I’d like to share that I’ve had the great joy of celebrating many, many, many weddings. Lots of couples … I’ve had the joy of presiding over their wedding celebration. I’d like to share with you one of my homilies. I can’t do a separate homily for each couple. It’s just impossible. I’ve got about 10 and rotate through the ten homilies, and this is one of them about the legacy of love.

I invite them and I’d like to invite you to go backwards in time. Do you mind? About six million years. Do you mind coming back with me about six million years? When God created the universe, and our Baltimore catechism reminds us, out of love. That God created out of love. He set universe in motion. He set the worlds spinning through the cosmos. He set it all in place for one particular reason, because he loves us and he loves humanity. He set humanity onto the world to multiply and to have dominion over the whole world. God created out of love billions of years ago.

Now, fast-forward in this legacy of love, fast-forward a little bit, and come with me 2,000 years ago. We heard this read in the second reading and also in the Gospel. 2,000 years ago, again, out of love, God sent to us his son for one very particular reason. To show us how much he loves us, so that that love may be complete and we might have everlasting life with God in the Kingdom of Paradise. The legacy of love continues 2,000 years ago when God broke into time and space and sent his only son, so that we might have everlasting life.

You see, the legacy of love continues. We think … I think as couples, sometimes that we love one another and it begins with these two coming together. Oh, no, no. This legacy of love has been going on for millennia and these couples step into this legacy in beautiful ways. So not only do we celebrate Jesus’s love, we also celebrate the love of family. Certainly the couple that comes before us, that couple comes to us from two dynamic families. And those families love these children, these adults, into being. Isn’t that true? Do you see how that couple participates in the whole legacy of love starting millennia ago, all the way through to the day of their marriage?

It’s true for not only married people. It’s true for single people, who live out their single life with great joy. It’s true for priests who participate in the legacy of love that God set in motion. It’s true for consecrated women and men. It’s true for all people. We all participate in this legacy of love that God set into motion many millennia ago, but came to its beautiful moment 2,000 years ago when Jesus was sent to us. The great gift that Jesus talks about in the Gospel today, the great gift that we all hope for, is not slavery. It’s not to be in slavery to God’s love, but to find freedom in God’s love and find freedom in our journey with Jesus. Certainly when a couple is 100% free to give themselves to each other, it’s a beautiful coming together.

Certainly we as Christians, as Catholics, when we love the Lord our God with our whole heart, we are free to journey with Jesus then. Not slaves to God’s love, but free. Let us live together in this legacy of love that God set forth. Let us live as free Christians, ready to offer our love back to our generous God the way Jesus shares it with us.