This weekend I have the honor of officiating my best friend's wedding. We have been friends our whole lives and being able to help her and her (almost) husband celebrate their love is priceless.
We both grew up in the Church and in religious families. We've both made all of the sacraments the church and life have allowed us to make so far..and most of them we've done together. So it makes sense to do this one together too.
I have strong feelings about the gatekeeping around sacraments. Sacraments are celebrations of important moments in our life and we make these commitments alongside the community that has formed and shaped us.
Sacrament is about relationship. The strong, confident, certain love of my friend and her fiance is one of the most beautiful I've seen and I have had the privilege to watch it grow over the last ten years.
It is fitting, I think, that the Gospel this weekend is about the Wedding at Cana. Jesus and his mother are wedding guests in this story. It isn't a story of Jesus officiating the sacrament, but one of him being in community with his family and friends. And what a sacrament true friendship is.
These last two weeks as wedding details were finalized and speeches written and table decorations crafted, I began to wonder why we don't have a sacrament that celebrates friendship. Catholics love ritualizing important things and what is more important than the people that have stood beside you forever?
This short post is less of a reflection then maybe, and more of a call for us to keep recognizing the everyday sacraments in our lives, and to ritualize them in ways that express their meaning and significance.
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