In fashion then as of a snow-white rose

it sank into the great flower, adorned with leaves so many,

and thence reascended to where its love abideth evermore.

Their faces had they all of living flame...

because the light divine so penetrates

the universe, according to its merit,

that naught can be an obstacle against it.

This realm secure and full of gladsomeness,

crowded with ancient people and with modern,

unto one mark had all its look and love.

O Trinal Light,

that in a single star, sparkling upon their sight, so satisfies them,

look down upon our tempest here below!

                                                                                               Dante, Paradiso, Canto XXXI

How is marriage possible, if this will — my own, wilful, stubborn, proud will (I don't mean just Filip or Karla, but all of us) — if this will of ours, this idolatry of ours, does not submit to the heavenly will, to God's will… That is why we say that Christian marriage is a marriage of three: husband, wife, and Jesus Christ. He is listened to. He is the head. It submits to the Father's will.

Homily by Don Antun Nižetić, Cathedral of St Anastasia, Zadar, 13 May 2023.

Everything that happened in Jesus's life concerns every person of every age. If Jesus were merely a man, that would not be so. For two thousand years the Church has proclaimed to us that Jesus is not merely a man, but that he is Truth and Love incarnate — God — and every one of us stands in relation to that Love and that Truth.

Nowadays people speak of God as though he were some impersonal energy, so whenever I speak to children about God, in particular, I ask them: can it be that the one who made us, that the God who made our ears, has no ears himself? Can it be that the one who made mouths has no mouth, and cannot speak?

The one who made our mouths and our capacity for speech and reason cannot himself be incapable of speaking and hearing… The Letter to the Hebrews tells us that God spoke to us many times and in many ways, and that at last he spoke to us in Jesus Christ.

We know that the Church always teaches that the passion and death of Jesus Christ concern every person, and we say that our sins fell upon Christ… A lady who had converted from atheism told me recently that she once had a mystical experience — she saw herself among that crowd shouting “Crucify him!” In the same way, Christ's resurrection concerns all of us. Paul says that Christ was raised for our justification… when a person goes to confession and tastes how God forgives even grave sins and gives a new life, he can really touch this Resurrection…

Each of us can taste this connection to Christ's passion, death and resurrection in our own life, but even the seemingly less important events of Jesus's life concern all of us too. They too are God's Word for me and for you.

So this miracle at the wedding at Cana in Galilee, which we have just heard, concerns us too, and the evangelist calls it a sign. That means he did not perform some trick just to entertain the people there, but did something that has meaning for us — this miracle is an image that speaks a thousand words, God's words. It is like when Christ multiplied the loaves, and then fled from the crowd because they wanted to make him king, and he said: “You seek me not because you saw signs, because it told you something, but because you ate your fill” — in other words, you understood nothing.

You will see interesting things in this Gospel that touch each of us deeply, and especially our bride and groom here, and every married couple.

The first sign Jesus performs is at a wedding. In the same way, the first problem — and the source of every problem in humanity… we all know that something went seriously wrong in humanity, in man; the Church calls that wrong 'the fallen nature'. Revelation tells us that the first thing to break was something within a married couple, and that this is the source of humanity's problem. It happened that this old Adam — we call Christ the new Adam — saw Eve, just as Filip said when he saw Karla, and fell in love, and wanted to give his life for her, so beautiful: ‘Thank God, God exists! When you see someone so lovely…’ Just as Adam too saw her — but afterwards, once he had separated himself from God's love… The Song of Songs says that the flame of love in Filip's heart, and the flame of love in Karla's heart towards him, is a spark from the flame of the LORD. But we know that an ember, once it is taken away from the fire… what happens to an ember once it is out of the fire? I need not explain that… and that is what then happened — that is the image of Adam and Eve, that is the image of all of us.

It happened that at a certain moment, when they separated themselves from God — and we all taste this, even without necessarily being aware of it, because when you drink some poison, you don't have to know it is poison for it to poison you. It is the same with sin, that is, disobedience to God, to God's will: it poisons our spirit, creates unrest within us, separates us from Love. We would like to love, but what happens, what does Adam say to God…. This is described in images, it describes our own life, because it happens within us too. God says: ‘What have you done?’ What does Adam say, what does Filip say, what does Antun say? What does he say…? He says: ‘She is to blame! She gave it to me and I ate! Punish her!’ What happened? Where did the love go?

That is the situation of humanity. We want to love, we want to live (in unity). I remember, as a child, my parents would sometimes quarrel — how hard that is for a child…, but I also remember certain moments, which are truly engraved on my heart, when I saw my father and mother in unity… we used to walk a great deal, we had no car… and when I saw them speaking to one another, loving one another, I remember such sweetness in my child's soul, such peace, such contentment…

We all know this without anyone explaining it to us: peace is in unity, salvation is in unity… it wasn't for nothing that the Communists used to say 'Brotherhood and Unity' — everyone wants that, only they were foolish about it… 'Come on, let's pick up rifles and then we'll have brotherhood and unity'… shoulder arms… how mad is that?!

How will you manage, when the problem isn't out there with whoever is in power, but the problem is in me, the problem is inside — the problem is that I have separated myself from the love of God, and because of that, anger and wrath rule over me, and lust, laziness, pride, envy… all of it rules over me. That is what stops me being in unity with others…

Well then, precisely because of this 'fault' that arose… perhaps that's not quite the right word, I don't know — better to say, because of this fall within man's inner being, which we see at every step… we constantly observe the rotten fruits of that fall, of that separation from God's love, from Truth, from meaning… We see it everywhere… every family, every person tastes it…

How do we know this is true — that they ate something spiritually poisonous? Because each of us sees it in ourselves. That poison still runs in our veins, this — that we live in… there is so much falsehood in us (for the root of every sin is precisely falsehood).

Then this Gospel tells us that everyone serves the good wine first, and once the guests have drunk freely, the worse wine comes out, and then the wine runs out entirely… that is human life; what else would you expect — they are young, they are beautiful, look how handsome they are, they are in love, it's all sparkling with attraction, the springtime of their life is the finest wine — but the plain fact is that this wine gets used up… and then a slightly worse wine comes, and in the end the water comes. But can we accept that our life should be water? That our life should become mere survival…

We could say that wine is an image of the joy of life. There is joy in their relationship right now. A person cannot live without joy. One man once told me: ‘I have lost every last drop of joy.’ A person cannot go on living like that. Joy is necessary for life; our life cannot be a mere symbiosis. How many married couples become just that — a symbiosis!? Together only because they have a mortgage together, because they're building a flat together, because they share children…

It is interesting how Christ answers Mary… today is the memorial of Our Lady of Fatima. Let us place this young couple under Mary's protection — she who has stood by the Church down all the centuries, and at Fatima in an extraordinary and wondrous way… I invite those of you who waver a little, who are without faith, who are in doubt, just to google Fatima. On this very day Our Lady appeared at Fatima. I don't think it's a coincidence that you chose this date — nothing is a coincidence — you probably wanted this particular day.

At Fatima, just as in this Gospel, Our Lady obtained certain miracles. Knowing how weak we are, Our Lady won for us extraordinary signs — unbelievable miracles took place at Fatima. The children said — Francisco, Jacinta and Lúcia said — at noon Our Lady would give a sign, and everyone would see it. Tens of thousands of people came; many came to mock; the newspapers came… that was in 1917. There are photographs of that event, you can find them on the internet. And at noon, just as Our Lady had said, people thought it was Judgement Day: the sun danced, it seemed to leap towards the earth… Every newspaper in Europe reported it. That was when the children had said, at noon…

Mother Mary is with us also in these hard times of unbelief and godlessness, which drive people to madness… we can truly see that this is a kind of madness. What is happening? Everyone has gone mad, society has gone mad — look at Eurovision, it's all mad, is it even possible that such things happen, it's mad, it's all sick, anything is possible, everything is possible — once you leave God behind, everything becomes utterly absurd.

It is interesting how Christ answers Mary when she says to him, ‘They have no wine!’ Just imagine when that moment comes… you married couples don't need to try too hard to imagine it… when the moment comes that there is no wine, no joy, when that attraction has faded, when the finest wine — the best that human life has to offer, the very best — has run out.

What is there in this world better, more sublime, than the attraction of a man and a woman who love one another… But we all know, we just play dumb about it, that this wine runs out! We only have a very small amount of it left in the cellar. We all know it — these two don't know it yet, they'll find out soon enough… that is why we are here — not to joke around, and not to throw them into a crisis either — we are here to celebrate love and marriage. We are here because we believe in supernatural love. In miracles. In the One who turns water into wine.

In his answer to Mary, when she said 'they have no wine', Christ speaks of a certain hour of his that is still to come — when he will give the wine that is lacking. What hour is that? When is the hour when he will give humanity what it lacks…? What can truly pour true wine into the heart of every person is that Love which was revealed in Christ, and we know that at the Eucharist we drink wine, which is his blood. There is one hour when he showed this heavenly love, which cannot remain hidden. When a person sees that — say, when that love becomes flesh, when you see a person who carries that love in himself — you cannot remain indifferent: that a man is dying, is tortured, is being killed, and yet he intercedes for us, for them, and prays, ‘Father, forgive them…’ — that is that heavenly, divine love.

The cantor sang words from the hymn to love in the Letter to the Corinthians. Christians, in order to describe that love which was revealed in Christ, even had to invent a new word. Greek is the language of philosophy: it classifies and orders everything, so it has one word that describes attached, family love, another word that describes love between friends, and a third word that describes the love of man and woman — we all know it — eros.

What is the fourth love? Before Christ there was no fourth love — that was all there was. There was one word used when people took pity on some poor soul, and it was precisely this word they took to describe that new love: agape — merciful, self-giving love. You have heard that word; it is, in fact, very close to the Hebrew word by which the Jews describe God's love, which is ahavah.

So then, when they had to translate into Greek — since at that time everyone in the known world understood Greek — they took this word, which until then had had only a marginal meaning… so that in the New Testament, which is written in Greek, this word becomes the most important one, carrying a new and deeper meaning… For us, in Croatian, it's all just one word — love — so we don't grasp the distinction. But this is now a word that describes a new reality, one that did not exist in this world before Christ… had that reality not appeared in Christ, we would never have known of such a thing. Love for enemies! God's love! Love that seeks no gain! Love freely given! Heavenly love!

A person who accepts that this love is true — and we are all capable of that, because we were made from that same Love, and it is the meaning and goal of our existence, which we all sense deeply within us. Why can so many people not accept it? If we accepted that this love is real — here is the crucifix that makes that love visible to us… if we accepted that this is the Truth… not to judge others, to love even one's enemy — then it unmasks me, convinced as I am that I am righteous, that I am good; and now, before this Love which is the only true love (every other love is merely an image of this one)… in the light of that love I must admit that my own love and my own goodness are false… we are all false… were all people put upon the scales, they would be lighter than a breath.

When we read the Gospel we see how Christ strove with us to unmask that false love. He said: ‘I know you well. You do not have the love of God in you!’ They, like us, thought they were righteous, thought they loved someone. He told them, ‘You do not have the love of God in you!’ What good is it to you if you love those who love you… why, even animals do that: a dog licks you when you feed it, and bites you when… nothing special in that, nothing of any worth…

Christ brought into the world the only thing of true worth, the only eternal thing; only a love like that has weight… God's love… and this is not something Christians say and believe while unaware of the suffering in the world, unaware that people have cancer, unaware of wars… this faith in that love holds fast in spite of all that; it was revealed precisely in the agony of the cross, the martyrs held it through terrible suffering, and so many people we know carry this faith through very difficult situations in life.

Saint John writes that this faith conquers the world — it conquers the mentality of this world, which leads us into absurdity, meaninglessness and despair…

Knowing Filip and Karla a little, I know that they are already, slowly, opening themselves to that love. You know what I ask engaged couples when they come for marriage preparation, when I see that faith doesn't touch them, that they aren't there for the sake of faith or of Christ but for tradition's sake, or for some odd idea or other… I ask them one question, just to make them stop and think — sometimes we even end up arguing a little over that question…

Let's say Filip and Karla came to me for marriage preparation, and I ask Filip: ‘Filip, who guarantees you… do you have any guarantee that in the years to come Karla will be faithful to you?’ And then I ask her: ‘Karla, what is your guarantee? You've had time to think it over — do you have a guarantee that Filip will be faithful to you? Faithful even when things get hard? When a child is born… we know how relationships change when a child is born. The husband is no longer at the centre, everything revolves around the baby, it has its own dynamic. Everyone is different, but certain things repeat themselves.’

Who guarantees it for you? Now watch, she says: ‘We love each other!’ What does that even mean, 'We love each other'? What does that mean? One girl once told me: ‘I just feel it — it's butterflies in the pit of my stomach!’ Whatever that means. But look, this matters: if you're entering a permanent bond, one you know will even be indissoluble and so on, and you're basing it purely on that feeling… but here is a fact — Filip did not give himself those feelings; he didn't clench his teeth and say, ‘Right, now I shall feel love for Karla…’ Those feelings simply came on their own and 'set him alight', and just as easily they could go out on their own — or be kindled for somebody else!

That is exactly why we are here today. Because those feelings are very wilful of their own accord… and now I ask Karla, or any young woman who… there are some girls here who will soon be getting engaged, and young men too… and I tell you, in the name of life's wisdom and truth: pay very close attention to this when you decide: ‘What guarantee do you have that he will be faithful to you in those moments, that she will be faithful to you?’ One young woman got angry with me once because she had no answer, and she snapped back: ‘And what guarantee do you have that you'll stay faithful to your own vocation?’ Sometimes they get quite seriously angry with me when I provoke them with that question.

Because look, you wouldn't go to a bank — and marriage is a far, far more serious covenant, a far more serious contract, than a loan agreement; this is a much more serious decision than taking out a loan, even though taking out a loan is itself a hard decision. This is far more serious — you will live with this your whole life. And now you're basing it on: 'We love each other!', 'butterflies in the pit of my stomach'… Would a bank give you a loan on a guarantee like that? They say: ‘What guarantee do we have that you'll pay us back?’ ‘I just feel that I'll pay you back.’ ‘Believe in yourself,’ says one bank in big letters, to reel people in… (laughter…)

The only real guarantee… Karla, I hope that this young man, with whom you are so deeply in love, loves Jesus Christ more than he loves you. The only guarantee for Filip that Karla will be faithful to him in those moments is that she loves Christ more than she loves him…

Let me put it this way… as I said to a little girl the other day, whom I had just baptised shortly before her First Communion so that she could join her group — she understood everything beautifully — and when I explained to her what baptism was, I told her: ‘Do you know what is about to happen? A covenant between you and Jesus. We spoke before about who Jesus Christ is… you said you love him… well, this is now a wedding between you and Him.’ She understood that very well. From now on, you belong to Him.

So, in that sense, we could say that this is the second marriage Filip and Karla are entering. The first marriage is baptism. Nowadays that has been utterly devalued, so many people no longer understand it. Baptism is a marriage in which you say: ‘I no longer belong to myself! From now on I obey you, Christ!’

The first Christians…, Christians today in the Eastern Church — I have seen this with my own eyes — when adults are baptised they must spit towards the west, towards the darkness, and renounce Satan, who was their master, whom they used to obey, and turn towards Christ and say: ‘From now on I obey you, you are my Lord and Master!’ That is the only guarantee for this marriage, for every marriage; that is why this is a call to conversion for all of us — without that, nothing. Conversion is baptism, the renewal of baptism, so that we may return to the Truth, return to Christ, return to our first love, and love Him. ‘Love is not loved!’ — a certain saint used to cry through the streets of her city. Why do we not love Love? … and only in that context can we then speak of where marriage begins.

A man asked me the other day: ‘What should I do, my friend…’ (they always ask 'for a friend', never for themselves — laughter) he says: 'his wife has gone off the rails, they have two children, she's out at the pubs, she keeps texting someone, all sorts of things going on…' he says, ‘What should I advise him, what should I tell him?’

This is the heart of the problem — whether that woman has 'life in herself', as Christ puts it, or does not. Here is the key, this is the crucial thing: if Filip's life, and Karla's life, is one great idolatry… what does idolatry mean? We are all steeped in idolatry — that is, when the meaning of my life is this earth. I must tell you the truth. The truth sets us free. The meaning of Filip's life is not this marriage. Nor is the meaning of Karla's life this marriage. The only objective reason and meaning of our existence is to know God, to love him, and to be with Him for ever. If they live out their marriage oriented towards that goal, only then will their marriage also be meaningful, lastingly worthwhile, and beautiful.

But if instead they live oriented towards this world as their goal, towards marriage as their goal, towards children as their goal, towards anything of this world as their goal… if they make the meaning of life out of that and everything that goes with it — that is not the meaning of our life. The meaning of our life is written plainly in the Catechism: to know God, to love him, and to be with him for ever.

Now pay attention — this happens through faith, when you receive it, when you give yourself to Jesus Christ, when you say: ‘From now on I will obey you!’ That's something very concrete: you begin to love what Christ says, you begin to love the Father's will… whatever Christ says. Christ says: ‘Forgive!’ That is his will. And my will says: ‘I will not forgive!’ And how can you not understand??? — his will is better, and so in everything else too. Then, when that happens within a person, that marriage of the soul with God takes place, which is all-important, which comes first; and if it does not happen, then we are living a lie. Our own plan for how things ought to look — that is, our own will. In the Bible, idols are called 'the lie': ‘No one who does and loves a lie shall enter the kingdom of God!’ It has to be my way, the way I pictured it, she pictured it… a woman has a husband, and he's going to be my safe harbour… every woman wants that, for her husband to be a safe harbour. A husband is not a safe harbour. One is quiet, one is like this, one is like that — these are what we might call little crosses; there are crosses, little crosses that mark everyone's life… they cut into our life, they cut into our idols so that they wither, so that the lie is exposed, so that it becomes plain that this earth does not offer the wine for which we were made…

So then, the one who does not follow Jesus Christ, who does not renounce his idols, who has no life within him — the moment some cross comes along, since he must build paradise right here… that is what idolatry means, living in a lie: 'I have to build paradise here.' There is no paradise here! Let anyone raise their hand who wants to build paradise here, whose goal is this earth. I must tell you the truth: ‘You will create hell for yourself and for others!’ Paradise is not here! Only in faith, in a relationship with Christ, can we understand that the goal of our life is not this world, as though we were mere animals: our goal is eternity, and only once eternity is our goal can we be normal with regard to the earth. Why 'normal'? Because it makes every one of us abnormal, irritable, unreasonable, when we expect from this world what it cannot give us.

A wife, the moment her husband so much as fails to look at her — I'm speaking generally now; there are hard situations, some of you may be living through them… That is why the Church, in her wisdom, says that when there is a grave situation, when life or faith is in danger, there is provision for separation from bed and board, and so on. But now we are talking about the ordinary, everyday problems and little troubles that throw our idols and our plans into crisis, and before which the one who has no life within him, who does not have Christ within him, has to flee, has to go looking for another idol… It becomes unbearable for him, because his earthly wine has run out, and he has not yet tasted the supernatural wine.

An idol means: 'that from which our life comes'. 'This is my god!' It is that for whose sake I live, that which I love with all my heart, mind and strength.

I don't know whether you're able to hear me, especially on a day like today, amid all this rush, this organising, this nervousness… today I am telling all of you that Love exists. I have not come here to discourage you, but to tell you the truth… in love. We can lie to ourselves, we can fudge it, we can just go on praising human love… but I must tell you the truth: that human love has its limits, and that there is a Divine love.

That is why Karla and Filip are here today, to place their hands in God's hands. They are now entering a covenant before God. That will help them — if the couple care about God. If a couple come to their wedding not caring about God, not yet having discovered how wonderful it is to live in grace… well, I do not want to live in sin. I do not want to torment myself. I do not want to live in a lie, cut off from Christ.

So then, when difficulties come, it will be love for God that makes it possible to overcome them. And difficulties do await you, just as beautiful moments do. Why do they await you, why do difficulties await you — just this one more thing…

Because every calling — take, for instance, when the apostles followed Christ, he called them — and God has called Filip and Karla to enter marriage; I am convinced they are not here by chance — but the trouble is, because we are sinful people, that calling gets tarnished. Peter's calling, John's calling — tarnished with what? They follow Christ. He says: ‘Follow me!’ He says to Filip and Karla: ‘Follow me!’ ‘Now enter into marriage!’ But what is the problem?

Let's look at Peter, John, all of them… it's tarnished — inside there is also vanity, and pride, and the struggle for the first place, and my own will… my own will… what is the greatest problem in marriage, and in every relationship? My will, my will, my will… now a process of growth begins, of maturing — it has already begun — but now you have a greater weapon, a greater help, in which marriage becomes possible.

How is marriage possible, if this will of mine — this self-willed, stubborn, proud will (I don't mean just Filip or Karla, but all of us) — if this will of ours, this idolatry of ours, submits to the heavenly will, to God's will… That is why we say that Christian marriage is a marriage of three: husband, wife, and Jesus Christ. He is listened to. He is the head. It submits to the Father's will.

We could call this a kind of dying. Who will give me the strength to die, to give up my own will? Let me ask this of all of us: ‘What is the sign that you are following Jesus Christ?’ It means that in the various areas of your life, in every area of life, you ask — you don't just live automatically by 'my will'. Instead you ask what His will is, and you enter into the struggle of letting go of your own will, which leads to loneliness and ruin, and entering instead into His will, in which there is blessing and eternal Life.

There is no recipe for communion, but this is the only way that communion can be lived, that unity can be lived.

I hope that the Holy Spirit is speaking to you through my poor words. Let us entrust these two beloved young people to God's love; let us accompany them in prayer. Our closeness and our support will matter to them too.

A few days ago a Slovenian theologian wrote an article entitled: ‘If we carry on like this, we shall all go mad.’ And then he gave the answer: community. Nowadays we are all individuals, each of us in front of our own screen. Community. For these two young people, one great hope is that they have the support of their communities, of brothers and sisters before whom they stand, with whom they listen together to God's word, gather, pray, and have spiritual guidance too… they are not alone… they have a concrete Church, brothers and sisters in the faith, catechists, priests…. I too have my community, and it encourages me; I see the struggles of married couples, I see other priests, and it is a wonderful gift, this honesty within community, where we can be what we truly are — weak, sinful — but where we walk together towards the same goal… that is the answer to this total crisis of marriage and to the breakdown of the system that we all see and don't know what to do about.

Dear Filip and Karla, we now place you in God's hands. He loves you beyond measure; love him in return, and you will remain steadfast in your love for one another too.

Homily transcribed by: Štefica Laura Paripović