The Perfection of Marital Love
Feast of Saint James the Greater, Apostle
Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe
La Crosse, Wisconsin
July 25, 2026
2 Cor 4, 7-15
Ps 126, 1bc-2ab. 2cd-3. 4-5. 6
Mt 20, 20-28
Homily
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Apostle Saint James the Greater, together with Saint John the Beloved Disciple, his blood-brother, and Saint Peter, Prince of the Apostles, enjoyed the special favor of Our Lord. Our Lord chose them to witness His Transfiguration on Mount Tabor[1] and to accompany Him in His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane before His cruel Passion and Death.[2] Saint James the Greater also had the privilege to be the first of the Apostles to undergo martyrdom in the fulfillment of his Apostolic charge with faithful and enduring love of his Master.[3] The Acts of the Apostles tell us that King Herod Agrippa I “killed James the brother of John with the sword.”[4]
Herod Agrippa, thinking to please the Jewish people and to rid himself forever of the nuisance of the Apostolic preaching and ministrations of Saint James the Greater, had him executed, but Saint James continues his Apostolic ministry from his place with his Master in glory, interceding for the flock. His burial place, the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostella, remains among the greatest of holy places of pilgrimage for Christians. We see in the life of Saint James the truth announced by Saint Paul regarding his own apostolic ministry:
For while we live we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.
Since we have the same spirit of faith as he had who wrote, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we too believe, and so we speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.[5]
In fact, eight centuries after the burial of Saint James, his tomb at the great Cathedral of Santiago de Compostella witnessed his powerful intervention against the advance of Arian barbarians and then of the Moslems against Christian Spain.[6] His Shrine remains a powerful place of pilgrimage to invoke his intercession in the struggle against the contemporary powerful forces of secularism, apostasy, heresy, and the Islamic persecution of Christians.
But Saint James had to undergo a purification in order to give his heart ever more perfectly into the glorious-pierced Heart of Jesus for the Apostolic ministry. The Gospel recounts for us how his mother sought earthly honors and power for her sons, John and James. They clearly shared in their mother’s request. Let us listen to the reflection of one commentator on this event in the life of Saint James the Greater:
The two sons of Zebedee spoke by the mouth of their mother as well as by their own, but Christ directed His answer to them, telling them that they knew not what they asked; for in His kingdom preferments are attainable, not by the forward and ambitious, but by the most humble, the most laborious, and the most patient …. Our Lord told them they should indeed have their portion of suffering; but He could make no other disposal of the honours of His kingdom than according to the proportion of every one’s charity and patience in suffering: “The Son of Man also is not come to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His life a redemption for many.”[7]
Saint James clearly learned well the life-saving correction of his ambition and thenceforth directed its energy according to the Mind and Heart of his Master. He became a most revered co-worker of Our Lord, bringing faithfully from Our Lord’s glorious-pierced Heart the graces of truth and love for the salvation of many souls. He became ambitious, no longer for himself but for Our Lord alone.
Saint James the Greater is a great teacher and intercessor for us in following Christ in our vocation in life, employing the gifts with which God has endowed us to love as Christ loves. We, like Saint James, are in need of purification. We, too, must go forth daily on the road of Christ-like perfection, confident in the grace poured forth into our hearts from the glorious-pierced Heart of Jesus, recalling His words in the Sermon on the Mount: “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”[8] Too often, we seek acknowledgment and adulation for the good work we do. We want to make certain that everyone knows how much we are sacrificing and how hard we are working. Too often, we engage in self-pity and discouragement before the challenges to our vocation presented by a culture of pervasive secularism. Saint James teaches us that we must have only one concern: to serve our Master with faithful and enduring love, and to trust in His victory over sin and death, His victory of eternal life, even should our service require us to die for love of Him. With Saint Paul, we give ourselves up to death “for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh,”[9] drawing many souls to know, to love, and to serve Our Lord. We are most happy when we die more completely to self and to sin, in order that others may live more fully and perfectly in Christ.
So it is that Pope Saint John Paul II developed The Rule for married couples, the measure by which those called to the married life are to seek the perfection of the love which they pledged to each other on their wedding day, the way by which they are to respond to the heavenly grace conferred by the Sacrament of Marriage. In his “Reflections on Marriage,” the then Father Wojtyła teaches us:
The sacrament, as an effective sign of grace, creates in nature supernatural forces, forces that allow for a full life of a human being – that is to say, life according to the plans and intentions of the Creator towards the mankind. These forces make such a life possible for the human person but not what achieves it. It is then necessary to extract from these forces everything that is hidden in it and apply it to the personal life. This is already the task of man, or people who, through the sacrament, enter the orbit of grace.[10]
The covenant of marriage and the married life to which nature draws a man and a woman participates, through the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, in the victory over sin won for us by Christ on the Cross.
The grace of Holy Matrimony is not some ideal to which only a few attain but an objective reality, a supernatural gift, leading a man and a woman to seek each other’s eternal salvation by the way of divine love. In his text accompanying The Rule, “Love is the Moral Foundation of Marriage,” the then Bishop Karol Wojtyła wrote:
We must clearly recognize that sacramental grace of marriage is not just some theory but a real endowment from which spouses can, and should, build a certain Christian perfection pertinent to their vocation and the multilateral totality that is their conjugal life…
Christian perfection consists in love. Love is also the moral foundation of marriage. Therefore, marriage opens up the possibility of Christian perfection…
Modern man finds himself often in front of this one essential challenge: You impose an unbearable burden on me, and at the same time, you contrast it with this “state of perfection” in which, who knows, maybe it is easier to live… First and foremost, this brings a question whether our entire way of thinking about marriage is “too low” with simultaneous high demands on it. Maybe it is best to pose the question entirely on a higher level….[11]
The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Heavenly Bread of our earthly pilgrimage, by which Our Lord renews His sacrifice on Calvary and in which we unite our hearts to His glorious-pierced Heart in the most perfect way possible on earth constitutes the higher level of pure and selfless love which sustains the married life. All our questions regarding marriage should be posed on the level of the Eucharistic Sacrifice of Our Lord Jesus Christ, on the level of the perfection of divine love.
Inspired by the example of Saint James the Greater and aided by his intercession, let us resolve to take up with new enthusiasm and new energy the spiritual practices by which our hearts dwell fully and securely in the Heart of Jesus for the transformation of the world by means of the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony and its incomparable fruit, the family. Let us be ready for martyrdom, if not the red martyrdom of blood, certainly the white martyrdom of faithful witness to Our Lord in the face of indifference, ridicule, and persecution.
Drawing near to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Virgin Mother of God, let us give our hearts to Our Lord in His Eucharistic Sacrifice. Let us prepare ourselves to receive the incomparable fruit of His Sacrifice: His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. In the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, may our hearts be purified of all sin and inflamed with His pure and selfless love. So may we live “always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.”[12]
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Raymond Leo Cardinal BURKE
[1] Cf. Mt 17, 1; Mk 9, 2; Lk 9, 28.
[2] Cf. Mt 26, 37; Mk 14, 33.
[3] Cf. Herbert Thurston and Donald Attwater, eds., Butler’s Lives of the Saints, Complete Edition (New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1956), Volume III, p. 183. [Hereafter: Thurston].
[4] Acts 12, 2.
[5] 2 Cor 4, 11-15.
[6] Cf. Prosper Guéranger, L’Année liturgique, Tome IV, Temps après la Pentecôte, 6ème éd. (Paris: Librairie Religieuse H. Oudin, 1901), pp. 225-226. English translation: Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, Time after Pentecost, Book IV, tr. The Benedictine of Stanbrook Abbey (Fitzwilliam, NH: Loreto Publications, 2000), pp. 181-182.
[7] Thurston, Volume III, p. 182.
[8] Mt 5, 48.
[9] 2 Cor 4, 11.
[10] Theresa & Peter Martin, The Rule: St. John Paul II’s Rule for a Joy-filled Marriage of Divine Love (La Crosse, WI: Wojtyła Institute Press, 2023), p. 65. [Hereafter, Theresa & Peter Martin].
[11] Theresa & Peter Martin, pp. 97-99.
[12] 2 Cor 4, 11.