thepath2eternity

My daughter got married one month ago today. It was so achingly beautiful, as I know many mothers would say; one of those milestone moments that truly feels etched into my soul.

There is one picture from that day that I keep coming back to more than all the others. It captures a truth so universal that it takes me beyond our personal family moment deep into the gift of this Holy Sacrament.

“What God has joined together, let no man separate.” ~Mark 10:9

At the core of our being, we long for union. We grasp for it in all of our relationships, from the simplest form of wanting others to agree with us to the most complex and sometimes tangled roots of family dynamics. We are always searching for a connection that completes and satisfies our souls.

We try from a young age to prove we can do life ourselves. We cannot. The facts remain that we were made for some form of community.

We try again from a more mature age to prove we can do life ourselves. Even if conceding on some level that it does take a village, we sort through them all and float in and out of various communities and relationships and it is still not quite enough.

There is only one way to obtain complete union that will satisfy the soul. It begins when humans give their own will back to God which He then channels through us into service and love of others.

Whether the vocation is marriage or religious life, all are gathered around the same and only path of eternal union…the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Christianity is more than just saying “I love you.” It’s a commitment of the deepest form of sacrificial love.

“Till death do us part.”

But even death only parts us from our current understanding and experience of human union. As the mother over an empty nest, I can attest that death is not the only lesson in separation. And marriage, while it nears the highest form of practice, is not the only lesson in union.

Yet, the wedding of two souls who know Christ puts me in deep awe of how He has created us to love. It is not her way or his way; they have left that behind to find each other in God’s way. This is true for all of us who want to be together forever…we simply must hold firm to Jesus Christ.

These two hold a Truth between them that I cannot stop staring at, and not just because I am her mother. They hold the key to True Love…freely willed sacrifice.

A bride and groom standing at the brink of forever are not the only ones who must work through this reality. But, oh, how achingly beautifully they capture it and inspire me to chase it. Every day, working to join to Him and with Him and in Him and through Him…willingly living according to the way He created us to abundantly live.

For what God has joined together, no one can separate. Ever.