Easterners

103 - 12th Dec 21 - Easterns

Rev dear Rev: Having heard of an Eastern Church Wedding in your parish, I was wondering what are the differences between the western weddings and the eastern weddings in terms of the Solemnities and Rites of either and whether there is some attempt to bring the two styles together, something we might benefit from down here in Cardiff Wales GB?

Will you still love me when I'm no longer young and beautiful? In a sense this sentiment, a strong one in the final days of Queen Anne Boleyn, is envisaged as an overall backdrop to the very different ceremonial of the Eastern Church Wedding, hence the coronation theme in which each young person becomes a king or queen in the kingdom and monarch of their new conjointed household, much of which faithfully transmits to the future the important insights of the Jewish community about human relationships begat by love. The following components are quite different in the Eastern Wedding:  

-Procession to the altar of groom and mother;

-Procession to the altar of bride and father;

-Solemn intoned and sung Blessing by the priest - required for validity - unlike the western weddings helas;

-Enthronement of each party in God's holy sanctuary;

-Coronation with decorative crowns joined by ribbons of both parties in God's holy sanctuary;

-Exchange of solemn and permanent vows for this life, following the agreed formula;

-Blessing and exchange of rings, a single ring for each party rather than just for the bride;

-Blessing of ribboned gold leaves for an Adamite blessing;

-Leading the couple after their vows around the holy altar three times while invoking the Blessed Trinity, with the blessing of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit - not Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier, as does another reformation church.

So western rites have been too bruised, beaten, and battered by reformation doctrines concerning the sufficiency of the couple in a nous orientated exchanging of their vows in which the couple manifest the sacrament to each other in the now increasingly discredited formula of the western Jesuits led by schematised thinkers such as the council theologian Urban IX as he was called at the time when he devised the formulas of the council at Gaudium et Spes 48 which he tried hard to canonise major league into a dogmatic definition among the council fathers. Conclusion? Westerners had historically spent too much time hunting down reformers and paradoxically adopted many of their largely statalist and principate and registry office notions of the theological doctrine of weddings. Eastern Rite Weddings are more faithful to the insights of Judaism and more faithful to the praxis of the early Christians under Roman persecution in the East. So while the norms of the two legal systems, green and blue, western and eastern, are quite similar, at green canon 1055 CIC of the western codex and blue canon 776 CCEO of the eastern codex, there are some subtle and important differences contained within the formulas adopted - instructum - with the proviso of the eastern weddings that the marriage be celebrated with a sacred rite - blue canon 781 * 2 CCEO. So the rite can be glimpsed for the major features as per above. No eucharistic rites needed.

It might yet be possible for individual parish priests who have cultivated the favour of the easterners to import elements of the eastern rites into the western rite since the western rite is woefully lacking in colour and drama, and this can be done with a simple letter to the local bishop, via the dean maybe or the vicar judicial, and the local bishop can then seek a "Licentia Quoad Experimentum" from the relevant department of the Nuncio pro quinquennio intimating to some Congregation or Pontifical Council of the Roman Curia the substance of the request. It is possible, nowadays under an enlightened pope, and it might bring many blessings to the depleted wedding sanctuaries of the cold frigorificos and porticoes of the western churches - certainly judging by the response of the bride-watchers and women at that parish church above, this would please young women no end - as they confessed to renewed interest in the subject of the gold rings and gold leaves and golden rituals, fully confessing to loving ritual and ceremonial on such special, sonorous, and sweet days, and preferably in plentiful abundance, if you please. Romance - always a winner. Floreat ius, floreant iura partium.