Homily for the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Steve Goodier wrote about the first time he met his wife. He said it was love at first sight. He ran home after their first kiss and, running into the house, shouted out to his father, "Dad, I'm in love!" Steve's father asked him, "How do you know it's love?" He answered, "Her dog bit me, and I didn't even feel it until I was almost home!"

Steve's future bride thought it was love at first sight as well. But about six weeks after they met, Steve noticed something strange about her love. She told him, "I love you too much to hold on to you. I want you to be happy, and if that means we don't marry, that's okay."

This sounded strange. Steve's love for her was different. His love said, "I love you so much. I want to make you mine, and I'm never letting go." Steve's love was a hanging-on kind, and hers was a letting-go kind. His love worried about what might happen if he lost the object of his desire. Her love worried about what it might do if she hung on too tight.

Shortly before they were to be married, she visited Steve on her way home from a doctor's appointment, distraught. Her eyes were swollen with tears, and she said that the doctor told her she couldn't have children. She said to Steve, "I know you want to have children. I'll understand if you don't want to marry me." I love you too much to keep you." And there it was again, that peculiar letting-go kind of love.

This happened more than fifty years ago, during which time Steve learned something about love. Love is letting go. It is as simple and difficult as that.

Steve learned something else, too. The doctor was wrong about the babies….. three times!

Thomas Merton wrote that "love seeks only one thing: the good of the one (who is) loved. It leaves all secondary effects to the care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward."

Such love is the true bond of marriage and even friendship. It is sacred and holy, mirroring God's great and limitless love.

A couple's life together – a life centered in trust, forgiveness, and love – and their generous response to the vocation of parenthood model the unfathomable and profound love of God, love that lets go rather than holds on, happily gives rather than takes, liberates rather than imprisons.

As Jesus taught, the Sacrament of Marriage should involve total giving and sharing by each spouse so that the line between "his" and "hers" disappears only into "ours."

This may sound very idealistic, and in a sense, it is. Many factors enter into the Sacrament of Marriage in today's world, and there are so many different parts of life that vie for our attention, things that can really get in the way. Sometimes, no matter how sincerely people try to work things out, it seems impossible, and, in some cases, it actually is.

But in today's Gospel, Jesus tells us the ideal of the sacramental commitment we find in marriage. In the life that they create together, a life that sometimes means taking on or letting go for the sake of the beloved, Christ wants to be the ever-present wedding guest who makes their simple, everyday life together a miracle: a miracle in which the love of God is revealed to all of us in a husband and wife's love for each other.