Married At The Seminary

This past weekend my wife and I attended a wedding at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Mo. A cousin of Sylvia is studying to become a deaconess there and she had met a seminarian in a Greek class a year ago. A year later they had invited their families to join them as they were joined together in marriage during a Saturday evening worship service.

Ellee and Kyle exchanging vows

The interesting thing about this wedding was the way it was conducted. Very little of the usual modern day traditions were observed. There was no procession of bride's maids, no groom's men, no large bouquets of flowers, no ushers, no separate bride's procession on her father's arm. Bride and groom followed the congregation accompanied by clergy and sat in the front row until it was time to exchange their vows. What both Sylvia and I appreciated was that the newly married couple acted as ushers for the congregation, greeting everyone personally as they left the church.

Up to and during the Middle Ages, weddings were always considered family and community affairs. The only thing needed to create a marriage was for both partners to state their consent to take one another as spouses. Witnesses were not always necessary, nor were the presence of the clergy. The role of the clergy at a medieval wedding was simply to bless the couple.

It wasn't official Roman Catholic church policy until the Council of Trent (A.D. 1545) that a third party (i.e., a priest), as opposed to the couple themselves, was responsible for performing the wedding. Trent called marriage a sacrament and sacraments, they taught, can only be administered by clergy.

The term sacrament is a Latin translation of the original Greek term mystery, from the Greek verb myein, to shut the mouth and then to instruct. Mystery, by its very nature, points to something beyond our limited intelligence. The term was used in the early church to describe many kinds of religous ceremonies and practices.

By the twelfth century Hugh of St. Victor listed some thirty sacraments. This was probably the result of Augustine's definition of sacraments as signs pertaining to things divine, or visible forms of an invisible grace. Since there is no limit to the number of ways God's grace can be expressed, the number of sacraments increased with Christian sensitivity and imagination, but this made it very difficult to administer and to control the sacraments. Therefore the Council of Trent decreed that not all signs of sacred things had sacramental value. Visible signs become sacraments only if they represent an invisible grace and become its channels.

Roman Catholic teaching realizes that marriage existed as an institution prior to Christ's founding of the Church, and accepts the validity of marriage in various traditions. Nevertheless, it holds that the marriage of two baptized persons has a special role in the building up of the Church. This tradition also holds that marriage imparts a grace and character which strengthens love, enabling the married couple to imitate and reflect the love of Christ for the Church. Because of such an understanding of marriage as a sacrament, the Catholics in marriage promise to share their faith through baptism and the proper instruction of children in the Roman Catholic understanding of that faith.

In the Reformation Lutherans defined the sacrament as a sacred act instituted by God. In such a sacred act God joins His Word of promise to a visible element. By doing this He offers, gives and seals the forgiveness of sins earned for all men by the suffering, death and resurrection of Christ. By this definition there are only two sacraments, namely Holy Baptism and the Lord's Supper. Sometimes Holy Absolution is counted as a third sacrament, even though it has no divinely instituted visible element such as water, bread or wine. Likewise, by this definition marriage is not a sacrament since there is no divinely commanded visible element nor is the forgiveness of sins offered.

In the style of the later medieval period, Ellee and Kyle walked hand in hand from her house to the church. The family and friends met the couple outside the chapel where we heard the pastor explain what was about to happen and pray God's blessings upon the couple. Then we processed inside where the two of them exchanged their vows. After the Divine Service of the Word, we processed to the seminary dining hall for a feast. Music filled the air as we ate and talked.