Fr. Byron Haganβs Homily About the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony
Fr. Byron Hagan celebrated our Nuptial Mass on Friday, August 4, 2017, at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Vermillion, MN. The following is a textual transcription of the excellent homily that he gave about the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony. Enjoy!
What a beautiful day, this is. So glad the weather is cool. Especially for a celebrant who celebrates a High Solemn Mass for his first time. We are so grateful to Father Cole Kracke for opening up the church in which he is pastor to us, the home church of Jeff, and for all of you for being here, and especially for the special devotion of Jeff and Danielle whose love for Christ and piety toward the Church have brought us here today to celebrate this Mass in the most high form that we could offer, except that if there were a bishop present we would have a few extra items of ceremony. It's a great moment for all of us here today, thank you so much for giving us this gift, Jeff and Danielle.
It's no secret to any of us that the idea of marriage, the practice, hasn't simply fallen out of favor, we certainly know that. Those of us who are priests who work in parishes, perhaps feel this in a particularly painful, acute manner; how few couples are coming for marriage, and even Catholic couples, assaulted as they are by all sorts of disinformation about love.
Disinformation about what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman. Disinformation about the human person. And this has affected our culture like a virus. So many of us at different points in our lives, perhaps have come down to a certain degree with this virus. It's made us fearful of marriage. And we look at our hearts so often today, within and without the Church, and we see that our hearts are so often too small to rise to the great ambition of marriage as we have known.
As Christianity has taught, this institution, which is breaking in every human society, is raised to a special dignity. The love between man and woman, which arises naturally because of their orderedness in creation, is filled and made perfect, in this great Sacrament in which Christ has shown us through the relationship that He has with His Church as Bride to Bridegroom. It's hard for us, maybe in a certain sense impossible for us, to really grasp this reality with any kind of depth - except that we first dive into it, enter into it. This is an adventure that you have chosen with an act of faith.
Jeff and Danielle, you've known that on your own you don't have the power to live up even to mere human ideals, which with love are great enough as it is. We need a little adding of faith in this equation, which has transformed the whole vision of the world, and for you to help yourselves and one another. You have now, as it were, a kind of massive responsibility bearing down on you to represent this great union between God and man that our Lord Jesus has intended. Even for good Catholics, it may appear to be, in this time, something unrealistic. Just a little bit too much of a weight to bear.
So I want to tell you something today: it is not too heavy for you, because you are Catholic, because you are Confirmed, because you have been living your life with the Church's faith, in penance, obeying the sacraments, humbly confessing your sins before God. You now have the power to do something in which otherwise cannot be done: which in the deepest heart of hearts all of us desire and increasingly in our time feel too weak to even approach the ambition. This power now is attached to you because of the Sacrament. And so now what do you have to do? You have to go forward in holy living and stepping in.Β
There's going to be fear, there is going to be anxiety, we know that that's already there. But you got to walk through that and walk into it. That power has come to meet you. So whatever challenges will come, whatever fearful events will come, you have remember that you face one another and remember that Divine Third who has united you to one another, who will always give you the power to give your hearts to one another, to ask for forgiveness, to accept forgiveness, wisdom to see how to navigate the problems that will appear, challenges, hopes, decisions that you might make. That power is there in you, but you have to continue to walk in it and let it grow. Let it be active.
I want to say something to you then about the spiritual issue as you live your very life. We are familiar with the idea that in Christianity there are three states in life. We may never have said this to ourselves, but we can see how it works in the Catholic Church. There is the married state, there is the religious state, and then there is the priestly state. The married state, we think, this is for almost all of us and in a certain way that's true. The religious state is for a chosen few, you probably think, and the same with the priestly state.
But I want to frame something here for us. It might help us to think about these three states in a way that's a little bit higher than that. I want us to think about the way each one of us in virtue of being created are called to the divine marriage. The marriage with God. And in virtue of our Baptism we are empowered and drawn toward this divine marriage. And this is the great image of the relationship between God and Israel, between God and His Church. In Scripture, the image of marriage, God comes to us as Bridegroom, we as the Bride which by His help He makes pure and perfect and prepared for Himself. And that means then that in a certain way all three of these Christian states are ordered to helping us fulfill the divine marriage.
There is something particularly of the religious state that applies in the married life. The religious, who take vows, live as a testimony to that the fulfillment of all time, in which there will be no marriage β but all marriage, all relation, all ecstasy will be with God. This is what you are preparing for and this is what you are charged with in helping to prepare one another. And so therein, in a certain sense, a religious frame of mind here.
Danielle, your task is to, in virtue of the priesthood of your Baptism, help prepare your husband to see God β who might be a source of challenge for you, sometimes, without being on purpose in a negative way. "Boy, is he really putting me to the temptation," as we say. You have the opportunity then to make a decision about how it is you are going to approach these faults.
And Jeff you have the responsibility, in a priestly way, by virtue of your Baptism, to help prepare your wife to meet God. To help mediate the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything that properly belongs to the spirit of marriage is taken up in that priestly mediation, into that spiritual way of thinking. So I want you to think of yourselves today in a certain way, in your marriage vows that you take, as if you have consecrated yourselves religiously. You will be each other's religious superior, if you will, immediately in the home, out there in the world, in the life of the activities that you take on together. Remember this relationship is a relationship that involves your relationship with Christ and His Church as His Bride.
And what do we hear from the first reading? Jeff, you are to love your wife as you love your own body because he that loves his wife loves also himself. Even when you hate yourself you love yourself because you are saying, "I should do better than this." Self-love is something that you already have just in the virtue of being a man and in a certain way rather accomplished.
Take hold of that self-love and extend it. Bring her into that. She's an extension of you now. She's a part of you. When you love her you are loving yourself. For no one hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it. Even as the Lord over the Church. Having a wife, see that she reverences her husband whether or not in any given moment he deserves to be reverenced. Sometimes he will, merely on the human level, this human gift, this virtue, people say, as you said many times already in your courtship, "That man has something going for him. I reverence that." Of course it's not just temptation that forces us to take all of this for granted. "What have you become for me lately, Jeff?"
Remember you reverence him first because the Lord has given him to you to model Himself. However well or poorly he may be to you at any moment, you are also reverencing the spirit of Christ that is within him in that priestly, husbandly manner.
And remember that you are going to be a part of his perfection by expressing thanksgiving and giving him credit even for virtues that he even doesn't have yet. Because that's part of what love does. Love makes the beloved loved. This is your test for one another.
Take this early time, this time in which despite whatever fears and anxieties you have, most everything that you dream of seems possible. And cherish that time. And also set that away in the past. Remember, when the feeling of hope or possibility seems to drain within you remember that the very offer of hope itself, the very reason for hope, who has Baptized you, who has brought you to Himself, who nourishes you with His Body and Blood, which transforming you into Himself is doing things in you, in your lives, that for your future so much that which you might not be able to see. That walk of marriage is an extension of the walk of faith.
And for all of us here today who come as family, as friends. You're charged with helping them to do and to live out this great mission. One of the first ways that you'll help is by exemplifying, if you are married, the same admonition that I've given today. The same truths of the faith.
You will show them again, "Hey we're doing this as well, we're in this with you." This is a community of family effort β this is an ecclesial effort. And then, second of all, you will be open and forgiving to them when they fail and when they fall. You won't be fair weather friends. You'll keep your home, your phone line, your email open to them when they need to contact you, when they need to call you and reach out to you. You'll say, "That witness, that testimony that we gave at your Wedding Mass, that we are going to see through with you, because we united our hearts and placed them on the altar with you."
On this great day in which we celebrate in the Extraordinary Form, in the old calendar, we celebrate today the feast of St. Dominic and in the Ordinary Form of the calendar the feast of St. John Vianney. Two great priests and saints who were above all things, perhaps, artists in the life of prayer. Remember that final thing which you do for them, the most important thing is to keep them earnestly in your prayers. Say penances, do penances for them, have Masses said for them. This is now a part of your religious commitment, according to your testimony here today.
By the intercession of St. Dominic and St. John Vianney, on this sacred day, we ask for your prayers for graces for your lives together going forward and we thank you again for blessing us and giving us this gift of your love and bringing us together in this time.
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