Each morning when I rise, even before my prayer and meditation, I have to spend time stretching. My joints, muscles and ligaments seem to get tighter as each year goes by. Sound familiar? But, I also have to deal with the impact of some trauma following a car accident some years ago, that seemed to destabilize my lower back, making stretching all the more necessary. What I have learned is that stretching not only opens joints, pulls ligaments and relaxes muscles to where they should be, but it also provokes greater blood flow needed to dispose of impurities and toxins that build up, and at the same time bring the body's tissues nourishment and new life. I'll be the first to admit it, stretching is painful, but it leaves me more nimble and flexible to take on the demands of the day, and also lessens the chance of pulled muscles or injury that in the long run would be even more painful. Over the years since the 1960s when you stood before each other, the community and God to promise your lives to each other, you have had to stretch a lot. Sometimes it was only a matter of adjusting to the stiffness that comes with the natural inclination to depend only on yourself or believing that you have all the answers. You know the stretching that comes in communicating and learning from each other, in loving another more than yourself and realizing that life is about more than you — now that is a stretch for us all. For some of you, there have been moments that traumatized your relationship, like that car accident traumatized me: the loss of a job or financial calamity, illness or addictions, challenges of raising a family and dealing with extended family issues or the inconsolable heartache that comes with the death of a child or grandchild. And, let's face it, just living through the past five decades, especially beginning with the 1960s, we have had our share of trauma associated with cultural shifts, changes and suffering in the church, natural and manmade catastrophes. Those unable or unwilling to stretch in all of this have been left pretty tight. Indeed, you have had to stretch a lot to keep yourselves and your relationships flexible, nimble and open to the demands of life. The famous spiritual writer of the last century, Henry Nouwen, offers a telling image of how people of faith should view their lives and the twists and turns our journey takes. He noted that we often approach our lives as though we were building a nice wall out of the bricks of opportunity and accomplishment that come our way. There are the bricks of our family upbringing and the connections we gain through that experience. Then there are the bricks of the education we receive, the job we take, the person we meet and marry, the promotion in the work place with its salary increase, the house we buy, the boat or car as well, the children who come to us, the friends we made. All these bricks are organized and come together in the building of our lives, creating the structure that speaks of our hopes and dreams and our identity, telling people and ourselves who we are. But, eventually for all of us, some of those bricks are taken away, the death of a child, the loss of a job, being passed over for a promotion, financial calamities, health issues and pretty soon we begin to see the wall we have built with our expectations comes crumbling down. The person of faith, Nouwen says, is able to see in that moment the faithful presence of God, the one who has never left us, who keeps his word. He comes and picks up those bricks from the crumbling wall and begins to fashion something new, not a wall but a concave space, where we are invited to a deeper intimacy with the ones we love and with God. It is in that greater sharing, that greater intimacy that we begin to realize that the real stability in life is not the wall of our accomplishments but the faithfulness of the ones we love and the faithfulness of God, because both reveal how rich life is in keeping a promise, in keeping one's word. There is nothing to compare with having someone keep their word to us. The readings today feature the Pharisees, who reduced God's word to a law to be obeyed, for which they could take credit as their own accomplishment. But, we distort God's word if we reduce it to a legal obligation. It is, as we hear today, not first a law but a promise that does three things: 1) it gives us life "I am teaching you that you may have life;" 2) it opens us up to a new vision of life for by keeping God's word, "you will give evidence of your wisdom and intelligence; and 3) it draws us nearer to God, for the God who gives us his word is "close to us whenever we call upon him." All of this helps us understand what we are really celebrating today. It is about more than your toughness, durability or tenacity in putting up with each other for a half century. You are not here as those who have "survived" marriage, as if it were an endurance test! So, don't get any ideas about auditioning for the TV show "Survivor!" To be sure your resilience and hardiness is admirable and a great witness to us all, but even more important is the faith that allowed you to detect the grace of God working in you since the day it was promised to you. Yours is faith that believes that it is precisely in the limited circumstances and the limited relationships of your life that God has called and graced you. Today is about acknowledging and celebrating that you have been able to keep your promises because God has kept his to you. So, this afternoon in this Eucharist I invite you to reflect on the moments in which God's hand has come and taken up the collapsing bricks of your lives and created new spaces of his grace to work in you, calling you to greater intimacy with each other and with him. Call to mind how in going beyond, stretching your expectations through sacrifice you have discovered God's grace, making you more nimble and flexible, all the while reinvigorating and purifying your love for each other, like the blood that renews and purifies in stretching. In all of that, let God leave you today with a sense of wonder and awe as you think of all the many moments he has pulled you back from the edge of danger, saving you from the full consequences of your mistakes and sinfulness. Today is a day to congratulate you for keeping your promise, but you know better than I that it is even more so a day to thank and praise God for keeping his promise to you. And as you renew your vows today, I want to bring you back to that moment when it all began, by reading the words which were spoken by the priest on your wedding day just before you made your promises to each other and God made his to you. My prayer is that in the familiarity of those words from the past and the memories of all that has happened since your wedding day, your promised love will be made ever new and joyful today and in the days ahead. I invite all the couples celebrating their jubilee anniversaries to please stand: Excerpt from the exhortation before marriage: "My dear friends: You are about to enter upon a union which is most sacred and most serious. It is most sacred, because it was established by God himself. But Christ our Lord added to the holiness of marriage an even deeper meaning and a higher beauty. He referred to the love of marriage to describe his own love for his church, that is, for the people of God whom he redeemed by his own blood. This union, then, is most serious, because it will bind you together for life in a relationship so close and so intimate, that it will profoundly influence your whole future. "That future, with its hopes and disappointments, its successes and its failures, its pleasures and its pains, its joys and its sorrows, is hidden from your eyes. And so not knowing what is before you, you take each other for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death. "Truly, then, these words are most serious. It is a beautiful tribute to your undoubted faith in each other, that recognizing their full import, you are, nevertheless, so willing and ready to pronounce them. And because these words involve such solemn obligations, it is most fitting that you rest the security of your wedded life upon the great principle of self-sacrifice. "Henceforth you will belong entirely to each other; you will be one in mind, one in heart, and one in affections. And whatever sacrifices you may hereafter be required to make to preserve this mutual life, always make them generously. Sacrifice is usually difficult and irksome. Only love can make it easy, and perfect love can make it a joy. "And if true love and the unselfish spirit of perfect sacrifice guide your every action, you can expect the greatest measure of earthly happiness that may be allotted to us in this vale of tears. "The rest is in the hands of God. Nor will God be wanting to your needs, he will pledge you the life-long support of his graces in the Holy Sacrament which you are now going to receive."