{"id":3220,"date":"2016-07-03T07:46:36","date_gmt":"2016-07-03T14:46:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/?p=3220"},"modified":"2016-10-05T19:03:34","modified_gmt":"2016-10-06T02:03:34","slug":"castles-in-the-air-a-wedding-homily-for-my-son-and-his-bride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/castles-in-the-air-a-wedding-homily-for-my-son-and-his-bride","title":{"rendered":"Castles in the Air: A Wedding Homily for My Son and His Bride"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ryan

Ryan and Teresa Senger<\/p><\/div>\n

Yesterday I had the great honor to officiate the wedding of my son, Ryan, and his wife Teresa. Here is the homily from that ceremony:<\/em><\/p>\n

Brenda and I have had the best time
\nwatching Ryan and Teresa get ready for this day,
\nand we\u2019ve enjoyed getting ready for it ourselves.<\/p>\n

One of the things I had to do for the wedding
\nwas pick up the dry cleaning a few days ago
\nfrom a place out in the valley, off Pines near Broadway.
\nAfter I picked it up,
\ninstead of trying to make a left on Pines,
\nI went down a side street to get back on Broadway,
\nand as I turned the corner,
\nthere, in the middle of a residential neighborhood,
\nwas a castle.<\/p>\n

I did not know that there was a castle in the Spokane Valley.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s there, on Vercler Road.
\nYou can tell by looking at it that it\u2019s homemade,
\nthat it\u2019s been built slowly, over time,
\nwith its leaning towers, and uneven brickwork.
\nSome of the towers look unfinished,
\nas if the builder is still working on it.
\nAnd as I drove by, I thought,
\nthank you, God, for the romantics of the world,
\nwho give us castles
\nin the middle of the city.
\nTo me, that castle is a sign of creativity, of idealism,
\nof something bigger.
\nSome might call it foolish, the work of a dreamer,
\nbut I call it romantic.<\/p>\n

I know there are some romantics here today,
\nand two of them are sitting right over there.
\nI don\u2019t know if it surprises you to know that they\u2019re romantics,
\nand maybe it surprises them.
\nBut here\u2019s how I know they\u2019re romantics:
\nIf any of you have seen the pictures that Teresa posts on Facebook,
\nyou might have noticed
\nthat whenever she posts a picture of herself and Ryan,
\nshe adds it to a photo album that she calls
\n\u201cMy Knight in Shining Kevlar.\u201d<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t that romantic?<\/p>\n

For Teresa, Ryan is the knight who rescued her
\nfrom a life of crime,
\nthat night when they first met
\nand he found her parked illegally.
\nHe is her knight in shining kevlar.<\/p>\n

And if you\u2019ve seen the pictures of the day they got engaged,
\nRyan on one knee in the middle of a field of blueberries,
\nthe knight keeling before his lady,
\nyou know that there\u2019s a romantic side to Ryan.<\/p>\n

So there\u2019s a bit of the romantic in each one of them.
\nThis became even more clear to me
\nwhen I asked both of them
\nwhy they had chosen these particular Scripture readings for today.
\nThey both pointed to the last line of the first reading,
\nwhere Tobiah and Sarah are praying on their wedding night,
\nand they end that prayer by asking God,
\n\u201callow us to live together to a happy old age.\u201d<\/p>\n

That line is important to Ryan and Teresa.
\nRyan and Teresa want their story to end with
\n\u201cand they lived happily ever after.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a romantic notion,
\na notion that some might see as idealistic, unreachable,
\nlike building castles in the air \u2014 or in the middle of Spokane.<\/p>\n

But it was the American writer Henry David Thoreau who said,
\n\u201cIf you build your castles in the air\u2026
\nthat is where they should be.
\nNow put the foundations under them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, Ryan and Teresa begin building the foundation
\nunder their castle in the air.<\/p>\n

And like that castle in the Spokane Valley,
\ntheir wedding this day is something visible, something public.<\/p>\n

Just as that castle in the middle of the city
\nis a sign of something bigger,
\nevery marriage is to be a sign of something bigger.<\/p>\n

The love that married couples have for each other
\nis to be a sacred sign of the way God loves us.<\/p>\n

Whenever we see married couples holding hands in the park,
\nor out on a date,
\nworried about whether the kids are tying up the babysitter,
\nwe get a tiny glimpse of God\u2019s love for us.
\nWhen one spouse is sick and the other makes chicken noodle soup,
\nor when one has had a bad day and comes home to a sympathetic ear,
\nwe get an echo of the great love God offers us
\neach and every moment.<\/p>\n

Marriage is a sacred sign.
\nIf we want to know how God loves us,
\nwe are to look at couples like you, Ryan and Teresa,
\nand see your love.<\/p>\n

You are called to be a castle in the middle of the city,
\nan ever-growing monument to God\u2019s love for all to see.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not an easy task.
\nIn fact, it\u2019s quite a challenge.<\/p>\n

Like that castle over on Vercler Road,
\nevery marriage needs constant building,
\nand continual tending.
\nThose of us who have been married for many years
\ncan tell you all about love\u2019s ups and downs.<\/p>\n

But we can also tell you that you are not alone
\nin building your marriage.
\nToday as you commit yourselves to each other,
\nJesus Christ also promises himself to you.
\nHe promises to walk your journey with you.
\nHe promises to be with you in good times and in bad,
\nin sickness and in health,
\nin the hope that you will live together to a happy old age.<\/p>\n

There is another castle, now, in the Spokane Valley,
\njust off Dishman-Mica Road.
\nThis is your castle,
\nthe castle that the two of you will continually build, remodel, and expand on,
\na castle to share with the world.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the house on the lot there,
\nor the shop, or the home theater, or the kitchen.<\/p>\n

It is the interior castle of your hearts,
\nthe place where a knight in shining kevlar and his lady
\nwork together with Christ to live a life happily ever after.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I had the great honor to officiate the wedding of my son, Ryan, and his wife Teresa. Here is the homily from that ceremony: Brenda and I have had the best time watching Ryan and Teresa get ready for this day, and we\u2019ve enjoyed getting ready for it ourselves. One of the things I had to do for the wedding was pick up the dry cleaning a few days ago from a place out in the valley, off Pines near Broadway. After I picked it up, instead...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,349],"tags":[651,168,650,547,653,652,391],"class_list":["post-3220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","category-homily","tag-castle","tag-henry-david-thoreau","tag-ryan-and-teresa","tag-sarah","tag-tobiah","tag-tobit","tag-weddings"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/13220942_10153853067984143_999918810701753776_n.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOucj-PW","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3220"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3226,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3220\/revisions\/3226"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}