"Until death do us part" is a poignant phrase in the traditional wedding vow that encapsulates the promise of lifelong commitment. As a priest and a member of a religious order, I don't have the opportunity to express those words. Instead, when I made my perpetual vows in the Society of Jesus, I vowed, “I promise that I will enter this same Society to spend my life in it forever.” Reflecting on my past, I realize that I nearly shared that heartfelt promise. I was once engaged to a wonderful woman, and we had shared a beautiful seven-year journey filled with love and dreams. We had already planned our wedding, selected a date, and arranged for the chapel and reception, envisioning a bright future together. But, as the day drew near, I felt an undeniable truth within myself: I was not ready to fully embrace the commitment of marriage. Making the decision to call off the engagement and cancel the wedding was incredibly difficult. I understood the weight of my actions on her and the future we had envisioned together. After that chapter came to a close, we both moved on with our lives. She married with another man and became the proud mother of two daughters, while I embarked on a spiritual journey that led me to the priesthood. It's a bittersweet reminder that life can take us in unexpected directions, and I hold deep respect for the choices we each made along the way.
Twenty years have passed, and last Christmas brought an unexpected and deeply poignant moment for me. I never imagined that as a priest, I would find myself anointing my former fiancée and offering her the Last Rites as she faced the end of her life due to cancer. It was heartbreaking to witness her struggle, and just over 24 hours after I administered the Last Rites, she passed away. This experience was a profound reminder of the fragility of life and the bittersweet nature of love and loss. I was honored to offer her a Requiem Mass. At her funeral, her sister approached me and said, "Although two of you were never meant to be together in life, it's meaningful that you were the one who gave her last rites and presided over her funeral." It struck me how, even though we never exchanged the vow, "until death do us part," it is in death that we are brought together one last time, only to be separated again.
In my former fiancée’s Requiem Mass, I preached about the promise of eternal life. In the First letter of St. John that we hear today, St. John wrote, “God gave us eternal life... I write these things to you so that you may know that you have eternal life.” In his letter to Anicia Faltonia Proba, a wealthy Roman widow, St. Augustine defines the ultimate object of all prayer as the "happy life" (vita beata), which consists of eternal life with God. St. Augustine wrote, “We know that both the competency of things necessary, and the well-being of ourselves and of our friends, so long as these concern this present world alone, are to be cast aside as dross in comparison with the obtaining of eternal life; for although the body may be in health, the mind cannot be regarded as sound which does not prefer eternal to temporal things;…the life which we live in time is wasted, if it be not spent in obtaining that by which we may be worthy of eternal life. Therefore, all things which are the objects of useful and becoming desire are unquestionably to be viewed with reference to that one life which is lived with God and is derived from Him.” Nevertheless, as Pope Benedict XVI quoted in Spe Salvi, St. Augustine realized that in this life we are simply looking for “happiness.” We cannot stop reaching out for it, and yet we cannot accomplish what we yearn for. This unknown desire is the true hope that drives us, and the term eternal life is intended to give a name to this “unknown.”
At her baptism, my former fiancée was given the name Marcelina, after Saint Marcelina, the sister of St. Ambrose. There is no record of St. Ambrose presiding at the funeral of Marcelina, but at the funeral of another brother of Marcelina, Satyrus, St. Ambrose preached that God prescribed death as a remedy for our sinfulness; therefore, death is not a cause for mourning, “for it is the cause of mankind's salvation.” Au revoir, ma chère Marcelina.