The wedding of Andrew Olsen and Victoria Pionessa, Edmonton
18/7/2026
Beloved, we gather today together not to witness a passing event or an emotional encounter. The love that unites (the groom’s name) and (the bride’s name) today is not merely a moment in which a person falls into desire for another person; rather, it is a state of conscious surrender and joy in what the human heart decides. Each looked at the other, and each submitted to that power that suddenly erupted in their hearts, and they accepted with joy to be led by this power. They are today like a blessed fish surrendering to the wave of love, not to be lost, but to sink into the depths of the sea of partnership and the one life. Love for us is not, as you say in your countries, ” we fell in love”, but rather the moment in which a person decides to surrender to his heart and submit to it, so that it leads him to the other
Love in its essence is the longing for the other to become a dwelling place for me. A poet from my country says: ” For I, from the beginning of creation, have been searching for a homeland for my forehead”. The human being is in constant search for a dwelling for his heart, for a dwelling for his soul and for his body. He searches in everyone’s eyes and faces, and when he finds that face, he loves and cries out, as the bride cried out in Holy Scripture: “I have found him whom my soul loves” In that moment a deep desire for unity is born: that my beloved should be me. And as Holy Scripture teaches us in the Song of Songs: “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine“.
These words do not mean ownership or control; rather, they mean the pure desire to be united together. And the expression of this union is manifested in the simple details of daily life:
- That the other’s smile becomes a moment of my own smiles.
- That his laughter becomes part of my day, and his breath part of my air.
- That the other be a partner in the hours and moments; we eat together, we laugh together, we play together, and when trials come, we weep and suffer together.
- That his face be the first face with which I begin my morning and the last face with which I end my evening.
But what gathers them in the church today? It is marriage. Marriage is the decisive decision that this shared desire is not merely feelings, but the decision to be in a permanent covenant. Not a covenant that you be mine as personal property, but a covenant that you be “I”, and a covenant that I be “you”. It is the transformation of the emotion of human love into a state of union that cannot be severed.
The third axis: What does Christ do in this marriage?
And here we ask the essential question: What does Christ do with their marriage today? Is the mere presence of Christ here a Christian tradition or a social custom?! The invitation of Christ to be a partner in this marriage means that He alone is able to transform your human desire for union into a real fact that emerges from the bounds of humanity to the expanse of divinity.
- Christ today takes your individual existence (I and you), and fuses it by His grace to make it “an existence together”.
- And greater than that, Christ intervenes to release this love from the narrow bounds of time and space into the eternity that does not end.
O (Andrew ) and O (Victoria), your love, which began at a specific moment in time on earth, Christ blesses today and pours into the eternity that does not end. Your love is no longer governed by the time of this mortal world; rather, it has become an eternal love extending to the kingdom of the heavens.
O our beloved children, keep this covenant. Make Christ always the third in your home, for He is the guarantor of transforming every affliction into joy, and every moment of time into eternal glory. May the Lord bless you both, establish your home upon the rock of faith, and make your lives an endless hymn of love.
Amen.