Witness homosexual love

Homily delivered in Washington (USA) in the early 1990s by a Catholic priest during a union ceremony for a gay couple, freely translated by Fabio

This is an occasion of great joy. We gather to witness the exchange of vows between Michael and Dennis in which they will solemnly pledge to love, comfort, honor, and remain faithful to each other for the rest of their lives. This is an occasion of great joy first and foremost for Michael and Dennis, as well as for their families and friends.
It is also an occasion of great joy for the Church, especially for Dignity, a faith community in the Catholic tradition made up of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, their families and friends.

Probably almost all of you have seen a man and a woman united together in a union that the Church blesses and considers holy. But few of you, I imagine, have had the opportunity to witness an exchange of vows between people of the same gender and a blessing of their union.

This happens to me too, to be honest. While I have attended and officiated at dozens of heterosexual wedding ceremonies, this is the first time I have attended and officiated at a ceremony for a same-sex couple. However, what we come together to celebrate today is nothing extraordinary or unprecedented.

There is nothing extraordinary, really, about two people choosing to get married. Most of us grew up expecting to get married one day, to share our lives with someone in times of joy, challenge, difficulty and pain – a partner with whom we can create a home, a place of safety. and comfortable where we can feel at ease and where we can welcome our best friends.

Almost everyone seems to want to get married. The desire to get married is an expression of the desire to be a complete person which, as we normally think, means finding someone to love and be loved by and, simply, taking one's place in a couple, in a family, alongside the others couples and families.

As far as they're concerned, Dennis and Mike fit into this picture. In my seventeen years of ministry, I have officiated, as I mentioned earlier, at many weddings and have worked with heterosexual couples in preparation for their marriage. What I've found from working with Dennis and Mike is that it's the same as working with any other couple.

They are attracted to each other, they have fallen in love and want to stay together for the rest of their lives. They experience the same fundamental challenges and hopes as heterosexual couples. And they seek support and advice from friends, family and church.

This year has been one of the biggest moments of growth for Mike and Dennis – they bought a house and prepared for this ceremony – and they have already sufficiently experienced the normal hustle and bustle that surrounds these activities.

But their love and commitment is evident and I would expect that next year will be a quieter time to savor love and life together. So, in a way, this is quite ordinary. As it should be. How society and the institutional church should just let it be!

But all of us gathered here know that there is also something quite extraordinary about being here at this celebration. There's a reason why most of us have never before been to a ceremony celebrating the union of love between two people of the same gender, even though about ten percent of the population is gay. or lesbian.

It's because gays and lesbians have long been oppressed. As they grew up, their desire to get married was generally repressed, since they did not even dare to say who they really were. […] Furthermore, we gather for this ceremony not in a Catholic church, although Mike and Dennis are Catholic, but in St. Mark's Episcopal Church. This is because the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington does not allow Dignity to gather in Catholic churches to celebrate a same-sex union.

We are grateful to St. Mark's and St. Margaret's Episcopal Churches, where 400 to 500 of us gather for Sunday Mass each week. Some of us may have noticed that my name and the name of the concelebrant do not appear in the program. Even this small detail highlights the extraordinary nature of this occasion.

We take a risk by being here. Priests who associate with Dignity take risks simply to be here. Why then do we do it? For myself, I can say that I fear more the consequences, for myself and for our society, of remaining silent in the face of oppression than of speaking the truth.
This Gospel passage, which is taken from the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, says it clearly: we are the light of the world. We are called, first of all, to let our light shine.

The time has come for firmness against the fear, ignorance and oppression that keeps gays in silence, in terror and in hiding and it is time to announce to the church and to the world that, yes, here too there is love and life and good.
Here too there are gifts and talents and resources for our communities. Here too, there is the Holy Spirit. Here are your sons, your daughters, your brothers and your sisters. Let their light shine on everyone.

Later in the mass, after the prayer to the Lord, the concelebrant will bless Dennis and Mike, using the words of a 12th century text. That text is a translation of one of hundreds of texts that John Boswell, a medieval historian at Yale University, discovered during several years of research.
Professor Boswell has discovered something that many would find quite extraordinary, namely that there is a Catholic text for same-sex marriage ceremonies and that such ceremonies have been performed in churches in Europe, including in Rome, for over 1500 years. […]

Heterosexual marriage was, in ancient Rome, first of all a civil and family event that identified marriage with a contract between families - the father gave his daughter to a man who took her into his possession as his wife. These were precisely the terms that were used when talking about marriage and this is reflected in the traditional wedding rite in which the groom waits at the altar for the bride accompanied by her father.

These arrangements existed primarily to safeguard property and maintain the family's inheritance. Marriages were frequently arranged by parents or authorities. Marriage for love was rare. At a certain point, starting from the 11th and 12th centuries, heterosexual marriage was celebrated as a church ceremony, first outside and later inside the place of worship, and only at that time did it begin to be considered a sacrament.

Marriages between people of the same sex, however, were celebrated in the Christian Churches starting from the 4th century. in fact, two saints, Sergius and Bacchus, who suffered martyrdom, are called, in some texts, "erostai", that is, lovers. They were a couple and were recognized as a couple.
Bacchus, who died first, appeared to Sergius, who was suffering from torture, encouraging him to remain strong and full of faith until the end because he, Bacchus, was the reward that awaited him in the afterlife.

These Roman martyrs are cited as an ideal in the same-sex marriage rite. […] the emphasis here was on an ideal of interpersonal love as a means of spiritual growth that looks to the life to come, to the heavenly Jerusalem, where everything will be based on love.

This historical background serves, I think, to point the way to reclaiming a vital part in our Christian tradition. The celebration of the holy union between people of the same gender, if on the one hand it is not familiar to the experience of most of us, on the other hand it is not new. Find space in the life of the church.

Furthermore, it has a gift to offer us because it provides us with testimony to the ideal of interpersonal love as a spiritual good in itself. While this occasion is full of joy, as we find ourselves celebrating the mutual love of these two boys, I cannot, however, forget the oppression and fear that have afflicted gays and lesbians for many centuries.

While on the one hand the church has become more tolerant towards gays than people say, there has been real persecution against them in the past, starting from the 13th century.
Since then and for a long time, our brothers have often been arrested, tortured and killed. For many centuries, we were considered mentally ill, until the associations of American psychiatrists and psychologists in the 1970s removed this label, having become clear that all this reflected a social prejudice and without scientific basis.[…]

There are many who say: “I am a tolerant person. I have nothing against gays and lesbians, as long as they remain silent and do not show their sexual orientation or ask for special rights."
Well, my friends, silence is our worst enemy. It is precisely this silence that has prevented gays from enjoying the normality of finding a life partner and forming a couple with the support and recognition of families, friends, colleagues, the church and society.

But we are living in a historical moment, a moment in which gays are no longer silent; a time when many like Mike and Dennis are choosing to let their love shine on everyone. This is not a display or demand for rights that are not available to others, it is simply taking one's rightful place in society. And the more they follow their example, as will inevitably be the case, the less extraordinary this will become.

Twenty-five, fifty, one hundred years from now, when friends and families gather for same-sex wedding ceremonies, it will no longer be the first time many have attended.
Dennis and Mike: God give you the strength to remain faithful and love each other with the love you find in your hearts today. You are a sign for all of us, a sign of the primacy and power of love, a sign of courage and a sign of hope. […]

And while the darkness of ignorance and bigotry continues to surround us, may the sweet light of your love, experienced in everyday life, step by step, be a sure sign that the darkness will not prevail. God give you courage and grace and many years to live together.

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* This homily was delivered in Washington (USA) in the early 1990s by an American Catholic priest during a religious union ceremony for a gay couple. We believe that the serene words of this priest will be able to open hearts and help us remember that "while the darkness of ignorance and bigotry continues to surround us, the sweet light of your love, lived in everyday life, step by step, let it be a sure sign that the darkness will not prevail.”

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Original text: “In Celebration of Ordinary Life”. A homily given by a priest celebrating a holy union