Happy Anniversary!

Today my brother and his wife have been married 35 years. They have two adult children and are the proud grandparents of two granddaughters and one grandson.

                            

In 2009 the United States Confernce of Catholic Bishops published the asptoral letter Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan. In it they wrote:

God established marriage so that man and woman could participate in his love and thus selflessly give themselves to each other in love. A man and a woman who by their act of consent are no longer two but one flesh (see Mt 19:6ff.) render mutual help and service to each other  through an intimate union of their persons and of their actions.

“My lover belongs to me and I to him” (Song 2:16; see Song 6:3). With all the dignity and simplicity of poetry, the Bride in the Song of Songs sings of the unitive meaning of married  love.

“You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride. . . . How beautiful is your love!” (Song 4:9-10). So responds the Bridegroom of the Song, overcome with the wonder of conjugal love that is extended to him by the Bride. This is the love that is strong as death (see Song  8:6b).

Just as beautifully, Tobiah prays with his wife, Sarah, on their wedding night, awestruck at the mercy of the God of their fathers, that is, the God of the covenant, in bringing them together in a union of true conjugal love:

“Blessed are you, O God of our fathers;

praised be your name forever and ever.

Let the heavens and all your creation praise you forever.

You made Adam and you gave him his wife Eve

to be his help and support;

and from these two the human race descended.

You said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone;

let us make him a partner like himself.’

Now, Lord, you know that I take this wife of mine

not because of lust, but for a noble purpose.

Call down your mercy on me and on her,

and allow us to live together to a happy old age.” (Tb 8:5-7)

The love that is as strong as death is the love that prays and praises, caught up into divine love.

Congratulations Pat & Holly! May God grant you many more years! And may God bless you for your fidelity to one another and to the sacrament of marriage.