This year, the bishops of California are launching a new statewide initiative. Titled Radiant Love, it’s a call for Catholics to rediscover the beauty and goodness of marriage and the family. This focus is desperately needed today. Marriage rates are plummeting. Young people simply do not want to get married, like the previous generations of their parents and grandparents. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2021, 25% of 40 year olds have never been married. It’s all time high. That number was 16% percent in the early part of the 20th century. Among Catholics, the trend mirrors the wider society. In another study by Georgetown University, Catholics marriages dropped by a staggering 70% since 1969. This shocking collapse of marriage among our young people, who for various reasons, no longer see the value of marriage.. We need to do something about this as the Church. 

We all have family and friends in our lives that fall into this trend. I recall a heartfelt conversation with a young parishioner a few years ago. She confided in me that marriage scared her. She unfortunately came from a family where her earliest memories of her parents, aunts and uncles, was constantly fighting.  To be married in her impressionable young mind was one of pain and misery. She vowed to herself to never have “a marriage like that.” The only “healthy” marriage she remembered was her old grandmother in Mexico. Part of her hesitancy reflects the experience of many people listening to these words. If this congregation reflects an average American parish, many of us come from similar difficult situations that have left a bad taste in our mouths. 

How can we as a Church rediscover the wonder of marriage again? The answer lies in today’s Gospel passage. Jesus again is teaching us about the bodily reality of the “Bread that came down from Heaven.” He tells us, “For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” The Eucharist as we now call it is the answer to rediscover the beauty of marriage. When we enter into a relationship with someone, we make ourselves vulnerable to the other person. We put our hearts in their hands and ask them not to hurt us. To love, in other words, requires me to trust the other person. This love always comes with risk. There is no other way if we want to enter into communion with another person. In the Eucharist, Jesus makes himself vulnerable, just as a husband and wife do to another.  Our precious Lord allows himself to be consumed and handled by us. He literally places himself, body, blood, soul and divinity into our hands. What will do with such an immense responsibility? We must respond in kind. We must love one another as Christ loved us. This, my friends, is the secret to reclaiming the beauty of marriage in our modern day. Treat your spouse like Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, who is, afterall, the divine source of love itself. But you don’t need to genuflect in front of them. That would be weird.