SERMON FOR WEDDING

THEME: MARRIAGE IS AN IMPORTANT WORD, IT IS NOT JUST A WORD BUT A

SENTENCE! NOT JUST A SENTENCE BUT A LIFE SENTENCE!!

1. Today we celebrate NEW LIFE. The love of Philip and Cheryl will, with God’s grace
blossom as a flower blooms, and mature as good wine develops over the years of this new
life together. Marriage is a yoking together of two separate lives into one, enduring until life
ends and not before. You both will freely and publicly today renounce your single lives
forever. In doing so you will be obliged to renounce also all selfishness and embrace the
state of fruitful love to build up the common good of both Church and State. In doing so you
ensure your salvation. Thus marriage is for LIFE.

2. Also we have a right to expect new life from this union, if God so blesses you in Holy
Matrimony. Every single time you come together as man and wife, there will be and must be
openness to new life, otherwise you would be cheating God, yourselves and all of us. In
being open to life, God will bless your love, He who told us through St Paul: “The wife will
be saved through childbearing”. Conceiving, bearing, and raising children are what
Marriage is all about. There is some risk to the life or health of the mother, yet the benefits
and dignity of motherhood outweigh all the risks.

The husband who becomes a father must share the toil and worries of his new burden to assist
the family if he is to share the creative dignity of Almighty God.

The children need to see you both united in love and in discipline in justice and in charity.
You will represent God for them; you will stand in His place as you will have participated in
His creative power. What an awesome and grand privilege! This will be yours if you are
faithful and if God chooses to make you parents, if He does, you will be channels of new
life, and custodians of His creatures, these angels in the flesh, children.

3. New Life is given on this day because you who are baptised and have been to confession
will now receive a totally new infusion of grace. You will administer to each other, in the
presence of authorized witnesses the holy sacrament of matrimony. This will give you both
an increase of sanctifying grace and charity, as well as implant in both of you a new creation
that will last until the death of either partner: The Marriage Bond.

This bond is symbolised by the rings you wear, it gives a new source of sacramental grace
every time you need it and call upon it in prayer. This grace does three things for you both;
A. Enables you to bear the many difficulties of your new state.
B. Helps you to love and be faithful to each other.
C. Assists you to bring up your children in the fear and love of God.

1
 This bond has such an important function that every diocese has a priest trained as a lawyer
and appointed to defend that bond!

MEDITATION:
To help you consider fruitfully the wonders of this day, I urge you to read the beautifully
chosen prayers and readings in the missal for the weddings, including the nuptial blessing.

Read later on the book of Tobias and the second chapter of St. John’s Gospel. Our Lord
Jesus Christ chose a wedding feast for a relative to honour with His presence and first
miracle. Let us notice a few things about that event:
1. The feast lasted a full week, on the eighth day the couple would come together and lift
the veil of the wife (in Latin “Revelatio” in Greek the word is “apocalypse”) and start to
live as one.
2. Our Lord came with His apostles, in order to ensure good company and to show that His
Church was being founded on family relationships.
3. He despised not the simple human pleasures of good wine in moderation, even changing
a huge supply of water into the best Australian wine!
4. He did this at the implicit request of His Blessed Mother, to whom He can refuse
nothing. We can gain all things through her!

Later on, He would teach us that His Kingdom/Church is like a marriage feast (Matt 22:1-14 cf:
19th Sun after Pentecost) and that we are called to share His new Life and eternal happiness in
Heaven. “I come that you may have life, and have it more abundantly!” He will take wine,
made from crushed and fermented juice of many grapes, and change it into His Most Precious
Blood. With this Blood, poured out “for you and for many” in the Holy sacrifice of the Mass,
Jesus Christ wishes to make new children for His Church, new citizens of His heavenly
Kingdom. This is why you wish to sanctify your marriage with a nuptial Mass.

Our Good Lord wants you to realise that you will build up His Church. By having your children
baptised, they will become newly born into the family of Christ, and by nurturing their faith
you will make saints and overcome the evil in the world. This is your mission, you who are
married. You, Philip will become the bishop of a new diocese! You, Cheryl, will be the fruitful
bride who will represent the faithful people of Christ, the Church, obedient, loving, faithful to
all his honest requests. You, Philip, will protect, nourish and make fruitful this church, given
you in trust by Almighty God.

Learn to make a happy marriage by giving all to Jesus through Mary. Honour your religious
duties and pray together the Holy Rosary every day. God will ensure your perseverance and
every natural happiness possible in this vale of tears may be yours; until you come to that
supernatural happy home where the Heavenly Father has prepared for you a great and eternal
feast to celebrate with infinite joy the marriage supper of the Lamb of God.

Amen.
2