily Ever After.
Readings: Gen. 2: 18-24; Psalm 103; 1 Cor.
12:31-13:8; John 15: 9-12
[1]
Jeffrey Cole, ed., The Didache Bible (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
2014), 6n.
[2]
Francis Martin and William M. Wright IV, The Gospel of John: Catholic
Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids: Baker Publishing Group,
2015), 258.
[3]
Michael Patella, Angels and Demons: A Christian Primer of the Spiritual
World (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2010), 81.
[4]
Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch, Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: The New
Testament (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010), 304.
