Congratulations…
…on your engagement. The Church of Saint Anne’s celebrates with you your decision to marry in the Church and receive God’s blessings on your union in the Sacrament of Matrimony. In its sacramental celebrations, the Church believes that God continues to be present to the world, doing the healing work of Christ through signs: words, actions, color, singing, and other symbols. By taking part in the sacrament yourselves and inviting your friends and families into the celebration as well, you make the work of Christ present in the world. The days, weeks, and years of your relationship that brought you to this moment have been full of the presence of God, showering you with loving-kindness. The sacrament gathers all of that energy and blessing, and propels you into a new world of grace, making you as a couple a visible sign to everyone, and especially to those most in need of the Good News of God’s reign, of the saving power of God.
Through you, God is saving people!
In one of the wedding Gospels, Jesus is a guest at the wedding in Cana. In that story, we are presented with a God who does not want the wine to go dry, who is present to our lives in our moments of joy and need, and who is ready to change a moment of shame and sadness into an unimagined blessing. In the same way, God changes the water of your life into wine in the person of your spouse-to-be, and calls you, through the sacrament, to do the same for others, wherever and whenever there is “not enough wine.”
Similarly, Psalm 34, one of the responsorial psalms for weddings, calls upon us to “taste and see the goodness of the Lord” in our experience of our own lives. Those of us who have been blessed with the experience of the profound human love that leads to marriage know that this is nowhere more true than in the love shared between lovers. Having known God’s blessing in our own lives, we are called to share it with the poor and lost, so that they too will know God’s love, and join in the rejoicing.
The wedding liturgy attempts to express all these realities in a way that actually makes them happen. We at Saint Anne’s are committed to assisting you in preparing a beautiful, memorable, meaningful wedding service.
