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Josephine and Alfred Romine, celebrating their 65th anniversary, and Edgar and Lorelei Fulwider, celebrating 72 years of marriage, attended the archdiocesan wedding anniversary Mass Feb. 29 at St. Mary’s Cathedral. (Photos by Dennis Callahan/Catholic San Francisco)
March 9, 2020
Nicholas Wolfram Smith
When Josephine and Alfred Romine dated in the early 1950s, and then married in 1955, the common advice they heard was “the family that prays together stays together.”
“If people can do that, it helps strengthen their marriage and relationship,” Josephine Romine said.
In the 65 years the two parishioners from St. Robert have been married, they have picked up a few more lessons on what makes a successful marriage: listening, attention, patience, working together and forgiveness.
“And it’s so important to communicate,” she added. “You shut the one person out, what have you got?”
The Romines, along with about 125 other couples, were honored in front of a congregation of nearly 500 during the Archdiocese of San Francisco’s wedding anniversaries Mass Feb. 29 at St. Mary’s Cathedral.
The annual Mass, which is sponsored by the Office of Marriage and Family Life, honors couples for living the vocation to marriage and celebrates milestone anniversaries that some have reached. Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone celebrated the Mass.
In his homily, the archbishop said the vocation of marriage “is lived out in the body: married love is not just a meeting of the minds, it involves the gift of one’s whole self, body and soul.”
Archbishop Cordileone continued that the “complete and comprehensive union” of man and woman in marriage enables “the communion of body, mind and soul,” and makes married love an image of the Trinity.
The relations between the three persons of the Trinity reveal what love is, he said. “Love is always other centered, it is outward focused, not focused in on oneself. When that happens, the love dies,” he said.
Each person receives a vocation in order to give them an opportunity to take those “lofty ideals” and live them out concretely, the archbishop said. The sacrifices undertaken during Lent are always felt, the archbishop emphasized, whether in fasting or in giving alms. Similarly, the sacrifices experienced in marriage, “to continually give, when it becomes hard and tiring; to forgive; to make the sacrifices for one another: this is the only way to persevere in a vocation.
The sacrifices made during marriage “create within us an ever deeper capacity for love,” and are ultimately to help each person find happiness in God, Archbishop Cordileone said.
In his concluding remarks, the archbishop thanked the couples present for living out their vocations, “a witness that is so important in our time. Your lives are a witness to the power and beauty of these truths.”
Edgar and Lorelei Fulwider, celebrating 72 years of marriage this year. (Dennis Callahan/Catholic San Francisco)
Later in the Mass, the congregation applauded for the couples who stood as their anniversary milestone was called, from those celebrating fewer than 15 years of marriage to those celebrating more than 70. Afterward, the cathedral filled with the hum of more than a hundred couples renewing their vows to each other.
For Lorelie and Edgar Fulwider, who celebrated 72 years of marriage last November, the annual wedding anniversary Mass is an important day.
“It’s a beautiful, wonderful thing and it just gets better every year. In the year in between, or two years, you sort of forget how wonderful it was, and there it is again. I just feel this has been a great part of our marriage,” Lorelie Fulwider said.
Fulwider added that going to the Mass “gives us a little extra boost in our marriage, just our presence going to Mass. it reinforces everything we believe in.”
Being congratulated the following day after Mass at their parish, Good Shepherd in Pacifica, was also a “very proud” moment, she said.
“God has provided this to us. And we still have each other and are able to enjoy our marriage.”