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My Brothers and sisters in Christ, the first letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, the thirteenth chapter is the most challenging canticle of love that has ever been written. This reading points to a path, a path that surpasses everything else, and it points to the only sure way that leads to God the Father in heaven. So I want to speak about that.
This reading as a canticle of love and also to use this as an opportunity to speak about marriage, to say a few things about marriage and the Sacrament of marriage. The married life that most of you are called as a sacramental way of living.
Saint Paul cries out with great joy: "Now I will show you the way which surpasses all the others, if I speak with human tongues and angelic as well but do not have love, I am a noisy gong and a clanging symbol. If I give away everything I have to feed the poor and hand  over my body to be burned but have not love, I’ve gained nothing." What is Saint Paul telling us here? Is Saint Paul telling us that if we love well, that we’ll earn a place in heaven? Is Saint Paul telling us that the heart of our Catholic faith is us loving God? And when we love God well we earn our way to heaven? Absolutely not. That’s not our Catholic faith. Actually it’s a heresy.
It is the astounding love of God the Father that saves us and is our hope. We don’t love our way into heaven. God loves us into heaven. His love comes first; ours is only a small, little response. It is the astounding love of God the Father that is our hope. God so desires to redeem us, to love us, to unite us forever with Himself, that it is He who sends Jesus the Son to be born, to suffer, to die in atonement for our sins. It is this path that leads to heaven. The one short path that leads to heaven is not our love, it is Jesus’ love. The sure path that leads to heaven is Jesus our Lord. And when you look upon the crucifix we are reminded of that every single day. Our love is a response, is in response to God who has first loved us.
This is the heart of our Catholic faith. It is God the Father’s love in Christ our Lord that it’s the path that leads to eternal life. Our love does not save us, thank be to God. Because, boy! My love wouldn’t be strong enough to save me I know. And I assume the same with you. None of us love perfectly enough. Only God can do that.
Our love doesn’t save us, it is God’s sacrificial love that saves us. When you and I realize this, we are blown away by that truth. When we realize this truth, it is then that we seek with God’s grace to love with all the strength and all the power that we can.
And so in light of what Saint Paul tells us about love, its strength, its beauty, its power, its ability to tell the truth, its ability to endure all things in joy. When we hear this reading, the purpose of our Catholic life becomes really rather simple; and the reason for the Church becomes simple. The Catholic life gives us the tools to fall in love with God who has first loved us so much. Through the Sacraments of the Church, the example of the saints, the community life, our prayer; all of these things are tools that give us the grace to fall in love with Him who has first loved us so well.
If we love God then we gain heaven. And our love is just a little response to Him who loves us with such a ferocious love. But if we seek to love God who has first loved us, then we will gain everything. If we do not love Him, we will lose everything. That is a frightening thought. If you and I do not seek to love Him who first loves us in Christ our Lord, we will lose everything, and we will lose it for ever and ever.
Love is patient, love is kind, love is not jealous, it does not put on airs, it is not snobbish. This is beyond our own strength. It is God who gives us the strength to love in this way. Love is never rude, it is not self seeking, it is not prone to anger, neither does it brood over injuries, love does not rejoice in what is wrong, but rejoices with the truth, love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. This ferocious kind of loving is beyond your strength and mine. When you and I realize we are first loved by God, then you and I, we have the courage to say ‘Oh Lord, teach me to love in this way.’ And it is not easy. For example, one phrase from Saint Paul I just read says: "Love rejoices with the truth", that’s hard for us as Americans, because we produce truth to being nice. How do you know if you love somebody? You’d be nice, you don’t tell the truth, you don’t hurt their feelings, is almost like a doctor who has a cancer patient that is sitting before him, and the doctor says: "Oh I won’t tell them that they have cancer because I don’t want to hurt their feelings." You and I, Saint Paul tells us, love correctly when we speak the truth; love tells the truth. That is not easy. When we speak to those that we love we tell them the truth. It is not always easy to hear, but that is the only authentic love that is worth living.
I want to speak also just a little bit about married life. Of course I have a great deal of experience in this area, but I want to say a little bit about married life; because this reading from the first letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, the thirteenth chapter is chose for wedding ceremonies more than any other reading in scripture. Brides and grooms choose this reading more than any other, and we can see why. Because it is this reading that our Lord wants to be the heart and soul of how couples love each other. Love is patient, love is kind, love is not jealous, it is never rude or self seeking or prone to anger or broods over injuries. Boy! Those sound like things that you struggle with? That we all struggle with?
Jesus uses your marriage, He uses your marriage to teach us about Himself and about the Church. Did you know that? Our Lord uses your marriage as the symbol of His close relationship with His Church. He doesn’t use priesthood as the image, He uses marriage as the symbol. As much as the groom loves his bride still more does God love us. As close as a bride is to her husband, still closer is the Church to her groom and to God the Father in Christ Jesus our Lord. It is no wonder that your marriage is a Sacrament. Sacraments point us to God. The Sacraments of the Church make saints of us when we receive them in faith and love. And marriage, of all the Sacraments, points most clearly to God’s intimate relation with mankind in Christ our Lord.
Marriage is a Sacrament which shows the unity of God and the redeemed human race. In this Sacrament of marriage, God blesses and makes worthy of heaven your love for your wife, for your husband. It is in this reason that it is the law of the Church and of God that physical love between a man and a woman can be shared only in marriage. And when it is shared outside of marriage it destroys our souls, it destroys our freedom, it destroys our joy. It is so hard for young people to believe that, but our Lord tells us the truth. Physical love within marriage is a reminder of God, outside of marriage it destroys souls, it destroys joy. Because there cannot be physical joy without the giving of your life whole and entire to another in Christ our Lord.
Because marriage is a symbol of God’s love for His Church, and is the royal love that leads to heaven for married couples. Every Catholic is required to be married sacramentally by a priest. If they are not married by a priest, if they are married outside of the Church they are in a state of mortal sin and should not receive the Sacraments. That is a hard teaching nowadays, but we speak the truth, because our Lord has said that marriage is within the Church; that all of the Sacraments are within the Church. And Catholic couples are obligated to be married sacramentally. Their marriage is the royal road that leads them to heaven.
Christians are allowed to marry once. The man that divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery. Who said those words? Was it an old Pope in Rome that said those words? No, those are the words of our Lord Jesus. Our Lord says those words. The one who divorces his spouse and marries another commits adultery. It is our Lord who speaks these words, and we must take them seriously. And again, I’ve said it before, if you are in a second marriage, and your second marriage is outside of the Church, come and see the priest; there is a possibility of an annulment. The annulment process of the Church is looking at one’s first marriage to see in fact, was it sacramental? If it was sacramental, nothing in heaven and earth can dissolve it. But if in some cases they are not sacramental, and nowadays often that is the case. The Church allows couples to marry not for the second time, but for the first time. And so approach the priest if you are in that circumstance.
Jesus tells you on the day of your wedding: "Do you want to know the best way to be a saint? Do you want to know the best way to win heaven? Then love your husband, love your wife as if they were me", because of course they are. Because your husband and wife have received the body and blood of Christ, they are living tabernacles of Christ Jesus our Lord. So when we love them, when we endure their weaknesses and their failings; when you and I are patient with them, when we don’t brood over injuries from them, when we seek not to be jealous, when we seek to lift the other up in holiness we are serving Christ Himself.
In our culture nowadays there is over a fifty per cent divorce rate; in some parts of our country, Colorado included, it’s almost sixty per cent of couples end in divorce. This is not what God wants. It’s interesting....What about couples that are married by a priest? Who go to Mass every Sunday as a couple and pray daily, just a simple prayer each day. What’s their divorce rate? It’s under two percent. So if you go to Mass every Sunday as you do, and if you pray as a couple, just saying the Our Father together, saying a decade of the Rosary together, whatever you do as a couple, the divorce rate for you is less than two percent, because you recognize the truth that marriage is a trinity of persons; the Father in heaven, yourself and your spouse. It is only when couples forget that and cease serving the other as they would Christ that marriage becomes so much more difficult. Marriage is never an easy way of life, because it requires you serve the other above your own joy and your own happiness you place the holiness of the other. It means the crucifixion of your own will each day. That’s the royal road to Christ that our Lord has for you.

Let us ask the Lord to strengthen each of the marriages of our parish; may our Lord bring you great joy, great graces through your marriage which is a royal road which leads to the Father in heaven.