For a Wedding is a Funeral - New Evangelizers

“Come to the church on Saturday,” I said to my students, “Come and see Mr. Grayson die.”

That is what I said when I invited my students to my wedding.

This past week I was privileged to attend both a wedding and a funeral. It is a privilege because you are invited to be a part of two incredibly important family moments. The former is the beginning of a new family. The other is a parting of a loved one from this earthly life. Both are pivotal, life-changing events. And both have some striking similarities.

When I was about to me married, I understood that marriage was a kind of death. Now most people would read that sentence and think it was some kind of joke or a dig at married life. But it is neither. It is a sober statement about the reality of marriage. When you get married, you are dying to yourself.

I understood that the moment I took my vows that my old life would be gone forever. I was no longer and independent man. I would be a husband, and my whole being would be defined by the relationship I would have with my wife. Many people think of marriage as an accessory to life. What I mean is that they imagine their own life with its desires and dreams and then they see if marriage fits into those plans. They imagine themselves to be a monolith, improved upon but not essentially changed by the union. As someone who married in my early twenties and has been married for a few decades, I can tell you that this is in no way true.

Marriage changes you. I am not the same person I was before I was married. And the time I spent married, my wife and I have grown together, not as parallel entities, but as one life woven together.

This is the meaning of the unity candle that we use at weddings. There is the one unlit candle between two lit candles. The bride and groom take the lit candles, which represent their own lives and together they light the single candle in the center, representing their lives burning as one flame. But the last important part of the tradition is that the bride and groom blow out the first two candles. This means that they die to their old selves.

I don’t live for myself. When I wake up in the morning, before I think of my, my thought should be how I can make my wife’s life better. This is easier my situation because that is always what my wife does: she thinks of my needs before her own. When I took my vows I also died to any other potential romantic relationship. Saying “yes,” to your spouse is also saying “no” to the billions of other potential mates. Again, in my case this was easier because I’m not sure anyone else but my wife would have me.

But together, God takes these two dead people and resurrects them into one flesh, one life.

And something similar happens at a funeral.

Here the dying is literal. The parting that comes with death is one of the hardest things for any of us to endure. Even if we are people of faith, the earthly loss of the person we love is devastating. I lost my own mother several years ago, but I still miss her every day. One of my best friends died a few months ago and there is a conspicuous absence in my life. When we truly love someone, when they leave, they take a little piece of our hearts with them.

The funeral reminds us that the life that we knew before is gone.

But it also reminds us that a new life is beginning.

We are the the Church, and thus we are also the bride of Christ. We have been living this earthly life, waiting for our great wedding day, when we will be united to our Beloved Jesus. The funeral is a reminder of that great Wedding Day. If our faith is true, then the funeral is not only a time of mourning, but a time of rejoicing. Yes, the old life is gone, but the new and better life has just started. CS Lewis was fond of saying that we are currently living in the Shadowlands and that real life has not yet begun. When we die, the faithful will be taken to be with the love of their life: Christ.

When that happens, our lives will be woven together with His in a heavenly marriage. This is what Christ meant when He said, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live.” (John 11:25)

That is not to say that this undoes the mourning we experience. Human life is complicated and the great moments of life are both happy and sad. I think of fathers watching their daughters get married and feeling the loss of their child along with the joy of her new life. When I think of my own mother, I am sad that she is gone, but I am happy that all of her earthly miseries are behind her and that she is resting with Jesus. She began a new life with Him and set the old one aside.

Because every funeral is a wedding.

For a wedding is a funeral.

Copyright 2025, WL Grayson

W.L. Grayson

I am a devoutly Catholic theology teacher who loves a popular culture that often, quite frankly, hates me. I grew up absorbing every movie, TV show, comic book, science fiction novel, etc. I could find. As of today I’ve watched over 2100 movies and tv shows. They take up a huge part of my life. I don’t know that this is a good thing, but it has given me a common vocabulary to draw from in order to illustrate whatever theological point I make in class. I’ve used American Pie the song to explain the Book of Revelation (I’ll post on this some time later) and American Pie the movie to help explain Eucharist (don’t ask). The point is that the popular culture is popular for a reason. It is woven into the fabric of our lives and imaginations, for good or ill. In this blog I will attempt to bring together the things of heaven with the things of earth. Of course this goal may be too lofty for someone like me.