By the time all my kids are in bed, I feel like I’ve just run a marathon. I usually collapse on the couch and take a few minutes to breathe. The morning seemed like ages ago, and by nightfall, I’m totally spent. I’ve given love to my children all day long, and now what I need most of all is to be loved. 

In today’s Gospel, Jesus corrects the Sadducees who denied the resurrection of the body. Christ reveals the stunning plan of God—that in heaven, “they neither marry nor are given in marriage” (Lk 20:34) because heaven itself is the “wedding feast of the Lamb” (Rev 21). My romantic heart never tires of hearing this truth: God’s plan is to marry us forever! “As a young man marries a virgin, so your Builder will marry you” (Is 62:5).

In Karol Wojtyla’s play, The Jeweler’s Shop, a wife and mother, Anna, hears from a friend, Fr. Adam, that “the Bridegroom” is coming. Anna says, “This news not only fascinated me but suddenly awoke a longing in me, a longing for someone perfect.” Each one of us yearns to be loved by someone who is perfect—someone who sees us exposed in our total vulnerability, and says, “I’d die to give myself to her.”

The “good news” of the Gospel is that he’s real. He did die to give himself to her. So, from the quiet of my couch, I look at him on the cross, the Bridegroom, who gave himself to me today in the Eucharist—the “sacrament of the Bridegroom and the bride” (JP II, Mulieris Dignitatem). And I take a moment to stop giving and just let myself receive his love for me. Because, while it’s true that in giving we receive, I know I have nothing left to give, unless I first receive. “We love because he first loved us” (1 Jn 4:19).