A reflection given at the first wedding at St. John’s new temple, by Priest Paul Siewers. Photos by Sophia Sobeleski.
Beloved in Christ,
The marriage bed is undefiled, Scripture and Church Tradition tell us.
And it was at a wedding indeed where our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ performed his first public miracle according to the Gospel of John, turning the water into wine at Cana of Galilee, as the icon on the table here reminds us.
So the everyday is turned wonderful by Jesus Christ in His Church, and as Dostoevsky said, “beauty will save the world.”
The Apostle Paul tells us that the man should be head of the wife but should lay down His life for her and his family as did Christ. So like the Orthodox Church herself, Christian marriage is a blend of mystical hierarchy and conciliarity, of love in Truth Who is Jesus Christ.
This is a reminder, too, that Holy Scripture tells us that marriage is a mystery in the Church that typifies the relation of our Lord to His Church, Christ as the Bridegroom and the Church as the Bride, in which we all participate in a hidden unity, in what the Russians call the sobornost of loving each other more than ourself, in Christ.
This is the hidden meaning and mystery of marriage, which we cannot fully fathom intellectually, but which we spend our lives experiencing and learning with God’s help, amid all life’s challenges.
I have told you before of the lesson that Matushka and I received before our wedding from Priest John of the old Russian cathedral in Chicago. He asked us what is the most important thing about marriage. I said love, she said respect, he said, no, you’re both wrong, it is commitment.
As the Dance of Isaiah in the Orthodox wedding ceremony illustrates, this is commitment to one another in marriage, and to Christ, whom the priest unworthily symbolizes there.
It is said there are two paths in Orthodox Christian life on earth, that of monasticism and that of marriage. Both are paths of family, of community, and of love in truth, Christ. The one is celibate in a communal society of worship. The other is in the world, that God willing is a little Church that also a little kingdom that is fruitful. The crowns in the service will symbolize this, too. They are crowns for you as king and queen of your little Church and kingdom. They are also crowns of martyrdom. For marriage shares this with monasticism, it is an ascetic struggle, to be faithful to one another all our lives, to be chaste in our lives in that fidelity to one another, and to live not for ourselves but for Christ in our little Church of home and family. We do so, as the biblical iconography of marriage indicates, also in the promise and mystery of the larger Church family in which you are related through this wedding and by the baptism of your daughter Cecelia.
The beauty of marriage is the beauty of God’s love for us and our love for Him, and the capacity for love in the face of many struggles and trials that He gives to each of us, to love one another and our family more than ourself, in fulfillment of His New Commandment, that we love one another as He Christ loves us.
May that divine beauty of the mystery of marriage sustain you together all your years. May He bless you with many blessed years in your lives together. This is the heartfelt prayer of all of us in your Church family today. Amen.
Note: Joseph and Karina’s wedding on the Sunday before the Feast of the Transfiguration was a beautiful event. Normally an Orthodox wedding would not be held during a fast season (in this case the Dormition Fast), but it was by special hierarchical blessing due to family circumstances.