When we celebrate a Catholic wedding, we do so for more than the couple marrying. We do so for all those present. The same is true for baptism, First Communion, Confirmation, and Holy Orders. How many of the people present to witness a Catholic marriage are not Christian, are Christian but not Catholic, are Catholic but rarely attend Mass? We must use the occasion of a Catholic marriage to teach, to explain the Sacrament of Matrimony, to describe the vision of a man and woman being married in Christ.

I once was working with a woman who had been married for nine years before she divorced about two years before I knew her. One day I informed her and some other colleagues that my wife and I were about to celebrate our 30th anniversary. This woman turned to the other colleagues and said that I was married that long because I was a Catholic. There was a great deal of truth in her observation, but not in the way she was thinking about it. She was thinking that my wife and I would not have stayed married for three decades if it weren’t for the laws (those “bad laws”) of the Church. She was thinking that we remained married against our will.

No, our will when we married and our will throughout our marriage is that we would marry until death. We were (and are) in it for the long haul, for our growth individually and together, for our growth in Christ. You might recall the last line in the 1999 movie Anna and the King, when the Buddhist, polygamous king (Chow Yun-fat) is dancing with an Englishwoman (Jodie Foster) and tells her he now understands how a man can love just one woman. That is indeed the Catholic vision of matrimony. My message: Give the gift that keeps on giving. Give secure love. Give vowed love. And expect the same in return.

The Order of Celebrating Matrimony (2d ed., 2016) contains the following devout, deep, beautiful “Nuptial Blessing” which is recited after the couple has exchanged vows. It is addressed, at the outset, to all brothers and sisters present, and subsequently to God:

Nuptial Blessing

Dear brothers and sisters,
Let us humbly pray to the Lord
that on these, His servants, now married in Christ,
He may mercifully pour out the blessing of His grace and make of one heart in love
by the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood
those He has joined by a holy covenant.

[after silent prayer]

O God, Who by Your mighty power created all things out of nothing,
and, when You had set in place the beginnings of the universe
formed man and woman in Your own image,
making the woman an inseparable helpmate to the man,
that they might no longer be two, but one flesh,
and that what you were pleased to make one must never be divided;
O God, Who consecrated the bond of Marriage by so great a mystery
that in the wedding covenant You foreshadowed the Sacrament of Christ and His Church;
O God, by Whom woman is joined to man and the companionship they had in the beginning
is endowed with the one blessing not forfeited by original sin nor washed away by the flood.
Look now with favor on these Your servants, joined together in Marriage,
who ask to be strengthened by Your blessing.
Send down on them the grace of the Holy Spirit and pour Your love into their hearts,
that they may remain faithful in the Marriage covenant.
May the grace of love and peace abide in your daughter, N., and let her always follow the
example of those holy women whose praises are sung in the Scriptures.
May her husband entrust his heart to her, so that, acknowledging her as his equal
and his joint heir to the life of grace,
he may show her due honor and cherish her always
with the love that Christ has for His Church.
And now, Lord, we implore You:
May these Your servants
hold fast to the faith and keep Your commandments;
made one in the flesh, may they be blameless in all they do;
and with the strength that comes from the Gospel,
may they bear true witness to Christ before all;
may they be blessed with children, and prove themselves virtuous parents who live to see their children’s children.
And grant that, reaching at last together the fullness of years for which they hope,
they may come to the life of the blessed in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Through Christ our Lord.

As good as is this Nuptial Blessing, prior to Vatican II, the rite of marriage contained the following “Exhortation Before Marriage” which one of my siblings recently sent me. It was recited before the wedding vows were exchanged. There can be many reasons why this was deleted, perhaps most notably because of the growth of months-long marriage preparation. But so many of those present for today’s Catholic weddings will not have participated in such marriage preparation. These include the members of the wedding party and all family members and friends of the couple marrying. I commend this to you:

Exhortation Before Marriage

My dear friends: You are about to enter upon a union which is most sacred and most serious. It is most sacred, because established by God Himself. By it, He gave to man a share in the greatest work of creation, the work of the continuation of the human race. And in this way He sanctified human love and enabled man and woman to help each other live as children of God, by sharing a common life under his fatherly care. Because God Himself is thus its author, marriage is of its very nature a holy institution, requiring of those who enter into it a complete and unreserved giving of self. But Christ our Lord added to the holiness of marriage an even deeper meaning and a higher beauty. He referred to the love of marriage to describe His own love for His Church, that is, for the people of God whom He redeemed by His own blood. And so He gave to Christians a new vision of what married life ought to be, a life of self-sacrificing love like His own. It is for this reason that His apostle, St. Paul, clearly states that marriage is now and for all time to be considered a great mystery, intimately bound up with the supernatural union of Christ and the Church, which union is also to be its pattern.

This union, then, is most serious, because it will bind you together for life in a relationship so close and so intimate, that it will profoundly influence your whole future. That future, with its hopes and disappointments, its successes and its failures, its pleasures and its pains, its joys and its sorrows, is hidden from your eyes. You know that these elements are mingled in every life, and are to be expected in your own. And so not knowing what is before you, you take each other for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death.

Truly, then, these words are most serious. It is a beautiful tribute to your undoubted faith in each other, that recognizing their full import, you are, nevertheless, so willing and ready to pronounce them. And because these words involve such solemn obligations, it is most fitting that you rest the security of your wedded life upon the great principle of self-sacrifice. And so you begin your married life by the voluntary and complete surrender of your individual lives in the interest of that deeper and wider life which you are to have in common. Henceforth you will belong entirely to each other; you will be one in mind, one in heart, and one in affections. And whatever sacrifices you may hereafter be required to make to preserve this mutual life, always make them generously. Sacrifice is usually difficult and irksome. Only love can make it easy, and perfect love can make it a joy. We are willing to give in proportion as we love. And when love is perfect, the sacrifice is complete. God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, and the Son so loved us that he gave himself for our salvation. “Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

No greater blessing can come to your married life than pure conjugal love, loyal and true to the end. May, then, this love with which you join your hands and hearts today never fail, but grow deeper and stronger as the years go on. And if true love and the unselfish spirit of perfect sacrifice guide your every action, you can expect the greatest measure of earthly happiness that may be allotted to man in this vale of tears.

The rest is in the hands of God. Nor will God be wanting to your needs, he will pledge you the life-long support of his graces in the Holy Sacrament which you are now going to receive.