How to fail in marriage

Quiet Storm by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, 01 July 2024

Many people today see marriage in the human level, downplaying or outrightly refusing its supernatural dimension being a gift and a grace from God. What is most funny with them is how they also insist on giving weddings some semblance of “spiritual” meanings with all the crazy symbolisms and dramatics conjured by some wedding planners that have prompted – rightly so – many parishes to impose strict rules and guidelines to stop all these follies that have robbed Matrimony of its holiness and sanctity.

We in the Church have never failed to remind couples getting married that more important than their weddings becoming Instagrammable is their spiritual preparation because marriage is a vocation, a call from God to a life of holiness for husband and wife to become Christ’s saving presence in the world.

Divorce has always been the easiest way out of many failed marriages even among God’s chosen people in the Old Testament, an attempt to free couples of moral responsibility and culpability in their failures they could not humbly admit. Jesus had explained and clarified it 2000 years ago and still, here we are insisting for divorce which is a symptom of pride, the first sin of Adam and Eve when they broke away from God. That is why, divorce is a breaking away from God too.

There are many ways to succeed in marriage but there is only one sure way to fail which is to turn away from God, to disregard God, to stop believing in God. Here now is a homily I shared two years ago at the wedding of a very good friend in my former parish in Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria, Bulacan.

*Photo by author, Don Bosco Chapel on the Hill, Bgy. Cahil, Calaca, Batangas, 03 January 2023.*

My dearest Gracie and Chino:

Congratulations on this most joyous day of your lives. Finally, after much prayers and waiting, following so many detours in your lives, you are now before the altar of the Lord to exchange vows in the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony.

I am sure you must have heard so many things on being successful and fruitful in marriage. In fact while praying over this homily since last year (yes, believe me), a lot of things have also come to my mind that I felt very important so you may grow and mature in your married life. But, as I prayed more, I realized lately that while there are many ways to be successful and fruitful in marriage, there is only one sure way in order to fail as husband and wife.

Disregard God.

Stop believing in God.

Live as if there is no God.

Do not pray. Do not celebrate the Sunday Mass.

Forget God. And you will surely fail in marriage.

Without God, Gracie and Chino, you cannot truly love each other because the only true love we must all imitate despite our weaknesses and imperfections is the love of Jesus Christ poured out on us there on the Cross. He said it so clearly today in our gospel, “This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you. There is no greater love than to offer one’s life for a friend.”

Remember, Gracie and Chino, human love is always imperfect; only God can love us perfectly.

Here lies the great mystery and joy of human love, of marriage: God willed from the very start that man and woman be united in marriage. When His Son Jesus Christ came to the world, He not only reminded us of this wonderful plan of the Father for us but also elevated marriage into a sacrament, a sign of the saving presence of God.

In sharing His life with us, we are able to love like Jesus that is why He tells us too that it was Him who chose and called you, Gracie and Chino, not you who chose Him. God willed that on this day, Gracie and Chino that you get married. It was also part of His plan that you met during the COVID pandemic when we were locked down and when many weddings were either postponed or cancelled.

Very clear, Gracie and Chino, it was God who designed your marriage! Do not disregard Him. Invite Him daily into your lives in the same manner you invited Him on this day of your wedding.

*Photo by author, Don Bosco Chapel On The Hill, Bgy. Cahil, Calaca, Batangas, 08 February 2023.*

Let me warn and remind you, Gracie and Chino, that a wedding nor a sacrament is not everything. Love is difficult because love is not just a feeling but a decision we renew daily. You must have heard how some couples ran out of love that eventually, they split up, separated and failed. When we have that deep faith, fervent hope and unceasing charity and love of God, you will never run out of love, Gracie and Chino, because God is love.

Keep that in mind. If you want to remain in love, love God. That is what marriage is all about: in loving your wife, your husband, you are actually expressing your love to God who is after all our very first love. That’s what Tobias realized when he married Sarah in our first reading. Tobias went to a far away land not only to look for a wife and a cure for his father Tobit’s blindness but also for God! When he found Sarah, he also found God.

Is it not the same thing happened with you, Chino, upon meeting Gracie? It was not love at first sight but more like the experience of Tobias when God revealed by silently speaking into your heart Gracie is the woman whom you shall marry. In a flash, you felt so certain about it, Chino, and despite your distance from each other, you felt this love growing deeper every day.

There is no perfect marriage, Gracie and Chino, but every couple is surely blessed by God. Cooperate with Him, do whatever He tells you as the Blessed Mother told the waiters in the wedding at Cana where Jesus transformed water into wine. Imagine, the first miracle by Jesus Christ was in a wedding just like this!

You know why? Because love is most truest when there is forgiveness and mercy. As I have told you, human love is imperfect, only God can love us perfectly. Without God, it is impossible for us to forgive and move on with life. Without God, it is impossible for us to say sorry and ask forgiveness too. It is God who gives us the grace to be sorry and to be merciful and forgiving like Him.

When couples become hardened in their hearts as they keep tabs of each other’s sins and mistakes and misgivings, they get tired and fed up with each other and then separate.

With God, we are able to clean our slate, delete our memories and restart/refresh our programs like the computer to begin anew each day.

Without God, the festering anger within us gets worst and soon, everything crashes. That is when we fail because we do not have God as our foundation and root.

Try seeing it this way: human relationships are like two hands together.

Without God, they are like interlocking fingers where the partners are both so good, so bilib in themselves, filling each other’s needs that soon, they get filled with themselves. Like interlocking fingers that get painful, they eventually breakaway or separate from each other because love has become a demand than a gift, sex an obligation than an offering, with each one becoming more an object to be possessed than a person to be loved.

With God, human relationships are like two praying hands. Very flexible. You keep your identities and personalities intact, growing together, maturing together in love as you both create an empty space for each one’s shortcomings and most especially for God to have a place in your lives.

Like Tobit and Sarah in our first reading, pray always. Handle your lives with prayer, Gracie and Chino. The more you pray and believe in God, the more you will love Him, and the more you will believe each other too and hence, love more each other too! Keep God in your life as husband and wife. Whatever you do to each other, that you do first to Jesus who is always between you.

You see, Gracie and Chino, there are so many ways to be fruitful in marriage for as long as you are rooted in God. Take away God and you will surely fail as an individual and as a couple.

My prayer for you, Gracie and Chino is that today may be the least joyful day of your lives. Live in God through Jesus Christ with Mary our Mother. Amen.

How to fail in marriage

Marriage is a prayer

Quiet Storm by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, 11 June 2024

*From stillromancatholicafteralltheseyears.com*, *January 2022.*

What is very sad in this ongoing debate against divorce in our country is how some people claiming to be graduates and professors of Catholic institutions insist on their many “intellectual reasonings” why divorce should be allowed while at the same time declaring it is wrong to profess we are against divorce simply because we are Catholics.

What a tragedy when those educated or teaching in Catholic schools and universities who are supposed to know more and better about Jesus Christ and His teachings are the ones favoring divorce. They cite so many studies and authors even theologians to support their stand in favor of divorce without ever mentioning Christ’s teachings found in the Sacred Scriptures that were explained by the Church in our Catechism as well as in so many other documents by the Popes and bishops.

We understand how journalists could err regarding names and other details that essentially do not effect the veracity of their news like the recent sakalan blues in Gagalangin, Tondo when the interview of a priest was ascribed to another; but, to be one sided in the presentation of a story is something else like Rappler’s “The Problem with I am Catholic, I say no to divorce”. There’s a reliable maxim in journalism that says “Opinions are free but facts are sacred.”

*Photo by Joseph Kettaneh on Pexels.com*

The main fact we have been holding on the sanctity and indissolubility of marriage for over 2000 years is our Lord Jesus Christ’s teaching against divorce that the pro-divorce everywhere have refused to accept.

Yes, we need to listen to different views about divorce but not to those views condemned by the Church because they are wrong.

Divorce cannot be isolated as merely a political issue to be resolved because marriage as a natural sacrament is spiritual in nature, a path to holiness.

Marriage is a gift and a call from God for men and women to live and work together in order to attain eternal life. This we achieve firstly by having a prayer life, a relationship with God expressed in our love for one another especially between husband and wife.

In arguing against divorce, we need to look for those couples who have made it through thick and thin in their marriage in order to inspire others in following the path of Holy Matrimony.

*Joyce and Tony in 2019 with son Atty. JA and wife Kathleen with their two sons, and daughter Rosella.*

As a contribution in our fight against divorce, I share with you my homily at the 40th wedding anniversary of my cousin Joyce Pollard to Tony Lopez in October 2019 which I titled as “Married life is a prayer”.

Oh what a joy to officiate weddings especially of relatives and friends!

Hope you find some lessons and inspirations on the beauty of marriage we have to keep.

As I prepared my homily for your anniversary, Joyce and Tony… “the moment I woke up and before your Mommy Fely put on her make-up, I said a little prayer for you.”

Of course that is not the theme song of Joyce and Tony. They haven’t met yet in 1967 when Dione Warwick recorded I Say a Little Prayer. But they were already married when it became one of the tracks in the movie “My Best Friend’s Wedding” starring Julia Roberts.

And since this is my “best cousin’s wedding anniversary” in this part of the city, I have thought of reflecting on married life as a prayer.

In our gospel we have heard Jesus Christ narrating the parable of the unjust judge and persistent widow to underscore “the necessity to pray always without becoming weary” (Lk. 18:1).

Prayer is an expression of faith.

When there is faith, there is also love.

And when there is prayer, faith, and love, what we have is a relationship, a community of believers who love each other.

People who love and believe with each other always talk and communicate. They make time to be with one another. And most often, that is what really matters with people who love and believe – simply to be together.

Even in silence.

Like prayer.

Prayer is more than asking things from God but most of all, prayer is a relationship with God expressed with others. That is the beauty of the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony: husband and wife are bound together in marriage to become signs of the saving presence of Jesus Christ.

Marriage as a sacrament means it is a prayer as well, a relationship of a man and woman with God as its source and foundation.

I am sure, Joyce and Tony along with all the other married couples here today will agree that married life requires a lot of prayers. In fact, married life is a prayer, a very difficult one that is much needed.

Like in that movie My Best Friend’s Wedding, there are real forces of evil that are trying to destroy couples. So many couples have already fallen, going their separate lives after several years of being together while on the other hand, more and more couples are refusing to get married at all due to this reality of breakups and separations.

And that is why we are celebrating today Joyce and Tony’s 40th wedding anniversary! We are praying with them in expressing our faith and love for them in Christ Jesus. Prayers have kept them together, transforming them into better persons.

At the end of the parable of the persistent widow and unjust judge, Jesus posed a very crucial question for us, especially to every married couple here today: When the Son of Man comes again at the end of time, will he find faith on earth? (Lk.18:8)

And what shall be our response?

“Yes, Lord, you shall find faith when you come again in Joyce and Tony!”

Like Moses in the first reading, they both prayed hard with arms outstretched on many occasions as they battled life’s many challenges and struggles.

“Yes, Lord, you shall find faith when you come again in Joyce and Tony” because they have both proclaimed your word with persistence, whether it is convenient or inconvenient like St. Paul in his second letter to Timothy. They have weathered so many storms in the past 40 years and your words, O Lord, have kept them together, sharing these with their children and with everyone in their life of fidelity and love.

“Yes, Lord, you shall find faith when you come again in Joyce and Tony” now before your altar to renew their vows to love and cherish each other for the rest of their lives!

“Yes, Lord, you shall find faith when you come again” among the many couples gathered here who have remained faithful to each other despite their many sins and failures, weaknesses and shortcomings.

Joyce and Tony, you are not only a prayer of faith but also a homily of the Holy Matrimony, showing us the light and power of Jesus Christ to transform people in prayer and bring them to fulfillment.

Prayer does not change things like typhoons and earthquakes. We cannot ask God in prayer to spare us from getting sick or be exempted from life’s many trials and sufferings. Prayer cannot stop those from happening.

What prayer does is change us, change our attitude so we may hurdle life’s many blows and obstacles. Especially with couples who always find God in their lives, in good times and in bad.

Prayers transform us into better persons as children of God, especially couples who eventually look like brothers and sisters after living together in faith, hope and love.

Tony and Joyce, I am sure everyone in our family and among your friends here can attest to the many good things that have transformed you in the past 40 years.

You have changed to become the best for each other.

In the bible, the number 40 means perfect.

May God continue to perfect you, Tony and Joyce.

Keep us too in your prayers as we pray for you. Amen.
https://lordmychef.com/2019/10/23/married-life-is-a-prayer/