Pray for your spouse/future spouse

 

Deacon Kevin Gingras

October 15, 2023

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/101523.cfm

Is 25:6-10a     Ps 23:1-3a, 3b-4, 5, 6

Phil 4:12-14, 19-20     Mt 22:1-14

Scripture is full of analogies comparing Heaven to a wedding feast.  St. Paul often calls Christ the bridegroom of the Church.  We see this in today’s readings from sacred scripture.  Jesus’ first miracle occurred at a wedding banquet, emphasizing the sanctity of marriage that the Catholic Church holds tight to.

Last month I mentioned Confession as a forgotten sacrament. We could easily include marriage as a forgotten sacrament as well.  Last year we only had one single sacramental marriage at Holy Family Church - just one. But why have a Sacramental marriage?  I hope to explain that now.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church has this to say:

God himself is the author of marriage." The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes. 

The Sacrament of marriage is written on our souls by our creator!  If that’s not reason enough I don’t know what is.

Let’s take a trip back to October of 1984.  It’s when I started dating the girl I would marry.  She was a Junior in High School and I was a Freshman at Bridgewater State.  I was working at St. Thomas Aquinas in Bridgewater MA.  It’s where Allison and I met, she was teaching religious ed and I was out mowing the lawns.  Even though I was an all-knowing teenager at the time the Holy Spirit was there, invisibly guiding me along.  Skip ahead about 5 years and we began to plan our wedding and decided we should get married at St. Thomas.  This was one of those unseen nudges from the Holy Spirit also as neither of us were practicing our faith at the time but we went ahead and set up a meeting with the priest anyway. St. Thomas was where we met and where I worked for eight years so we had that nostalgia driving us there too.  From that first meeting with the priest at the rectory we had all the priests at the rectory, four of them, praying for us.  At our rehearsal the night before the wedding Fr. Ed Serena suggested we go to confession.  We did and to be honest, I was truly penitent and glad we went!

We were going to have a full mass and he reminded us we should be in a state of grace not only for the full efficacy of the sacrament of marriage but also to receive Jesus in the eucharist.  The wedding was beautiful and moving.  Our second reading today reminds me of the wedding vows as St. Paul:

I know how to live in humble circumstances; I know also how to live with abundance … I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of living in abundance and of being in need.

For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.  St Paul also reminds us that it is God who will fully supply whatever we need.

Sadly, at that time our faith was like the seed that fell on the rocky ground, sprang up at once but was soon scorched and withered for lack of roots.  We again stopped going to church soon after our wedding.

It wasn’t until four years later when we decided that we wanted children after all that we came back.  We came back with a passion knowing we had lost time to make up for.  We were asked to be lectors, and Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist, sang in the choir (no, not me, only Allison!!), were youth ministers, helped organize Vacation Bible School, and taught religious education and other things at St. Ann’s in Raynham.

Now I’m not saying all this to brag but to illustrate what the Holy Spirit knew far before that all-knowing teenager that I was.  Without that sacramental marriage, we wouldn’t have done all that, we wouldn’t have gone to China to adopt, and I certainly would not be preaching to you today as a deacon.  None of this would have happened, in fact, we might not even still be married today calling it quits during the tougher godless times we went through.

But what can we do now?  We can certainly pray for an increase in the vocation of Catholic marriages.  If you are grandparents or great-grandparents pray for your grandchildren and for their future spouses.  As parents, you should also pray for your children and their future spouses if they are not married.  If you are single start praying immediately for your future spouse, God already knows who they are, ask Him for guidance!  If you are much younger and still think boys or girls still have cooties, well, someday that will change, you can and should pray for your future spouse as well however gross that may sound to you!

Pray often and deeply for a return of the sacrament of marriage - it can save our church, our community, and even our society!

I’ll leave you with these thoughts from St. Josemaría Escrivá: 

“Marriage is to help married people sanctify themselves and others. For this reason, they receive a special grace in the sacrament which Jesus instituted. Those who are called to the married state will, with the grace of God, find within their state everything they need to be holy.”