MARRIAGE: THE GOOD WINE (a wedding homily), Part 2 By Cormac Burke

Continued from Part 1

Water to wine is an evident miracle. God's deeper miracles are not always so evident. Wine to Blood is a miracle seen only by the eyes of faith. The appearance has not changed. But the reality has. The reality is divine. It is the Mystery of the Sacraments: God's hidden presence and action through human signs.

The real miracle of Cana is our Lord's endowing human love with a new power: the power to be a sign and a cause of divine love.

He wanted this couple, and all Christian couples, to be happy in loving one another. He wanted them to love him in loving one another. He wanted them to be saints, in loving one another. And so he raised their marriage to be a Sacrament.

Christian teaching on marriage as a Sacrament means not only that husband and wife have God's help, to love each other more, and to love their children more. It also means that in loving each other and their children more, they are loving God more. Marriage is both a means and a challenge to growth in love. And growth in human love, in Christian marriage, effects (i.e. causes) growth in divine love. This is the sacramentality of marriage.

Everyone marries in expectation of happiness. But you must have often reflected on the fact that many marriages do not work out as happy marriages. Will yours? Will you be faithful to one another ? for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, in happiness, to the very end? That is what you hope and pray for today... (To be continued)

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