Adam And Alexa’s Wedding

Reconciliation

New American Bible: Revised Edition (Chapter 8)

“My sister, come, let us pray and beg our Lord to grant us mercy and protection.” 5 She got up, and they started to pray…

This is what we are doing first for we are all beggars before God.

New American Bible: Revised Edition Chapter 12

I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship. 2

The offering of your bodies…this is my body…this is my blood, given for you

New American Bible: Revised Edition Chapter 10

and the two shall become one flesh.

What a reality!

One of the privileges that I get to do as a Catholic priest is hear Confessions. “OOH, so juicy right!” Well, no, while performing the rite of Reconciliation is ‘favorite,’ as Adam and I would say, hearing the sins part is well, sad. Its not the best part hearing where people failed and are at their worst. And if this was my only interaction with people… well hey, they’re pretty bad! But, what makes people not total hypocrites is that while they are able to sniff out good and bad and call that out in others, we fail often to acknowledge that failure and to somebody else. Great!

But even we the priests get tired of it. Priests get touchy about being in the confessional too much over their assigned time slot.

[Why? As a priest, I’m called father, a title that you, Adam, and I have discussed much, in relation to our own father, Frank, rip, and in the possibility of becoming one. As a father, I preside over the family, currently here in the desert, just as you fathers preside over the home, the domestic church. As a body, a family, there are many rifts that come in, spats, frictions, breaks].

I can’t address each one of them, but as a father the family comes to me on their own honor to plead their guilt and then ask for a blessing, to come back into the house, back to the table, so that they can do their part in building the kingdom. And this is what I should die doing, pouring out my life in that box so that the rifts can be repaired, (not with duct tape and glue, sorry Alexa, that’s about all the handy we inherited from our Father), but with God’s breath, and I mustn’t ever tire from another soul who says, “Father, I messed up, can you hear my Confession?” This is what I was ordained for (!), if nothing else, I mean, that’s what the word “religion” means, to heal a break, to mend. Wouldn’t it be messed up to say? “Nope, all out of forgiveness today it seems.”

[The word Reconciliation comes from the word “cilia,” meaning, hair, specifically eyelash. Perhaps it has that connotation to denote how the upper eyelash and the lower eyelash intertwine… or perhaps this is how close God wants us to be with him…eyelash to eyelash … so that we can give him a kiss, adore, ad ora - to the mouth, as from a daughter, Alexa, or as from a son, Adam, to their Father.

(Side note: I was at marriage class once and the instructor made all the couples sit knee to knee and hold the gaze for some given amount of time. Man that was intimate and I was pretty happy that I didn’t have to do that exercise, can you imagine eyelash to eyelash?! … Many of you are thinking at this moment, “Oh yea, I know eyelash to eyelash baby, poor priest, he doesn’t.” Maybe true… but there is something that’s deeper, soul to soul.)]

Anyways I go on this rant about Reconciliation because just as I say, that I’m not allowed to be empty of forgiveness, well, on this first day of the marriage, neither are you! You are never allowed to give up when the other comes to you in humility saying “I’m sorry… sorry for spilling everything all the time… sorry for becoming Yiorgos, a commercial thats online forever… sorry for being all dramatic, etc…” sorry Adam, I refuse to point out any of a bride’s flaws during the wedding.

The grace of matrimony is that this marriage isn’t dependent on one another alone, but upon God. Because as we know about people in general, and I know about Adam, in particular, we mess up a lot and our love is limited… it is conditional, except for a mother’s love. But isn’t it wonderful that we have a God who will adhere to you, who promises to be the adhesive between you two, so that when you two are all out of love, God shows up?! It is actually impossible for you to say, “I’m all out of forgiveness.”

You’re actors so you know the line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry”… but no, love means saying “I’m sorry” all the time and responding, “I forgive you, as if its the first time!” Because here’s the situation. You two are picking each other. That’s pretty neato! We don’t get to pick our family, our classmates, our teammates, our crew on a play, on a set,… cast-mates? our director, choreographers, orchestra, nor our kids, etc…so many people that influence our happiness, but we do get to pick our spouse. And often times even this goes south. Why? Because we don’t really know each other and what we’re in for and that’s for sure seeing that this is day 1 of the marriage. Its the most fun day, a very intense day, and a very short day. It’s easy to love each other today for all those reasons on day 1, in fact today will be the easiest day to love each other. And that’s why we all gather today, because we believe in love, we doubt love, we want to believe in the reality that you are saying that you will choose each other unto death precisely because you don’t know what is coming tomorrow and who this person next to you will become.

Alexa, us guys were joking at the bachelor party about what would happen if Adam put cake in your face at the cake cutting… and Alexa, I need you to know this because you and I are going to know each other for a long time, I WAS NOT ENCOURAGING HIM TO DO IT! I don’t know what Adam’s gonna do, he’s mysterious that way and he’s a lot of fun. Comedy is the exaggeration of reality, he taught me, so, heads up.

Now with that said, Alexa….Adam…. life will present you with a lot worse than cake in the face, unfortunately. And whenever this person sitting next to you, all dapper and handsome and beautiful, is the reason for that cake, or worse, in the face, You must have the courage with all the heartbreak to respond, ‘I forgive you, I don’t tire of forgiving you, I love forgiving you!’ Because see Alexa, Adam for you is Christ. He’s not just the first Adam, meaning the man born from clay, he’s the new Adam, Christ for you, as St. Paul says. As you love Adam you are simultaneously loving Christ. How? This is the mystery of the Sacrament that St. Paul speaks of in Ephesians 5 and the fulfillment of what Christ says in Mark 10. Alexa, your name btw means ‘defender of man,’ not a bad title for a wife, especially seeing how God gave woman to man as a helper, aka defender. (And only two other persons are referred to as helpers in this manner in the Scriptures… God and the King). You Alexa, defender, are for Adam, a symbol of the Church. Adam’s love for the Church entire, as Christ loves the Church, goes through you, Alexa. Adam will love all of you here present and beyond, through you personally, Alexa. Yes!!! This is why we are all here, to pray for you two, that you do not stop loving one another! That you never stop reconciling to one another, because we are reliant not just to believe that love can endure and outmatch our own selfishness, but because, now that you are getting Sacramentally married, you are becoming conduits of grace for us and the Church universal!

[That’s why marriage is way more important than being in a perpetually monogomous union alone, because no one gets any grace from it.]

But here, you are starting to love another person more than your very self, (and that love might just create a new person with a new name) and if you can love a person of your own choosing, with much needed help from God, well then maybe you could love your kid…and if you can love your kid, who looks like you and moves like you, well then maybe one day you could love your neighbor… and because you’ve gotten so good at love, yes from your family and friends your whole life, but in a deeper and more important way in this your new home, well then maybe, just maybe you could love your enemy, and forgive them… because Christ did that, on the cross, on his wedding day, when he was clothed with purple as a king bridegroom, with a garland crown, just like King Solomon was on his wedding day in the Song of Songs.

Now for you drama kids this is the ultimate drama to get wrapped up in! And that’s what we’re asking you to do, to get wholly wrapped up in this theodrama. And its not merely enough to say all this, we have this gorgeous crucifix of the mystical friendship and embrace between St. Francis of Assisi and the crucified Christ, but it’s that your cross, Alexa, has a name, and it’s Adam, and your’s Adam, is Alexa. And you love your cross as Christ did His which brought salvation to the world! And you are pegged to each other for life, eyelash to eyelash, knee to knee, heart to heart. And that you are promising to carry your cross to the finish line, which is death, the last day of your marriage.

And our prayer is that on that last day of marriage you might love each other more perfectly than today, when you aren’t beautiful anymore, when it isn’t easy, when you aren’t surrounded by all of your favorite people, but by your favorite person, all wrinkly and lovely,… and then you will know the cost of carrying each other to heaven.

Today is easy to love, and its glorious, you look perfect and perfectly in love! It is your mission and thus your mutual submission, to never stop reconciling, to never keep score as to who’s done what, but to keep giving God your ‘Yes,’ your fiat, this YES that you make today with your mind and heart and will, and that tomorrow and forever you will make with your bodies and with your choices…those thousands of choices made in the secret of your heart that will determine the success or failure of this marriage, those little no’s to yourself and yes’s to the other, that are all wrapped up in this great YES you say to one another today, and part of that even greater YES that you said to God at your baptisms, at your confirmations, every time you receive holy Communion, and at your only Marriage. My brother and my sister, prove to us the love, the unity, and the beauty of God.

Dante heard the Blessed Beatrice’s words so that he would set out on his journey to Hell and upwards to Purgatory and then to Heaven: “So did my weary courage surge again, and such sweet boldness rushed into my heart, I cried out as a man at last set free…Your words [Beatrice] have put my heart in order now, kindling so great a longing to set on you’ve turned me to our first intention-GO! Go, for we two now share one will alone…Then we set forth, taking the deep and savage-wooded path!” [Inferno, Canto 2, 130-142, Dante trx by Esolen].