Confetti in My Pockets

I have officiated so many weddings; I have lost count.

Nevertheless, the joy of that day is always with me, like confetti in my pockets. Every couple carried something different to the altar. Some trembling, some laughing, some crying...

It is the hands I remember, not the faces:

two hands joined,

and mine laid over them

like a small roof over a new house.

I remember their beauty, the magic dresses that seem to come from an ancient world or a childhood fantasy story.

We stood there, all of us,

like people queuing for a famous healer.

To heal from what? From the wounds of love.

The bride and groom think the day is just about them. It is not, entirely. They are the door through which Love enters the room and visits everyone. Those pews are filled with people attending the clinic of broken lives: the betrayed, the disappointed, those who were dreamers and poets once and have turned cynical through so much pain.

All of them, for one afternoon,

looking up,

letting something in.

Oh, all of you who are listening, join me. Raise your hands to heaven, fall on your knees, and let us pray for them.

May the sighs of our prayers reach their house and sustain them when "the rain falls, the floods come and the winds blow" (cf. Mt 7:24-27).

Their marriage sustains us all. That warmth is the energy that keeps the world turning, the miracle that makes us still believe in love.

If they stand, we stand.

If they fall, we fall.