It’s always a privilege to officiate at a holy marriage performed in church before the altar of God.
The couple is not there just because they love each other. With the eyes of faith, they’re in church to be a sign and echo of God’s love for all of us — it’s named the Sacrament of Marriage.
When a couple “gets married” apart from a church or religious way, it seems they’re not interested in making their love a sign of anything more than just their personal love.
In our Catholic way of thinking, the couple doesn’t just “get married” — they become a living and breathing, walking and talking and loving sacrament — a beautiful gift to all of us.
When a couple is asked, “Why do you want to celebrate your wedding in church?” they have many answers (“Well, because my grandmother did.”) I suggest it’s because God brought you together to fulfill God’s purpose to be that sign of something much bigger and more awesome than just your personal affection.
It’s interesting the first miracle that Jesus of Nazareth worked wasn’t making the blind to see, the lame to walk or raising the dead. It was providing wine at a local wedding reception in Cana of Galilee. That’s how important blessed and sacramental marriage is in the life of the Church, our faith and the world.
It’s too bad that too many couples, in love, don’t want to bless their love in church — too bad that many don’t even want to be married at all. How will the children know about holiness, faithfulness, faith itself with parents just settling for “playing house?”
At the wedding in Cana the best wine came out after Jesus saved the day. The best marriage is blessed and made a sacrament.