This week’s homily was given to the archdiocesan permanent diaconate aspirants and their families during their weekend of formation.
Marriage and the end of the world… the classic combination. While this thought may create some light-hearted jokes among spouses, our readings today take this connection very seriously. As beautiful as marriage is, it’s more of a “coming attraction” preview of not just the end of this world, but the beginning of life in the new world to come.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus says that, in heaven, people “neither marry nor are given in marriage.” If marriage is a holy sacrament, why is there no marriage in heaven? Well, there is. Now, I’m not contradicting Jesus here. In heaven there is marriage, but there’s just one marriage. All of us will be “married” to God. As intimate as the connection is between husband and wife on earth, this is only a sign of the intimacy that we will have with God in heaven.
God wants to marry us. That’s the story of the entire Bible in a nutshell. In this world, our love is limited. But in heaven, our love with be perfected. It’s not that we won’t know our earthly spouse(s) in heaven; it’s just that we will be able to know and love everyone who ever lived. This thought was far from the mind of those questioning Jesus in the Gospel and I fear that it is often far from our minds as well.
If we know that we are meant to live forever in marital intimacy with God and all our brothers and sisters, then we ought to ask ourselves how we’re doing right now with these relationships. Maybe your relationship with God needs a second honeymoon right now. Marriage takes effort on our part. Scripture refers to the end of the world as “the consummation of the ages.” If you understand that we are made for marriage with God, then death and the end of this world is indeed “a consummation devoutly to be wished.”