The Impact of a Wedding...

“We are going to have a wedding in the chapel!” 

With these words, Cynthia Bach, Spiritual Care Advocate for St. Vincent de Paul, announced to me that two residents of the Central Arizona Shelter Service (CASS), had asked to be married. She also informed me that the couple needed a marriage license.

In a few days I met the young couple, Richard and Carol (names changed). We talked about their plans for their wedding. Having no income, they did not know how they could afford the $83 cost of a marriage license. I said to them that I would make sure they would have the money for the license. 

The next day I met them in the office to give them the money order and to help them fill out the marriage license application which I had printed off the County Clerk’s website. 

Meanwhile Cynthia and I met with the couple and worked out the details of the ceremony. Cynthia wanted to ensure the day would be special for them. The bride brought her dress to the meeting. Cynthia said she would find a veil, shoes, get a wedding cake and flowers for the occasion. 

I worked on the order of the service and prepared the ceremony. 

It was a nervous couple and friends who joined us in the Virginia G. Piper Chapel at St. Vincent de Paul building on the Human Service Campus. 

I was joined by a good friend of the couple to welcome the couple and their party at the altar. He arranged the music to be played for the bridal march to be played over his MP3 player and a Bluetooth speaker. The couple exchanged their vows and rings. The groom’s service dog served as the ringbearer. 

With much applause and celebrative cheers, the couple were pronounced husband and wife. 

In the lobby area, the couple danced their first dance. 

The bridal party and guests moved into the dining room for their meal. Cake was served by volunteers of St. Vincent de Paul.

A wedding is a wedding. Well, maybe not. The wedding ceremony brought a greater awareness of the presence of the chaplaincy to the campus.

On Sunday as I walked through the campus, many people who frequent the Human Service Campus recognized me as the chaplain who performed the ceremony. Many of the guests of the couple as well as the couple themselves attended the worship service. 

A prayer for today....

"My great God, you know all that is in the universe, because you yourself have made it. It is the very work of your hands. You are omniscient, because you are omnicreative. You know each part, however minute, as perfectly as you know the whole. You know mind as perfectly as you know matter. You know the thoughts and purposes of every soul as perfectly as if there were no other soul in the whole of your creation. You know me through and through; all my present, past, and future are before you as one whole. You see all those delicate and evanescent motions of my thought which altogether escape myself. You can trace every act, whether deed or thought, to its origin and can follow it into its whole growth and consequences. You know how it will be with me at the end; you have before you that hour when I shall come to you to be judged. How awful is the prospect of finding myself in the presence of my judge! Yet, O Lord, I would not that you should not know me. It is my greatest stay to know that you read my heart. Oh, give me more of that openhearted sincerity which I have desired. Keep me ever from being afraid of your eye, from the inward consciousness that I am not honestly trying to please you. Teach me to love you more, and then I shall be at peace, without any fear of you at all."

— Bl. John Henry Newman, Everyday Meditations, p.150

Change is a Daily Process

"Among the various indications that make the holiness of God known to men, the most convincing sign is the holiness of men, who are sanctified by the divine indwelling . . . In teaching us the words, ‘hallowed be Thy name,’ our Lord also bids us, when we pray, to ask that God may be glorified by our lives. The sense of the prayer is this: ‘Grant us so to live, that all men may glorify Thee through us.’ God is sanctified or hallowed in the minds of other men through us, to the extent that we are sanctified by Him. Hence when we say: ‘hallowed be Thy name,’ we pray, as Cyprian remarks, that God’s name may be hallowed in us.  Following the lead of Christ, who says: ‘Be holy, because I am holy,’ we beg that we, who have been sanctified in Baptism, may persevere in the state in which we began. Furthermore we pray daily to be sanctified in order that we, who daily fall, may wash away our sins by a constant process of purification."

— St. Thomas Aquinas,