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Cien Años de Amor/One Hundred Years of Love
Deacon Mike Meyer / Saturday, June 11, 2022 / Categories: Blog, Homilies

Cien Años de Amor/One Hundred Years of Love

          One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien Años de Soledad) is an epic tale of the Buendía family that spans one hundred turbulent years of Latin American history. Penned by Nobel Prize-winning Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez, the novel is set in the fictional, isolated town of Macondo, founded by the family patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía. As the title suggests, the book’s dominant theme is solitude. So much so that the word solitude appears on nearly every page of the book, and each member of the seven Buendía generations depicted in the novel displays a particular type of solitude—loneliness, seclusion, inner coldness, and imprisonment. Why do they choose solitude? They clearly haven’t read the scripture passages that Tina and Brian have chosen for us today.

          In our first reading from Genesis, we learn that in his infinite wisdom, God determined that “[i]t is not good for man to be alone.”  So God created woman, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, to be man’s lifelong companion and partner. In our Gospel passage, Jesus

turns to the very same Genesis story to explain God’s original will for humankind before the fall from grace,[1] telling us that from the beginning of time, God intended for man and woman to come together in marriage so they wouldn’t be alone. Jesus returns to the beginning to show us that it’s “only by rediscovering God’s original plan that we can find the answer to our longing for relationships of lasting, authentic love.”[2]

          Our longing for relationship, companionship, and communion, then, is a longing for God’s love, which knows no solitude. We can’t sit with it alone; it always joins us to another. This love, celebrated so eloquently by Saint Paul in our second reading, “comes from God, claims us, and through us reaches out to others.”[3] Tina and Brian will publicly exchange the love they receive from God when they join in Holy Matrimony today, but God’s love doesn’t stop there. Love is dynamic, not static. Like the energy that’s released in the fusion of two atoms, God’s love will proceed from you, now as a couple, out into our broken world. As husband and wife, you’re like a fighter squadron armed with love, the most powerful weapon known to mankind, or as Saint Paul says, the most excellent way.

          How do a girl from Cali Colombia and a boy from Pittstown, NJ find each other? How does a man who marvels at the wonders of God’s creation from the cockpit of a P-8 and a woman who studies the intricacies of God’s handiwork through the lens of a microscope meet? Through the Hinge dating app, apparently, which Tina and Brian tell me is the “hip” dating app. But after sharing that their respective favorite hobbies are knitting and birdwatching, I have my doubts. Brian and Tina, Hinge may have brought you together, but God’s love will keep you together. God’s love bears all things, like cringy TV shows and impulsive spending. God’s love believes all things, like Hinge is a hip dating app. God’s love endures all things, like stubbornness, anxiety, knitting and birdwatching, and even frustrating marriage prep bureaucracy. The love that joins you today in an indissoluble union will strengthen you and support you in good times and in bad, en la salud y en la enfermedad. How? El amor nunca pasará. Love never fails.

          Tina and Brian, God has blessed me with the opportunity to prepare you for this big day, and you’ve graciously extended God’s love to me as we slogged through more paperwork than one could imagine a Church could invent. I thank you, and I thank God for that blessing. Now, I know that you refuse to see yourselves as “old souls,” but perhaps I can help you achieve greater self-acceptance by sharing that there is one thing more beautiful than young love. It’s old love. It’s an old man and an old woman finishing their life’s journey together—their hands gnarled but still clasped; their faces wrinkled but still radiant; their hearts physically tired, but still strong with devotion for one another. With the goal of old love in your hearts, you’ll never be alone. So Tina and Brian, your family, your friends, and your Church wish you cien años de amor, one hundred years of love.

 

[1] John R, Donahue, S.J., Daniel J. Harrington, S.J., Sacra Pagina, vol. 2, “The Gospel of Mark” (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2002) p. 294.

[2] Mary Healy, The Gospel of Mark, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 199.

[3] J. Paul Sampley, “ The First Letter to the Corinthians,” The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 10 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002), 957.

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