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You know, one danger of wearing the Roman collar in public a lot is sometimes people like to smart off and say things to you, and a couple of months ago I was going to a dinner party and I promised to bring wine, and so I went to a liquor store down in Colorado Boulevard, so I walked in and the guy said to me: "You are not supposed to be in here", and I said: "Shut up or I’ll turn all your wine into water." I don’t know if he was a Catholic but he’s probably not if he was.
But today is a wonderful, wonderful gospel, and it talks on the glory of marriage. In the book of Genesis the final action of creation was the gifting of man and woman with each other and the institution and the gift of marriage. Marriage is also the first victim of sin. All of the effects of original sin were immediately felt between the relationship of Adam and Eve, with each other and with their God. It should be no surprise to us that Jesus Christ chose as the place to bring about His first miracle, His first sign of the in-breaking of the redemption and the love of God the Father in the midst of a marriage celebration; at Cana in Galilee where Jesus was present with His mother.

 This story of Cana like the story of creation is filled with amazing truths; the first one I’d like to point out is no matter when you are married, sooner than later, and it’s usually much sooner than much later, there will be a crisis in your marriage. It may be as insignificant as running out of wine or maybe much more tragic. But to every crisis in marriage, ultimately, the answer is Christ; to every crisis. If you really think about it, the answer to anything that threatens our marriage can be found somewhere in the message, in the person, in the power of Christ.

Today we see water turned into wine in this miracle at Cana, but Jesus Himself offers to every married couple who’ve ever walked the face of this earth, new wine. A wine that exceeds even the wine of Cana, and that’s the gift of Himself. See wine gives joy to your heart, have you ever noticed that? If you have too much joy in you heart you come to confession about it. But wine does give joy to your heart, and that’s what it was considered in the Old Testament, the Psalms say: "wine gladdens a man’s heart", and Jesus wanted the celebration of marriage to be filled with joy, and it was only possible not only because they had new wine, but they had the new wine of this Christ.

And to every marriage that wants to experience joy, there must be an acknowledgment of presence of Christ if that marriage is to be filled with true joy. For He is the true wine, and He alone can give joy.

The Church says that marriage is a Sacrament, instituted by Christ to give grace. Only Mary and those servants that are listening to Him see the miracle and know of it, and only those who enter marriage with the servant’s heart will ever realize the miracles that Christ will bring in married life.

Married people you have the most awesome responsibility in the kingdom, because to you God said: The whole Church should look to find an icon of what it means to understand the love between Christ and His Church. Because Jesus in His most profound moments, when He wants to describe love between Himself and His people, He says is like a marriage, and if we look to marriage we will know what it means.

As beautiful as the Sacrament of Marriage is, in our society it faces enormous dangers. The first is the one sitting next to you. The greatest danger to your marriage is the person you married, and they can say the same about you. Because the problem about marriage is you always marry a sinner, and one of the greatest realizations that young married couples tell me is marriage convicts them not only about the sinfulness of their spouse, but usually the first six months of marriage are filled with amazing revelations about how selfish you are yourselves, at least that’s what I’m hearing; is that marriage can teach you a great deal, but it can also teach you how to encourage one another, how to pray for one another, and if marriage doesn’t teach anything else on earth, it teaches you how to forgive.

But you know, in some ways I think priests have cheated you, because we let so many people come forward to the altar to be married whom we’ve never really challenged to know Christ, and if you don’t know Christ and you don’t love Christ, you are in an awful lot of danger (of failing) to have a successful marriage.

When my friends in college used to come to me and said: "Michael, I’m in love", and I said: "Well yes, so what? How much in love are you?" In my criteria for a couple prepared for marriage is this: "If you love someone not this much but that much, if you are ready to die for them, then you are ready for married love." Because all the Sacraments and all the Christian states of life, marriage, priesthood, sisterhood, the consecrated life are all about donating ourselves. To love someone so much that we want to give our whole lives for other person. So I always challenge young people, if you are think you are ready for marriage, meditate on the cross, and then come back and set an appointment to talk to me about the ceremony. Because married love is very difficult and it is profoundly beautiful, but it reveals to us the intensity of Christ’s own love.

One of the other dangers that faces marriage is commitment. We have a society that absolutely abhors it. If you look in the media, very rarely will you ever see couples in programs that are actually been married. There is a great war against commitment; there are probably some here who have opted to live together, a modern option where we try to figure out whether or not the other person and I can get together and live together in such a way and if it works out we’ll enter into marriage. It’s a lie! Because it never works, even sociologists will tell you it’s a miserable thing to try, because it never really proves what true love is about, and it only discerns whether this person is really right for me, the deeper discernment is if God called me to love this person in married love.
And so we need to encourage one another to be more deeply committed again and again to God.

This week, as a nation, we’ll celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, we won’t celebrate it, we’ll mourn it. Twenty five years that we’ve allowed the abortion of children, and abortion and artificial contraception are both in the midst of the world, undermining the awesome and beautiful radical faith that is present in married love. The pro-abortion lobby says: "No one should allow an unwanted child to enter the world." What we should not allow is a mentality that says a child could ever be unwanted, that’s the real sin; every child is a gift from God. And only the radical trust of marriage that is always open to life will do that. And to those of you out there who have the courage to live the Church’s teaching to always be opened to life in your marriage, I applaud you, and not only will I applaud you, but Christ and all the saints will applaud you when you come to heaven for your commitment, to your openness to the radical trust that God will bless you and however He blesses you, you will accept it.

I want to end this homily by encouraging married couples, it’s awfully tough I think, in this world, to live the sacrament of marriage with great faith and great love and great fidelity. I want to thank all the couples here for their witness of married love. I hope this doesn’t scandalize you, but as a priest I have been most edified and I have seen the most holiness in my life not in other priests but in married people. I have been more challenged to be faithful as a priest by married people and their radical love for each other than I have for my brother priests. It is an amazing sacrament, and it amazes me each time I see it. So I want to thank those of you here who witness each day to your marriage because it does strengthen me in my own priesthood; the Sacraments work together. I want to thank my folks too who are here tonight, they’ve had forty five years of marriage and they’ve been an awesome witness to me about what the vows mean. In fact, on December 27 it was their forty-fifth wedding anniversary and we were going to have a big Mass and have them repeat their vows to one another, and my dad got sick and had to go to the emergency room and we spent all day at the hospital, and the next day. And I was so bombed because we didn’t have the chance for them to renew their vows, and then it dawned on me as I prepared this homily that they did renew their vows by living them out for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health. And so they did repeat their vows on the day of their forty fifth anniversary.
I also want to thank so many of you who invite priests into the best and the worst moments of your lives because we do se Christ in the midst of that. I also want to thank those of you who repeat your vows. When I was in college, my roommate after we graduated from college invited me to come down and see him; and he and his wife, each day, before they left for the office to go to work would kneel in the doorway of their home and repeat their vows to one another. I want to encourage couples to do that, memorize your vows and repeat them to one another often. Make clear and lucid what the commitment is that you’ve made to each other.

Also, you receive the sacrament not once but an enduring sacrament, and every day you can call on the grace of the Sacrament of Marriage to strengthen you and to support you as you love one another, so I beg of you to call on that sacrament and to call on that grace, to lay your lives out in love for one another.
Paul in his letters to the Romans says that we must outdo one another, Christians, in showing respect and honor; and that’s specially true for married, that’s the goal, to try to outdo one another, to be competitive in your service, in your love, in your humility towards one another.
Very often in sacristies they post on the wall the saying: "Father, celebrate this Mass as it were your first Mass, your only Mass and your last Mass." That’s the way you should approach every day of married love; as it was your first day, your only day and your last day. That’s how we live out the sacrament.
I have seen some amazing things as a priest, I have seen some amazing families that are the products of married love. When I was a newly ordained priest I saw on Good Friday in my first year of priesthood and a family of eight children gathered around their father as he died at Lutheran Hospital, and as I anointed him as we prayed as we blessed them I saw an amazingly devout family raised so by two married people in love with one another. But you know what the most awesome thing was? Was the moment the man was about ready to die, his wife climbed into the bed in the emergency room and she put her arms around him: "Honey, I am going to hold on to you until you go to paradise." That was married love and it was awesome to see it. That’s why the sacrament is there for.

You are to be to one another nothing less than tabernacles and reliquaries, God’s presence in the world to one another and also symbols of holiness, persons of holiness to one another.
I hope too, and I encourage specially young couples here tonight, choose friends who are like Mary and like the disciples, who will tell you always in your marriage to do whatever Christ ask of you. Surround yourselves with faithful friends who will encourage you to the kingdom of God. And remember this, your marriage is not an end, it’s God’s gift through you to the Church. Your marriage is not simply to bear fruit in your own lives, is to bear fruit of holiness and truth and a witness of goodness for the whole Church, so I encourage you, it’s tough, I’ve got the easier Sacrament, I am convinced. But please, I encourage you to live your faithfulness and your love in your marriage, because when you do the whole Church is better and the whole Church becomes more holy.