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Composed by Fr. Paul Ward for Jeff and Megan, in the month of Mary, May 2006. May God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit bless them with endless joy and fidelity, children and health, protection and goodness every day of their married lives. Amen.

What started as a neat little suggestion and a fun idea rather grew and developed. For the spiritual fruit I personally found in this exercise, the deeper I got into it the more deeply I wanted to go. Perhaps I developed too much “stuff” here for such a simple project? As for the quality of the poem, there are many more better out there, so don’t feel obliged to put this on your wedding card under any circumstances!

The three stanzas are an expression of the human experience of the dynamism of love:

· First, there is the gift itself; therefore the first stanza expresses the nature of matrimonial love.

· Second, there is the wondering and hope that the beloved will accept the gift of oneself, which a good soul experiences with the thrill of the very moment she is proposed to; therefore the second stanza confronts the reader with truly accepting the beloved, and giving oneself to become two in one flesh. This type of mutual acceptance of the total gift of self is essential to marriage.

· Third, there is the victory of love, the embracing of the gift freely offered, therefore the third stanza asserts the complete donation of self, and not only as an act of human love, but a human love filled with the grace of God, who is Love, and therefore the perfect ideal after which couples must strive.

The structure of the poem is taken from an old Latin Meter I once studied and enjoyed, but whose descriptive name I now forget, with a simple rhyme structure. I may be completely inventing the meter, so cloudy is my memory. But it’s a meter I like, so on to it! This summarizes all that I wish to say regarding rhyme and rhythm:

I wished the poem to be both catechetical and heavily scriptural, so I will now comment the poem, line by line, including footnotes of passages quoted. The scriptures are, after all, living and active, sharper than a two edged sword,[1] and hence more than the word of man, they are the word of God: read, and listen to his voice.

The meaning of man’s life on earth is found in love. God created us to love and to be loved. It is He alone who can love us and be loved by us in a way that corresponds perfectly to our human nature. Yet he has given us marriage, to anticipate and participate the eternal union with him. If this is how beautiful love is upon earth, where marriage is only a sign and image of God’s love in heaven, how ecstatic will it be in heaven when the true Groom, Jesus Christ, is definitively united with his pure bride, the Church, the New Jerusalem?[2] And if God is love, when love is lived out on earth in God, is it not a foretaste of eternal bliss?

Jesus reminded us about God’s plan for marriage in Mt 19:9. He reasserts with divine authority that it is to be faithful, fruitful and indissoluble. Let your marriage be formed and informed by Jesus’ words, and by a reflection upon “the beginning,” God’s ideal for human love, not yet poisoned by the effects of original sin.

I also bring to mind the existential pain of all us miserable, sinful sons and daughters of Adam and Eve. The amazing love they had would never be experienced again by men because of original sin. Could it have been even ten thousand times more wonderful than conjugal love is already? Yes, I say, and even more! Oh, then why did they sin? It seems because of pride: they wanted to know good and evil for themselves without having to obey.

Therefore, protect your love by obedience. Submit to one another, and let the man be the head of his body who loves and cares for his body, as Christ is the head of his body, the Church, who obeys and is faithful to Jesus. Submit to one another: to the contrary, the sad fate of Adam and Eve will fall with all its weight upon those who exercise pride in their marriages. Submit also in obedience to the laws and teachings of the Church regarding marriage, and that will be great protection from the influences of the devil, the flesh, and the world.

Every sacrament is a sign. A sacrament has matter and form. The words are your vows before the altar of God, the matter is the consummation in your flesh. It is all a sign of the love and fruitfulness of God and the Church; in another sense, it is a participation in the unity of persons in the Holy Trinity. Without faith, it is merely a contract, to be held and abused depending on human caprice and self-will.

Here I refer to the passage of Ephesians 5. St. Paul says that the line in Genesis 2:24, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh,” refers to “Christ and the Church” (Eph 5:32). He does so in the context of teaching couples to “be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ… wives, be subject to your husbands… husbands, love your wives” (Eph 5:21, 22, 25). This love is like a two way street, but men and women do not express matrimonial love in the same way, neither in the soul nor in the flesh, obviously.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God made flesh, born of the ever Virgin Mary, left the Father, was joined to his body, the Church, and hence became two in one flesh, a mystery that lasts in a mystical way through the Eucharist until He comes again.

By “new birth,” I wish to express the fact that the reality of the covenant of Christ with the Church, the new covenant mercifully made in his own most precious Blood, is “incarnated” if you will, manifest once again new in the world by your own faithful marriage.

By marriage, one gives himself away. He is able to do so, trusting that his spouse will respond with equal love. He knows his spouse’s love, and this gives him the assurance that he will love and be loved in a way proper to his dignity as a human person. By “he” I mean both man and woman. The gift is so radical, that by the marital covenant, it is impossible to take back, no matter how hard one may try.

Here I wished to express the mystery of the human person, and the nature of marital union. Through the flesh, man manifests his personhood. Only two souls who have come to know each other and love each other as persons, and have given themselves to one another by the rite of the marital covenant, are pure enough to express the gift of self by the faculties of the body. They to do so as persons, and mutually be treated as persons; and to show such love with truth and without shame. This line expresses the whole of personhood.

The lines come from First Thessalonians, where St. Paul discusses self control with the terms, “holiness and honor,” referring absolutely to the purity of chastity. They are sever terms, perhaps, for a wedding poem, but an important reminder that lust is to have no place even between spouses; for they are not to use each other in the flesh, but to love each other both in soul and in body. Love isn’t something you take, it’s a free gift.

There is an inherent “risk” of extending oneself to another in a complete act of selfless love, expecting the other to correspond equally, but yet still at the mercy of the other person’s freedom. This freedom is the protector, the arena of love. I had originally intended to include Song of Songs 5:8, “Tell my beloved, I am sick with love,” to express the helplessness of complete self-donation, but I re-wrote the phrase. The reason I did so is that these lines come from the woman of the Canticle of Canticles, and she is at that time separated from her beloved. It is a pang of love, the pain of absence. Marriage is not absence, but union, a sign and promise of the eternal union of love with God and all the angels and saints.

To embark upon marriage without learning marriage from God would be as foolhardy as piloting an aircraft without learning how to use it by consulting the aircraft’s creators. God is the author and Lord of marriage. His eternal son is the Groom, and the Church is his bride. You, by marriage, participate in this. As a room participates in sunlight, yet is not the sunlight itself, nor is all the sunlight emitted by the Sun in the room, so too, you participate in covenantal love by marriage, you aren’t love itself (that is God), nor is all the wholeness of marriage realized in your unique union, for infinite numbers of men and women join in marriage and for each the union is also unique. Learn from him every day, go to the Eucharist, read the scriptures, learn from the Church, and pray!

By “His endeavor,” I refer to the fact that all of the references I make to the covenant of Christ and the Church are really references to God’s plan of salvation for us sinful men! His endeavor is to enter into a covenant of love, like your marriage. It is his endeavor, much like a wish, because He who created man without man will not save man without man; in other words, God wishes us to be saved (an “endeavor”), but the results of his efforts to save us in his Love depend greatly on the import of human freedom. Hence, the spouse learns about God’s endeavor of covenantal and salvific love by entering into holy matrimony.

With elision, as in a hurry, I recapture not only Genesis, the beginning place to begin to understand what God wills for married couples. I also remember description of this verse of Genesis found in Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body Wednesday Audiences, where he describes this the first “Nuptial Song,” adding, “‘Bone of my bones’ can therefore be understood in the relational sense, as ‘being of my being.’ ‘Flesh of my flesh’ means that, though she has different physical characteristics, the woman has the same personality as the man possesses.” Person: the manifestation of the mystery of personhood through the flesh which requires sublimation, contemplation, prayer. The Pope overcomes any temptation to reduce the other to flesh and bones, for they are the flesh and bones of a person. So it is that man on earth, male and female, is a spiritual being made out of flesh, and this makes man unique in the whole order of the universe.

Love needs to be accepted and given. It is a grave obligation on all, that each person must experience love. It is impossible to love, unless love is experienced; and similarly, it is impossible to love God without knowing love. Love has to be humble accepted, not presumed, but with gratitude! And it requires correspondence if it is to be authentic. I included “sing” as reminiscent of the Song of Songs, a reminder of the revelation of Christ’s love for his Church even in the Old Testament, where the world was given only the figure without knowing the magnificent reality to come from the loving hands of the Father.

“Sing”: others hear when one sings. Your marriage isn’t a private matter between spouses. It has a role in the divine society of the Church, and in civil society as well. In the world and in the Church, your faithful marriage is a song all hear, a song full of catechesis and truth, a song to move men’s heart and soul. Finally, it is a song which you will share with your children, for they will rejoice in the love you have for one another.

Matrimonial love must be pure, in that it should never be mixed with any other man-woman love. Similar to a vow of celibacy, it is a renunciation of romantic love with all other persons of the opposite sex. Such love is steadfast and is not shaken, and the spouses can count on that love being there no matter what. The love on earth will be carried on in heaven through the communion of the saints. “Ever” is a foot of two long syllables (spondee), to stress the perpetuity and depth of marital love.

[1] Heb 4:12

[2] Rev. 19:7, 21:2.

[3] Mt. 19:8

[4] Eph 5:32.

[5] “You are not your own.” (1 Cor 6:19), “I am my beloved’s.” (Song 7:10)

[6] 1 Th 4:4.

[7] Jn 6:45.

[8] Gen 2:23.

[9] “My steadfast love shall not depart from you.” (Is 54:10)