Eros, Song of Songs, Marriage, Beatitude

Song of songs, great themes for a wedding!

Christ the bridegroom running over the hills like a gazelle to, encontrar su novia.

My Sister, My Bride.  Mi hermana, mi esposa!

Set me as a seal on your heart,

What is a seal? Something like wax that has an imprint stamped deep into this.  In marriage you find yourself, heart to heart, hearing the other’s heartbeat, feeling the other’s heart beat.  Set me as a seal on your heart. Imprint onto me, you.  My choice.  My desiring.

Eros, creative, exciting, desirous, jealous, erotic. Filia, & Agape

There is Eros in marriage. And after the wedding comes the consumation

Now, what your wedding prep has tried to do, is deepend your friendship.  You are friends before you are spouses.  “My Sister, my bride.”

You are friends now, are you spouses? You make your vows as friends! Eros speaks back to Filia, my sister, my bride. “My sister” comes first. You are friends before you are lovers. You are a unique Christian with your own soul and your own relationship with Christ before you are given (as gift, gift from God and gift from those here) to another in marriage. Eros speaks back to friendship love and remakes the vows with your bodies!. And Eros, while creating anew as well as speaking the vows with our bodies also points forward to Agape! (as we see in the second reading) it’s a promise of our fidelity, and a promise forward to sacrifice.

This isn’t just a reading about how beautiful being in love is, its not being in love, its loving your neighbor and your God.

I know this because it says love is not jealous.  Well, eros is, marriage is, but sacridfical love is not.  And you are supposed to become more Christian, more loving through this

And this love, this sacrament, is a sacrament of service, it is meant to extend you two beyond even yourselves, a love that generates, but a love that becomes a nest for others to rest in.  Your Christianity now has a framework to exist in.  Before marriage you are a single person looking for ways to grow.  Now God has set that up for you and now you love the world through your marriage, and your marriage helps you learn how to give yourself.

The beatitudes that we read should get more possible

Pobres en espiritu, qué lloren, mansos de corazon, sed por justicia, los qué tienen misericordia (y no manteniendo el marcador!), buscando paz, dar a otros el beneficio de la duda), siendo castos de corazon, puros, sin lujuria, enfrentando la persecución por tus creencias y los insultos, porque Cristo hizo.

“This is my body given for you…this is my blood, given for you…” the words of Christ at the institution of the Eucharist are really then Erotic love words to us, speaking of what your marriage is an analogy of, a real analogy, speaking of Gods love with His Church, and through the Church, Gods love to humanity. But it’s also a promise of the sacrifice to come, “this is my body given for you, this is my blood,” given on the cross (AGAPE), this total self sacrificial love. And so too your love speaks towards your love that you will give, when it will cost you, your money, your time, your hair, and indeed your body, maybe even your life. Giving your life daily as well as ultimate.

Marriage is a cross! Yes! Love your cross, embrace your cross, marriage will kill you, just as priesthood will kill me, and you are making your promises today to stay in it even on the tough days, the glamour-less days, the sick days, the poor times.

Many people, for their wedding, try to plan out everything.  Want everything to be just right.  You do your best, you do the work, and whatever happens today, happens.  Today will be just fine, but a marriage isn’t all about the wedding day, this is really the easiest day to love one another, and I pray that you are happier in ten years than today, more in love than today, a better human than today.  Marriage sucks the selfishness out of us (Natalie?)

And see, the problem today is we all think way too much of ourselves, humility is thinking about ourselves less, not thinking less of ourselves. Ok, but everyone wants to tell their story, listen to me!!!! I don’t care. The problem with the world is that their story isn’t rooted in any other bigger story! Your marriage and your lives are being brought into the larger story of Christ and His redemption of all creation.

I could tell the Christ story without mentioning your marriage, just as you could without ever mentioning me. But it is impossible to speak of our stories without mentioning Christ! And He has so dignified us His brothers and sisters that He Himself didn’t want to be able to tell His story without mentioning you. Today is yet another Sacrament in which Christ gives you His divine life. Live in such a way that when Christ speaks of you a smile comes to His face, as Say Anthony up there preached to the child Christ, so too you! Live your life in a way that reminds me that God came down from heaven to marry humanity, that you Isaias are Christ is the bridegroom and you Alexis, are The Church, His bride.