the Lord be with you a reading from the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew when Jesus saw the crowds he went up the mountain and after it sat down his disciples came to him and he began to teach them saying blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure of heart,
for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness. For the earth is the kingdom of heaven, and blessed are you when they insult you, incurs you, and utter every kind of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad.
For your reward in heaven will be great. The gospel of the Lord. Please be seated. There are no coincidences in God. And as it's anything but random,
that God will join you, Jason Will, in one flesh for the rest of your life today on January 4th. You chose this date because you wanted to wed at a fitting time during Christmas break. But God had something more in mind. He knew that every wedding anniversary you will celebrate, your first, your tenth, your silver, your golden, hopefully your platinum, will take place on January 4th.
the Feast of an American Saint, Elizabeth Ann Seton. On your upcoming anniversaries, besides flowers, exchanged gifts, and a great meal, I hope that you'll come to Mass with the children with whom we pray God will bless you, to thank him for the gift of your marriage, to receive his blessing, and renew before him your commitment to each other and to him. And each year as you come,
except on Sundays when we'll celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany on January 4th of it falls that day. The church in the United States will celebrate the liturgical memorial of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, who is not only one of the presently just 11 American saints, but the only one who was married.
The church remembers, and Elizabeth Ann Seton, of course, is the first native-born American to be raised to the altars, is the founder of the first Catholic school for girls, the initiator of the American Catholic school system, and the founders of the first American religious order, the Sisters of Charity. Before she was a religious, however, before she was even Catholic, she was the wife for nine years of William McGee's Seton,
The mother of five children in the foster mom of six of William's younger siblings. She was a happy wife. At the time of the American founding, most marriages took place among social classes and professions in order to strengthen the professional standing and connection of their respective families of origin. She came from a medical family. Her father was the first professor of anatomy at a place called Columbia.
as well as the first New York Health Officer or Commissioner, and she was expected to marry a doctor. Will, like his father, was a wealthy businessman down near Wall Street in the import business and was similarly expected to marry someone from a mercantile family. The fact that they married, she at 19, he at 25, was a real sign at the time that they were marrying out of love
that they loved each other more than their families of origin and social convention. Elizabeth, called Betsy by her family and Eliza by Will, regarded her husband as my beloved treasure. Will, who traveled extensively for work, never journeyed without her portrait. Marrying at the very beginning of George Washington's second term, they had a happy bond.
Will's literally playing the violin, including the first Strata various ever brought to the United States, and Eliza's playing the piano with their music a fitting symbol of their loving marital harmony. But their marriage wasn't easy. Because of an international financial crisis beyond Will's control, his business lost most of its money.
He eventually added a clear bankruptcy. They needed to move and dramatically downsize their home, and together they needed to try to build their livelihood anew. Elizabeth, in the midst of homeschooling the many children, health will run the merchant house assisting him with sundry types of paperwork and correspondence. Throughout the good times and bad, sickness and health, prosperity and poverty. Elizabeth found God in her marriage.
saying about Will, where he is, is my present home, and our God is everywhere. Seven years into their marriage, Will came down with tuberculosis and suffered terribly for two years as Elizabeth cared for him. Eventually, doctors advised him to travel to Levorno, Italy in the hopes of an easier situation for his lungs.
There was quarantine for 25 days in a damn stone quarantine house in the harbor where a situation only got worse. A few days after he was released, he died. Elizabeth stayed close to him until the end. And rather than assisting him to stave off death, helped him to get ready to enter into eternal life.
She was at the time an Episcopalian, the granddaughter of a Church of England priest, and far more devout than her husband. She helped him, however, to realize that the life they had lovingly made together was not his real home, and taught him to pray not for recovery, but for salvation. As Will struggled with the prospect of his upcoming judgment, Elizabeth urged him to trust in God's mercy. She wrote her sister-in-law,
My William often asked me if I felt assured that he would be accepted and pardoned. I always tried to convince him that we're the soul was so humble and sincere as his. And submission of God's will so uniform as his had been throughout his trial that it became sinful to doubt one moment of his reception to the merciful merits of his redeemer. She fulfilled the purpose of her marriage in his regard.
and helped him long for, and she prayed, enter the eternal wedding banquet, something for which she would later pray with faithful spousal insistence after he died. She added in the letter to her sister-in-law something that points to an important spiritual truth for couples, for family members, for all of us. Willie's heart seemed to be nearer to me for being nearer to his God.
The closer we are to God, the closer we are to those we love. St. Elizabeth Seton's marriage teaches us in a powerful and beautiful way that Christian matrimony is ultimately about holiness, eternal happiness, and heaven. It's about the sanctification of the spouses and the procreation, education, and sanctification of children.
Marriage like every sacrament is a gift from God to help us enter into intimate communion with Him, to submit with trust and love to His will, and to help us each grow nearer to God until, by God's mercy, we enter into eternal communion with Him. Every January 4th, from this point onward, you'll be able to ponder Will and Jace, the marriage of Will and Elijah,
and reflect on how they helped each other to become holy. Every anniversary you will be able to meditate on how marriage is meant to help spouse and their children not just remain faithful, but to become saints. Every anniversary you will be one year closer to eternity and of the grace to stoke your desires to help each other come to the eternal nuptial feast. The readings you've chosen for today
Help you and all of us focus on how the vocation of marriage is indeed a vocation to holiness. You're not just getting married today. You're making a commitment will to do everything you can to make her the first St. Jase in the history of the church. And you, Jase, are taking on the commitment to make him one more St. Joel Yeymus. The Book of Proverbs reminds us
that a worthy wife is far more valuable than pearls, that the husband who entrusts his heart to her has an unfailing prize, because she'll bring him good all the days of her life. The worth of such a wife, the sacred author, goes on to describe. He's not found in her charm or physical beauty, but in her fear of the Lord, in her faith. This was certainly true of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, but will, you have told me how in
You feel you have found a treasure more valuable than all the jewelry on the planet, that Jason's worth is not in the beauty that all of us behold with you today, but in her faith, the faith you say has helped you draw much closer to God and therefore much closer to her. You describe her in marriage preparation, how she stimulates you by the way she puts that faith into action.
Jase, you told me, has inspired me to take my faith more seriously. Although I grew up Catholic, I was away from the church for a while. Seeing how she put serious time, thought, and effort into strengthening her relationship with God helped me to do the same, which has had a dramatic impact on my life. In addition to faith, she's inspired me to be more confident in my identity as a Catholic, as a thinker, and as a Robinson.
An extension of this has been an inspiration to be present, to enjoy life, and to be fully engaged in whatever is in front of me. Jace is full of life, and her faith and vivacity inspires me every day. Jace, you've said to me in marriage preparation that you know that the treasure, Proverbs describes, is not one-sided, that in will,
You've found a man who is strong, smart, handsome, funny, and God-fearing. He told me, I genuinely feel Will makes me better every day through the kindness and selflessness he shows me and everyone else. We pray each night on the phone and before meals and try to pray together as much as we can. When I'm having a bad day or an anxious moment to imagine that you, Jakes,
I know Will is likely going to ask me if I prayed today. When I tell him I haven't, he's probably going to tell me to stop whatever I'm doing and offer it up to God. He pushes me to strengthen my relationship with God, to deepen my faith and resolve, to surrender to his will. He genuinely desires a holy life for me. Like San Elizabeth Seton before you.
You're both trying to live by the advice St. Paul gives you and all Christian couples in the second reading you chose for today. The Apostle told the first Christians in Rome, let your love be sincere. Sincerely, sincerity doesn't mean just from the heart. It means truthful, pure, unmixed and unadulterated, free from pretense and falsehood.
That's the type of love so many sorrow and Mr. and Mrs. Seton. That's the type of love God wants everyone to find in the soon to be Mr. and Mrs. Robinson. St. Paul gives you a list of behaviors to help you keep your love for each other as sincere as Christ's love for you. To love sincerely stresses means to hate what's evil and hold what's good.
to care for each other with mutual affection, to anticipate each other in showing honor. The love and honor you will publicly profess in a few minutes you wish to give to each other for the rest of your life, to help each other to be fervent and zealous and serve in the Lord, to rejoice together in the whole Christ places in you even on those days you might be tempted to complain, to endure an affliction even in the midst of sorrows and contradictions that inevitably accompany every marriage.
to persevere in prayer, knowing that God's listening and responding, to have the same high regard for each other, never looking down on each other, but always concerned for what's noble, to live at peace to the extent possible, never letting the sun go down in your anger and striving to abide together with the Prince of Peace, even after occasional quarrels. Christ wants to praise you for the sincerity of your love
in speech and in behavior. You praise the sincerity of each other's love for you effusively during our delightful marriage preparation meetings. Chase, you told me, I love Will's goodness and his total self-giving. He's selfless with his time and energy in a way that amazes me. He's an incredible friend and not just to me. He's loyal and forgiving.
At times, mine bogglingly so. He's immune to anger and inspires me to let things go. To assume the best in people and to forgive. He's silly and funny and always, always, always, always. You can tell what's coming is really important to you. Always, always, always fills up my water bottle if I ask. Even if he doesn't want to.
He's always trying to show up more to those he loves. He never makes me feel annoying even if I'm being very annoying. He shows his love through actions. Whenever I ask anything of him, the answer is almost always yes. He does this even if he doesn't have the time or doesn't know how. He gives really good hugs when I need them. And even when I don't,
and is always trying to be more vocal and transparent. He also shows his love by how seriously he takes our discussions whenever we have a conflict. He cares about getting to the root of whatever issue we're having and ensuring we have the systems in place not to recidivate. This means he's not going to say, sorry, unless he actually believes the situation warrants it. He's not going to lie to get out of a tough conversation.
That's what sincere love means. It's truthful. Well, you told me you are so grateful as well for Jesus and sincere love for you and for others. You stated, Jase is as thoughtful as she is confident. She shows this through things like notes she writes me or the things she remembers. She shows through sacrificing small things every day, like taking the smaller cup of coffee if they're unequal.
making the hike down to my apartment because I've had a long week or being patient with me when I'm certainly annoying her after a long day of work. She's never failed to support me. She's always put thought into our relationship, doing the legwork to ensure we're communicating and remaining connected. She cares for me in countless ways. Her cooking is something that's never required but always puts warmth not just in my belly but my heart.
her effort to keep my life organized has saved me on complex occasions. St. Paul summons to sincere love, however, is not the only connection between today's second reading. In the marital bond, God will form in you in just a few minutes. At the beginning of today's passage, the apostle urges you by the mercies of God to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.
In Greek, the text is even clearer. When St. Paul said that the only worship that makes sense that's logical is to give everything to offer your bodies, to make your life a commentary on the words of consecration. For you to be capable of such an exchange of self-gifts and love the Apostle tells you, do not conform yourselves to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that you may discern
What is the will of God? What's good and pleasing and perfect? Today, Jesus wants to give you the greatest help, transform your mind as you enter into this great sacrament of marriage. He wants to help you, in fact, put on his own mind to look at things from his perspective. No longer viewing things the way everyone else in this age does, but the way he does, the way things really are.
That's why it's so inspiring that you chose the gospel you did for this nuptial mass. There's no passage in sacred scripture more counter-cultural than the way Jesus began the Sermon of the Mount. The Beatitudes Jesus overturns earthly expectations and reveals to us the path to happiness, holiness and heaven. This is the way St. Elizabeth the Uncedent lives.
and God is calling each of you to help each other live. In a fanatophobic age, struggling to understand the relationship of death to life, Jesus promises that those who love enough to mourn will indeed experience great comfort through the truths of faith and the fact of His own triumph. That's what we see in St. Elizabeth when will her husband die?
In a world that seeks after money, that places its faith, hope and love and material possessions, and in things that can be bought. Jesus tells us that the truly blessed are those who are in poor in spirit, who treasure his kingdom above everything. In an epic that relies on force, when people and leaders often bully their way to power and try to overpower, those who have made themselves enemies.
Jesus tells us that real happiness comes from being meek, from making peace, and from being merciful. In a world addicted to the lust of the flesh leading to so many broken hearts, lives, and families, Jesus proclaims the important security of heart which sees God in others and references and loves both Him and them. At a time in which a globalized indifference to others has gone viral,
Jesus says that the path to happiness is compassion through hungering and thirsting for justice and through the perfection of holiness that's charity. And in an era when people crave publicity, idolize celebrities, and yearn for social media likes, influence, and popularity, Jesus says we will be blessed rather when we're insulted, persecuted, and
because of our love for infidelity to him. These are not easy words. The reality to which they point is likewise difficult to live. It's easy to see why the ways of the world are so popular and the beatitudes so uncommon. But they are the path that Jesus himself lived. They are the way San Elizabeth and Seton live.
and they are the way Jesus calls you to live. They indicate how not to be conformed to this age, to be transformed by the renewal of your mind so that you may discern what is God's will, what's good, pleasing and perfect, what leads in fact to sincere love. In an age in which many doubt of the path Jesus indicates is the way to true and lasting happen in this world and forever, you are called in your marriage.
Just like San Elizabeth Ann Seton was in herds, to become the living proof of Jesus' wisdom, and to help you in this Christian mission you are assuming today. Jesus is going to give you the greatest gift of all, himself. This is the greatest lesson San Elizabeth Ann Seton teaches us. After her husband Will died in Italy,
She and her daughter, Anna Maria, stayed for a few months there. They couldn't get a boat back. Elizabeth became exposed to the Catholic teaching on the Holy Eucharist, and she began to yearn for Jesus. She wrote to her sister-in-law, how happy we would be if we believe what these dear Catholics believe that they possess God in the Eucharist.
And he remains in their churches and is carried to them when they're sick. A couple of weeks later, she wrote that when she happened upon a Eucharistic procession, I fell on my knees without thinking when the Blessed Sacrament passed by and cried out in agony to God to bless me if he were there.
that my whole soul desired only Him, that agonizing prayer was heard. She would come to believe what we dear Catholics believe. She would be blessed by having her whole soul desire, Jesus. About a year later at St. Peter's Church in Lower Manhattan,
She would become Catholic and receive him in Holy Communion. She counted down the days to her first communion. The night before she would receive him for the first time, she could barely sleep. When she did receive him finally, she wrote to a friend, it seemed to me my king had come to take his throne in me. At last, she emphasized,
God is mine and I am his. She became one of the Catholic Church's greatest Eucharistic converts and one of our greatest Eucharistic saints. Because of her Eucharistic love and witness last summer, as you know, she was selected as the patroness of the Eastern route of the National Eucharistic pilgrimage as for 65 days, six permanent pilgrims,
including Marina Frateroli, here present at this mass whom you know from Columbia Law School, and I accompany Jesus through the streets from New Haven, Connecticut to Indianapolis, Indiana, so that others, like St. Elizabeth, could cry out for Jesus' blessing, and we prayed, follow her on the path of Eucharistic conversion and holiness. When we were in Manhattan,
both of you joined Jesus in us on that holy track. Today, you continue that Eucharistic pilgrimage as the Eucharistic Lord Jesus comes here to meet you, to bless you, to unite you, to possess you and you him to renew not just your mind,
But your heart, your soul, your bodily strength, your entire life, and to lead you for the rest of your days on the Eucharistic procession of Christian life. Jase, you told me in fatticle and marriage preparation, God put will in me in each other's lives and held us through each and every turn to get to this moment.
Indeed, God has come today to fulfill what He began in you when you met in the eighth grade at Oak Ridge and advanced at your high school senior prom. Good choice. Well, during your college years, your journeys in Europe and over the last year and a half in New York City. And as God comes here to join you for the rest of your life in one flash, St. Elizabeth, the end seat in his doubtless praying for you.
that you may experience the joy she had in her marriage and even more, as you, Will and Chase, will be able to share in what Will and Eliza were not able to do on earth. The fulfillment of Jesus' saving will is He gives you His body and blood and holy communion. It's here at Mass by means of His sublime self-gift.
that He will help you become a worthy wife and husband. It's here that He will regularly renew your minds and help you to conform yourself to Him and not to the world. It's here where He will strengthen you to love each other sincerely, to become a couple of the Beatitudes, and to learn how, as we sang in today's song, to bless the Lord at all times. It's here, today,
every January 4th hereafter, and in fact, each time you come to holy man, that you, like St. Elizabeth, will ultimately come to possess God, and he you, so that with self-mastery you will be able to echo his words to each other.
This is my body. This is my blood. This is my heart, my hands, my feet, my sweat, my bones, my everything and all given out of love for you. Conscious, as she grasped, that the nearer you are to God, and you can never become nearer to Him than in Holy Communion, that the nearer you are to God,
the nearer you will be in love to each other. May God was put you in each other's lives and held you close through each and every turn to get you to this place, this moment. Bless you all the days in the Eucharistic pilgrimage of your married life and through you and your holy love for each other and for him. Bless us all.
by inspiring us to join you all the way to that pilgrimage's fulfillment where St. Elizabeth the Unseaten waits us at the eternal nuptial banquet. This is our faith. This is the faith of the church. How proud we are to profess it in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
