Bishop Barron on the Sacrament of Marriage

[Music] well this a few weeks ago I had the great good pleasure of presiding at the wedding of my niece Brenna and her husband Nelson and it was a great joy because of course I've known Brenna all her life and she's always been a great person full of joy and cheerfulness and goodness and then Nelson have I known now for a couple years a very good man and also took the courageous step to become a Catholic in advance of this of this day so the two of them are a great couple everyone in the church was exalting in their and their goodness and just to see this young couple love terrific but the point I made in my homily was we're not here because here's this beautiful young couple and love because any romantic any secular romantic could look in and see the same thing we were gathered in church because we saw them with the eyes of faith and that means we saw them as a hint or a sign or an echo of God's love of Christ's love for the church you know it's a peculiarity of Catholic sacramental theology that a married couple don't so much receive a sacrament as they become a sacrament I just tell people when I was doing a parish work full time and I was working with young engaged couples at the time we were all about the same age I was in my like upper 20s at the time but I would always ask them at some point how come you guys want to get married in church and they'd usually say some version of well because we love each other and I would say well that's great I'm delighted you love each other but that's not reason to get married Church to be one love to get married under on the beach in front of the justice of the peace you get married in church when you're convinced that God has brought you together for His purposes so the people gathered the other day for my niece's wedding would say this young couple did not come together just by dumb chance but rather they were brought together by God's providence for God's purposes and that's what we were celebrating that day in church now to get a clearer sense of this I suggested in my homily that we should look with fresh eyes at the great story of the wedding feast at Cana so famously in John's Gospel the first sign the first miraculous sign that Jesus performs is not the raising of a dead it's not the comedy of a storm at sea it's not the healing of a blind person the first sign he performs is providing wine at a local wedding reception now every one of his brother has commented over the centuries how wonderful how charming that Jesus you know Stoops to do this very simple thing to help this distressed couple and sure I mean I won't deny that but I think we have to look a lot deeper because what we see there is this great motif of Jesus the bridegroom Jesus who is the God of Israel made flesh comes as the bridegroom to marry his people now to get that fully take a step back into the Old Testament look in the prophet Isaiah Isaiah relays this extraordinary line if you look in the history of religions and religious philosophy you won't see anything quite like it it seems to me when the God of Israel says or Isaiah says of him your builder wants to marry you now again I think spend a little time even in prayer with that line your builder meaning the Creator the one who designed you and created you God wants to marry you now I mean every religion and religious philosophy will talk about God will talk about our relation to God following the demands of God all of that but here we've got the distinctively biblical approach that God wants to marry us that means to share his life with us in the most intimate life-giving faithful way possible when they were looking for the great metaphor for this faithful life-giving intensely personal love they reached for the metaphor of the wedding of the marriage your builder wants to marry you God wants to share his life utterly with us now press it in that same prophet Isaiah we hear that when the Messiah comes there'll be this great banquet the beautiful description on the holy mountain there'll be these fine meats served and then pure choice wine will be served and indeed we hear there'll be so much wine that the very hills will run with it okay okay against that background look again at the wedding feast of Cana you don't just have you know Jesus being a nice guy and helping out this young couple he is the God of Israel made flesh and he presents himself in his first sign as the bridegroom of his people mind you it was the responsibility of the bridegroom at a wedding reception to provide the wine which is why the steward when he taste the water made wine comes to the bridegroom he says hey what are you doing most people serve the the good wine first then when people have drunk a bit they serve the bad wine you've gone ahead and served the good wine last Jesus in other words is the definitive bridegroom come to marry his people another step we hear John gives us the details how much wine was made he said there were six stone jars each one holding about thirty gallons of water so Jesus makes a hundred and eighty gallons of wine what we're meant to see is the Isaiah prophecy has come true that when the bridegroom comes the Messiah the very hills will run with wine this is the full meaning it seems to me of the wedding feast at Cana and this is exactly what we're meant to see now in a married couple that's why we come into church we see them as a hint a sign a sacrament of that love just one last observation I mentioned how Jesus first great sign is turning water into wine now it's ordinary wonderful that is how symbolically resident it is but then at the wedding mass so after I finished the homily we move into the Liturgy of the Eucharist which culminates in what not just the transformation of water into wine as marvelous as that is but now the transformation of wine into the very blood of Jesus which will now be poured out on behalf of the people gathered there and even more extraordinary wedding banquet is being hosted by the Son of God right so every mass is not you know Robert Barron presiding at something it's Christ I'm acting simply in Persona Christi in the person of Christ its Christ hosting a banquet at which he is serving his very body and blood acting as the bridegroom come to marry his people that's what we see that's what we see whenever two people get married in church and that is reason to celebrate [Music]

Channel: Bishop Robert Barron

Views: 131,946

Rating: 4.9206581 out of 5

Keywords: Marriage, Sacrament, Catholic, Gay Marriage, Why get married in Church, wedding

Id: JDBhaeus3Sg

Length: 8min 4sec (484 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 13 2017