“A man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate.” Mk 10,7-9

Dear parishioners,

Given this Sunday’s readings, today is clearly a day to celebrate your marriage. Take a moment today to name all the blessings that have befallen you since the day you were married, and that stem directly from the fact that you are married to this particular person. They are legion, starting with the children that were born of your marriage. Then there are the habitual, abiding blessings, one of the best of which is his or her abiding presence to you, and what that does to you. Waking up in the morning, and seeing her tousled head of hair on the pillow. You heart leaps for joy, just because she’s there, and it leaps for joy a second time, as you consider that she will always be there, since she promised that she would be, and she has kept her word until now, in spite of everything. The list goes on and on. Once you have taken stock of all the blessings, lift up a prayer of thanksgiving to God. Because it is all gift. Every marriage that was meant to be is something that God has joined together. As the scriptures say, “rejoice and be glad”, but above all, give thanks to God.

As we celebrate marriage, let us lift up to God in prayer all those whose marriages are not what they should be, what they had hoped, like everyone else, that they would be. God isn’t just a creator of marriages, he is also a redeemer of marriages. If these marriages were meant to be, God can redeem them. Let us ask that of him.

Finally, let us pray for those whose marriages are irredeemable, because they were never meant to be. They were the fruit of an honest mistake. Let us pray that once it becomes obvious that the marriage is irredeemable, the persons who are party to it will find the courage to acknowledge the mistake, as opposed to perpetuating it. And let us pray for their full healing. The healing of what must be the incredibly painful experience of a hope of happiness being slowly dashed. 

Finally, let us marvel at God’s incredible ingenuity at having made us “man and woman”, such that the two come together and experience that uniquely beautiful thing: oneness of body, and mind, and heart. A oneness in which each partner to the oneness is aware that because of this oneness, they have become more, as a person, than they would otherwise ever have been.

Take a moment today to meditate on your marriage in particular, and on marriage in general. It is a wonderful thing to behold. And when you’ve taken the measure of the beauty of it all, lift up, as always, a prayer of thanksgiving to God, for the way things are.

On a related topic, today is Safe Haven Sunday, a Sunday designated to our raising in the Church the issue of pornography, the reasons we have for needing to resist it, and the means at our disposal to help us to resist it, to make of our homes a Safe Haven, especially for the children who are growing up in our highly sexualized culture. For all the information you wish to have on this topic, simply type “safe haven Sunday” into your search engine. The title “Safe Haven Sunday – Archdiocese of Vancouver” will appear. Click on it, and everything that has been prepared for the people of our Archdiocese on this topic is there to be found.

One final note: we have once again had every frequently touched surface in the church and rectory covered with Baoshield, a substance which kills on contact any and every bacteria and virus known to science. It is effective for three months. We will repeat this every three months until such time as we feel that this pandemic is truly over. 

Have a safe and pleasant week. God bless us all.
Fr. Guy