Wedding of David Schauder & Nicole Tigno
Dear Nicole and dear David!
After serious and dedicated preparation, through study, conversation,
action and prayer, your Wedding Day has finally arrived!
It is unlike any other day of your lives thus
far, and all the days of your life together after it will look back to it, for they will be founded on it.
On this day you die to “going it alone.”
Today you conceive a new life as two-in-one, in what has been aptly called the “uniduality” of man and woman.
There will be many stages in the development and
maturation of this new life, but none of them would be possible without this first one.
For on this day, by your free and mutual consent,
you establish something unique that has never existed before. It is a new, spiritual genetic code; and we joyfully and proudly
call it matrimony!
But there is no such thing as some abstract, generic
matrimony. There is only this matrimony or that matrimony, specific to these or those determined spouses. Thus your matrimony
is one of a kind because each of you individually is unique and both of you together are therefore unique.
To look at matrimony merely as a social custom,
invented by humankind and therefore subject to human arbitration, is like saying that a painting is merely the twist and twirl
of the hand, or that music is a form of arithmetic.
Before matrimony was ever inscribed on the law
books of our parliaments, it was inscribed as possibility and promise in the souls and bodies of man and woman.
And just as art and music proceed from the non-conceptual
creativity of the human soul, so matrimony proceeded from the ineffable hand of the Creator by the very act, the supremely
beautiful act, of creating them “male and female” in his own image and likeness.
Matrimony’s roots lie in the creative love
and power of God, they lie in the deepest soul and truth of the original “uniduality” of man in the face of woman
and woman in the face of man. Every matrimony of this kind, and only of this kind, sings again the song of God’s creative
love, of God’s joyful satisfaction when he sings at the beginning of creation, “I see all that I have made and,
indeed, it is very good.”
Human organization of society can no more interfere
with marriage than it can with human dignity: it is untouchable in its sacred origin and inaccessible in its fundamental constitution.
Were it not for such marriage, there would be
no society. Matrimony is not a form of society: it is its ground of possibility, its genesis, its foundation. Society can
and must only take note of matrimony and seek to protect, strengthen and promote it.
Deliberately to try and tamper with it is to tamper
with society’s own source and survival, and to say to the Creator with untold arrogance and folly: “you did not
know what you were doing – we will fix things for you.”
Indeed, to tamper with marriage, whether one admits
it or not, is to silence the song of the Creator and to destroy creation’s crowning work. It is to subvert the apex
of creation and the foundation of society; it is therefore to usher in the end of a truly human civilization.
Dave and Nicky: the Creator rejoices over you
on this day, because you have submitted your entire being to that same life-giving law which Adam and Eve once obeyed. Today
he sings again, as he looks upon you, “what I have created is very good.”
As the Creator brought the woman to the man, so
he has brought you, Nicky, to Dave, that the “two might no longer be two, but one flesh”, that is, one in all
things, and that they might go forth and multiply.
For that oneness between you is not destined to
be a closed and static oneness, lest you suffocate or paralyze one another. Proper and exclusive to marital union is the conception
of the new, little Adams
and Eves, which the Creator seeks to bring forth through your free and loving cooperation as pro-creators.
Your children will be the Creator’s gift to you, not your right, and not even your privilege, but pure gift. They are the God-given, natural result
of your dynamic union of love, open to life, with all its risks, all its promise and all its love.
The Creator depends on you to educate them above
all about himself. You will do this by the way you live, by the values you embody, by the meaning of life which inspires you,
more than by words and books.
Just as you are ultimately not destined for one
another but for the Creator, so you must never consider them as property or serfs to yourselves. In pointing them back to
the Creator and ushering them forward to him, you can be sure that you will find them again in the Creator’s arms when
creation itself is consummated at the end of time.
By its very nature, then, marriage is a free,
committed, life-long and exclusive union between a man and a woman which is destined to be fruitful in the crowning joy of
children.
But what will see you through this wonderful yet
exacting vocation from the Creator?
Two counsels: the first from our first reading
from the Song of Songs, the second from our Gospel reading on the wedding feast of Cana.
The first: “For
stern as death is love, relentless as the nether-world is devotion; its flames are a blazing fire. Deep waters cannot quench
love, nor floods sweep it away” (Song 8: 6-7a).
How can love be stern as death? Death hardly
seems an appropriate concept for a wedding day! Yet, let us think more deeply. Death is relentless: nothing holds it back
when its time has come. And nothing must hold you back, Nicky and Dave, from loving one another relentlessly, as the Creator
wills it.
Indeed, such love is even stronger than death. The reason is that you can sin against each other, and sin is worse than death – we
should rather die than sin. If you forgive your sins against one another you are loving with a love that trumps sin, and therefore
also trumps death.
When you love one another with unconditional
and forgiving love you are ablaze with the Creator’s immortal love. The deep waters of sin cannot quench it, the floods
of mutual failures cannot sweep it away.
In this sense, too, love is “stern.”
It looks askance at any attempt to weaken it; it scowls with grim determination at any source which would dare to threaten
it. Be not stern with one another, but be mightily stern, be fatally unyielding to any sin, to any temptation to weaken your
marital unity, exclusivity, fidelity and fertility.
Do not compromise one millimeter with sin in
your hearts, for sin in the heart of one will soon become sin in the heart of both and sin’s intention is only ever
to deceive, divide, conquer and kill.
When sin intrudes, you must quickly expel it
by recognizing it, calling it for what it is, and forgiving one another.
The second counsel: “And when the headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine, without knowing where it came from (although
the servers who had drawn the water knew), the headwaiter called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves good
wine first, and then when people have drunk freely, an inferior one; but you have kept the good wine until now”
(John 2).
Early in your married life, you will hopefully
and joyfully drink the wine of your love, a love that is self-giving, sincere and unyielding to any other. But human love,
no matter how noble, can unexpectedly, unintentionally and inexplicably run out. We can get weak, tired and dry.
How can the wine supply be replenished? The
head waiter in your married life, whoever he may be, cannot provide the wine: he can only taste it.
Dave and Nicky, you need Christ! You need the Creator who has come in the flesh as
the Redeemer, who has come to marry divinity and humanity in himself and to pour into the empty wineskin of our humanity from
the unending fountain of his divine love, that is, the fire, the inebriating Spirit of God.
As he was present at the wedding of Cana, so he will be present throughout your matrimony. At times, you will not know where the wine comes
from, that is, you will not realize that, when you are not thinking or looking, he will supply you with his love, which is
the best wine, which comes at the end quite simply because it is endless fulfillment.
Indeed, on the happy day, hopefully not too
far away, on which you, Dave, are baptized, the consent you and Nicky exchange today will itself be absorbed into the covenant
between Christ and his Church, it will be transformed from water into wine.
True human love is like clear, fresh, sparkling
and tasty water: but it is till only water! Only the power of God can transform it into the wine of divine love!
To continue the image, your marriage then will
not be receiving wine from the outside, but will be rooted in the vine itself. On that day, the Redeemer will complete in
you the already astounding work of the Creator. Your married love will not only echo the song of the Creator, but the symphonic
chorus of the Redeemer.
Then your marriage will not be rooted in the
deep sleep of the old Adam, but in the consummation of salvation in the dying, love-stricken cry of the new Adam.
Then, the heart of your marriage will not be
you, but the Lord himself.
Then your hearts will be sealed deeply and
inaccessibly within the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
There is so much to be grateful for on this
day: your joy and your love are truly blessed! Yet, there is so much more that awaits you as your marital genetic code unfolds.
I can only appeal to you in the name of our
Savior to be filled with confidence and zeal as you begin your path. Pay no heed to the subtle sophistications of men and
women who may mock your fidelity and sense of vocation.
Listen only to God and to the friends of God,
for the day when you must depart from one another will come quickly enough, and there will be no champion of human idolatry
to help you then.
Stay close to God; stay close to his Church
and, together with those you will call your children in this life, you will all one day rejoice at the Wedding Feast of the
Lamb in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Msgr. Peter Magee
Saturday, January 14th,
2006
Our Lady, Queen of the Americas,
Washington, DC: 10.30 am
