November 5, 1971. It was a Friday evening-crisply cool. Good Shepherd was lit by candles on the aisles and in the windows. All the windows and statues had arrangements of fall flowers and bright autumn leaves. It was the day Alan and I were married.
Tears come as I remember it, treasure all the hope and love of it. I’ve been a widow now for 26 years, so there is a tender sadness as I remember. Yet it was a beautiful day, a beautiful mass, a beautiful beginning to our life together.
We want our weddings to be as perfect as we can make them. It’s true for us, and it’s been true for centuries. It was doubtless true when Jesus, some of his disciples, and his mother went to a wedding in Cana, the Gospel centerpiece of today’s readings.
John 2: 1-11 The Miracle at Cana
Marriage was the anchor of Jewish society. Weddings celebrated that anchor. A wedding lasted five to seven days. On the first night the bridegroom, splendidly dressed, went from his house to his bride’s house to fetch her. She, beautifully dressed, was carried on a litter to the groom’s house. Both families gave blessings there, and the party began. The groom stayed to enjoy the fun, but the bride withdrew with her bridesmaids.
The next day was a holiday in the village. There was a wedding feast. The bride was dressed in white, usually with ten bridesmaids. She sat under a canopy while songs were sung. Toward evening the groom arrived, there was an exchange of words between bride and groom, then, much blessed by the community, they disappeared to consummate their marriage.
The next evening the couple emerged to continue the celebration for three or more days—maybe until the wine ran out.
That’s what happened in today’s Gospel. The wine ran low. Mary noticed and expected Jesus to respond in some helpful way. Jesus was hesitant, yet, when Mary said, “Do whatever he tells you,” he turned 6 large stone jars of water into 6 large stone jars of wine. That would have been between 120 and 180 GALLONS of wine—or about 1000 bottles. Jesus’ first miracle was a definite demonstration of the generosity of God!
The Blessing of Marriage—and the Disconnect
The Church uses this first miracle of Jesus as the Biblical foundation for the Sacrament of Marriage. Church teaching on marriage goes back to Genesis which tells the story of God’s creation of Eve as a “suitable partner” for Adam. (Genesis 2:18)
Marriage rules were thoroughly outlined in the Torah. Jewish culture revolved around family life and supported stable marriage. While a husband could divorce a wife under Jewish law, Jesus spoke against it in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:31-32).
Yet today divorce is a common factor in societal understanding of marriage, joined in recent decades by cohabitation without marriage.
This creates a real disconnect between what our Church teaches us is God’s plan and the way our culture works. What do we do with that disconnect?
God’s plan for human culture—and individual couples—makes great sense: a man and a woman freely choose to commit themselves to each other, for the purpose of both their own spiritual and practical welfare and the purpose of having and raising children in a stable, healthy environment.
Each family, in God’s design, is meant to be a “holy family,” where the bonds and practical requirements of family life enable each person to grow in his/her capacity to love and be loved. In this design, there is no abuse, violence, abandonment, aggression, selfishness, drunkenness, or any other sinful behavior. Yet, troubles in marital paradise began with Adam and Eve, continue all through the Bible, and are legion today.
One of the great omissions of the implementation of Vatican II has been neglect of the section of Gaudium et Spes (The Church in the Modern World) which begins, “The well-being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal and family life.”(Gaudium et Spes, Part II, paragraph 47. The discussion continues through paragraph 52. This section of Gaudium et Spes summarizes Catholic teaching on marriage.)
We know the outlines of Church teaching: man and woman, free consent, til death do us part, to mutually love and cherish, open to children. But the Catholic picture of marriage is in such contrast to the realities of our culture that, well, honestly, we shy away from even talking about God’s standards.
While this is often done from compassion for the reality that many people attending mass live in the middle of family troubles, it also deprives us of knowledge and hope needed to live out God’s design. As a marriage therapist, I see many people who want a happy, healthy marriage AND who have no idea how to have it because they have never seen it.
How do we fix it? Do the other readings today give us ideas for solutions? Maybe.
Isaiah 62:1-5
From the time of the Exodus and the 10 Commandments, it was clear in the Hebrew scriptures that God saw his relationship with the Israelites as one of a marriage. Israel’s unfaithfulness to live by God’s design was described as adultery by multiple prophets. In this passage at the end of Isaiah, God is saying in effect: My Messiah will come and declare a new marriage, a new, intimate way of being with me.
Let the last lines of this reading resonate in you: This is how God wants to love you, whether you are single, married, divorced, remarried, or widowed:
As a young man marries a virgin,
your Builder shall marry you;
and as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride
so shall your God rejoice in you.
I remember when I came back fully into communion with the Catholic Church in 2010. My confessor gave me this reading for a penance at one of my numerous confessions, and the image filled me with hope. Today, almost twelve years later, I can tell you that bit by bit, God and I have grown closer and closer. As we do, God teaches me again and again how to love—HIS way.
Yesterday, I was disturbed about something. I cried out to God. Yesterday, God just listened. But this morning, as I prayed, I was able to reinterpret an incident that happened, then it was not-so-very-hard to see how a change in me not only could relieve me of much of yesterday’s distress, it would also make me more loving and more faithful in living in God’s ways.
I Corinthians 12:4-11
In his commentary on today’s readings in Food for the Soul, Peter Kreeft notes that chapters 12 and 14 of I Corinthians surround the famous love chapter, I Corinthians 13. They focus on “charismatic” gifts—that is, gifts of the Holy Spirit that enhance the ability to love. Love orders gifts from God, because any gift of God is a gift intended to foster God’s loving life in us and in others.
And WE ALL are given specific gifts from God—some unusual, like healing, some ordinary but no less important, like faith or knowledge. That is the core of what Paul says in this reading.
Perhaps, because many of the gifts God has given me have, for the past thirty years, been spent in helping couples love each other, what I see in this reading today is that it is a piece of the answer to the problems we have today with marriage and family life.
The Answer:
Jesus shows us how to love. His ministry in every Gospel begins by his doing acts of kindness for those in need. Jesus STARTED the Kingdom of God by helping and healing. As he did, he broke bondages of sin. He started a new way. The disciples walked imperfectly in that way, the Church has walked imperfectly in that way, just as we do today.
But there are gifts we have and can learn from God, Church, and others: how to listen, how to speak in ways that foster acceptance of even hard truths, how to problem solve with justice, how to forgive, how to dare to pour out to God what is in our hearts and let God make our hearts new, faithful, LOVING in the agape way.
I have seen the simple directive, “Treat each other like guests in the house” begin to change warring couples into loving couples. Everyone can learn to love, because we are wired to do it by God Himself, no matter what our history has been. If we begin to love God’s way, as God’s intimate partner, God will enhance His presence in us and show us how to let go of the wounds and habits that keep us mired in unhappiness.
Such a change does not immediately change our culture, but it can immediately put more gifts of love from God into us and our families. That’s a beginning.
Prayer Challenge:
Think of a situation where love is hard for you in your family. Pour out your heart to God about it. See what God can do.
