Eileen and I have passed through so many wonders and challenges and difficulties and all kinds of circumstances beyond anything we ever imagined when we committed our lives to each other on that hot day of June 22, 1996. We have both changed so much since that day, and yet our love has grown stronger through the years. Yes, it has taken hard work, mutual sacrifice, and continual openness to reconciliation. But married love depends on more than these things.
Marriage is a mystery that is beyond our power to control. It takes us beyond ourselves, only to enable us to find ourselves and one another ever more deeply. Marriage is in fact a gift of God’s grace.
Of course, so often we forget about grace. But marriage is a sacrament, and the bond that unites and sustains us is the redemptive love of Jesus who never abandons us. It is His fidelity to us that enables us to be faithful to each other, to love each other and help each other, to forgive each other over and over again.
We thank the Lord for the moments that we remember His constant redeeming and transforming presence, and ask that those moments of memory and gratitude might increase. In spite of how it may seem at the beginning, the grace that builds up married life is not a great wind or a roaring fire. It is the sound of the breeze, and the still, small voice.
A wedding day is a wonderful day, well worth celebrating year after year. The joy glimpsed by newlyweds united in Christ is vindicated, enriched, refined, and empowered to endure and be renewed again and again through the years, as we journey together on the road toward the fulfillment of eternal life.
