Today we celebrate the sacrament of marriage. I welcome all those who are here celebrating significant anniversaries. I am told that about 60 married couples have registered who are celebrating silver, ruby, gold, diamond and perhaps also platinum anniversaries at 70 years. They are many more. Congratulations.

We celebrate God’s gift of love, which has created a deep and ensuring bond between you in your marriages and your love that binds you together. As the Book of Genesis teaches us: marriage is a gift from God by which man and woman commit themselves to each other as ‘one flesh’, permanently to grow and flourish as a couple in a covenant of love. As you vowed on your wedding day, “to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death do us part”. Your rings – if you look at them now – are sign of your love and fidelity. We give thanks for the way in which this love has created new life in families which grow and flourish over time.

Today’s gospel which comes early in the Sermon on the Mount is very appropriate. Jesus says to his disciples ‘You are the salt of the earth’, ‘You are the light of the world’.

Salt is a very preciouscommodity. It gives flavour to food, It is also used to preserve food and wasessential before refrigeration. Salty water is healing although it will cause theterrible stinging of small cuts.

My dear married couples, you are the salt of the earth. Your lives of love and commitment, in good times and difficult times, in preserving, and building relationships are salt in the world, bringing flavour and preserving love. Your love witnesses to others of the importance of marriage and the good of the family. You bring flavour to life by the gift of your married lives in joy and sorrow, in loving and forgiving. You bring forth the next generations and prepare them for their life in the world. You hand on the faith to others and hope they will follow Jesus. Of course, when adult children walk away, this causes deep pain which you bear in your hearts.

You are the light of the world as you shine out with love and fidelity into the world. This is not to make it easy. Building a relationship requires sacrifice, for the Christian it needs prayer, it needs God’s grace. A relationship thrives on the simple but profound words: ‘I love you’ – repeated again and again, and the words of daily life, Thank you, Please, Sorry, all which show that your spouse is not being taken for granted.

Know that your names are written in the heart of Jesus. St Francis de Sales, who wrote about the spiritual life for lay people, writes of the heart of Jesus, ‘This most adorable and lovable heart of our Master, burning with the love which he professes to us, [is] a heart on which all our names are written… Surely it is a source of profound consolation to know that we are loved so deeply by our Lord, who constantly carries us in his heart”. We can gaze into his heart and ‘see our name carved in letters of love, which true love alone can read and true love has written.’

My dear friends, your names are written in the heart of Jesus in letters of love. As you celebrate your marriage anniversaries, I know that your names are also written on each other’s heart in letters of love.

Today I am sure that you are keenly aware of the losses which you have experienced over time; maybe the loss of miscarriage which is painfully carried, and in the past often unacknowledged, the death of a child, the death of a spouse and of course parents and loved members of the family. Know that their names are written also in letters of love in heaven. We are consoled by the mercy of God who wants all people to be brought together into the glory of eternal life. I know you continue to pray for them.

The blessing at the end of the marriage Mass shows ways in which your love is a light in the world. There are three parts, first for each of you that the peace of Christ may be with you; second, for the gift of children, third, I quote, ‘May you be witnesses in the world to God’s charity, so that the afflicted and the needy who have known your kindness may one day receive you thankfully into the eternal dwelling of God.’

Strange you may say, but it is a reminder that Christian marriage always looks outwards and has care for the ‘afflicted and the needy’ in the community. It is they who will welcome you into the joy of eternal life in heaven.

+John Sherrington

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