A Covenant Made Before God, and the Grace to Keep It
There is a particular hush that falls over our church in the moment before a bride begins to walk up the aisle. The music lifts, everyone turns, and a man who has been trying to look calm for an hour finally gives up the pretence. At St Anthony of Padua we are privileged to witness this often, and it never becomes ordinary to us.
If you are reading this because you are thinking of marrying here, you are very welcome. Perhaps you have been at Mass every Sunday of your life. Perhaps you have been away for some years and are not quite sure of your footing. Either way, please come and talk to us. Nobody here is checking your attendance record.
More Than a Beautiful Day
Weddings are lovely things. There are flowers, photographs, a dress that somebody has fretted over for months, and a reception where an uncle will say more than he intended. None of that is wrong. But the Church sees something underneath all of it that the photographs cannot capture.
Marriage between two baptised people is a sacrament. Our Lord raised it to that dignity, which means it is not merely a blessing laid on top of a civil arrangement. It is a channel of grace. Something is given at that altar that the couple did not possess when they walked in.
There is a detail here that surprises many people, and it is worth knowing. In this sacrament the bride and groom are the ministers to one another. The priest does not marry them. They marry each other, by their own consent, freely given and freely received, and the priest and the gathered Church stand as witnesses to it. That is why your consent matters so much, and why the Church asks you to give it in your own voice, out loud, in front of everyone.
A Covenant, Not a Contract
A contract exchanges goods and can be ended when the goods run out. A covenant gives persons, and persons cannot be handed back.
This is the language Scripture uses from the very beginning. “A man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). Our Lord takes up those same words and adds to them: “What God has joined together, let no one separate” (Matthew 19:6).
Permanence is sometimes heard as a burden the Church lays on couples. We would put it the other way round. Nobody standing at the altar on their wedding day wants a love with an expiry date. The permanence is not imposed on love from outside. It is the shape love takes when it is telling the truth.
Christ at the Wedding Feast
It is no small thing that the first of the signs our Lord worked was at a wedding (John 2:1-11). He did not simply attend as a guest. When the wine ran out, and a young couple faced an embarrassment they would have remembered for the rest of their lives, His Mother noticed before anyone else did and said quietly to Him, “They have no wine.”
He filled six stone jars with water and gave them back better wine than the feast had started with. Every married couple will one day find the wine running low. Christ is still in the habit of coming to weddings, and He has not lost the knack.
Free, Faithful and Open to Life
At the heart of the rite, the priest asks the couple three questions before the whole congregation. Have you come here freely and without reservation to give yourselves to each other in marriage? Will you love and honour each other as man and wife for the rest of your lives? Will you accept children lovingly from God, and bring them up according to the law of Christ and His Church?
Those three questions are not formalities to be got through before the ring goes on. They describe what a Catholic marriage actually is. It is free, because love that is coerced is not love. It is faithful, because a love that keeps one eye on the exit has not really arrived. And it is open to life, because love of its nature overflows and does not wish to be the last word about itself.
The Church of the Home
St Paul reaches for the highest comparison he can find. Husbands are to love their wives “as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her”, and he calls this a great mystery (Ephesians 5:25-32). A Christian marriage is meant to be a small, visible sign of how God loves His people: faithfully, sacrificially, and for good.
The Church calls the Christian family the domestic church, and that is not a flattering turn of phrase. It is a job description. Most of the holiness of married life is unspectacular. It is forgiveness offered at the end of a tiring Tuesday. It is grace said before a meal when nobody feels like it. It is a child learning the Hail Mary because they have heard it at bedtime a thousand times. It is two people arriving at the 10:30 Mass together, year after year, long after the wedding photographs have faded.
Grace for the Long Road
The sacrament is not confined to one afternoon in a church. It remains. The grace given on the wedding day is given for the whole of the marriage, including the parts nobody puts in an album: the redundancy, the illness, the stretch of years when the two of you are simply tired.
Catholic couples are not asked to manage that on their own strength, and they are not expected to. They have been given a sacrament precisely because they will need one. Prayer together, honest confession, and the Mass are not extras bolted onto married life. They are how it is sustained.
Marrying at St Anthony’s
We would be delighted to celebrate your marriage here, and we will help you through the arrangements, which involve both the Church and the civil authorities.
The most important thing to know at the outset is that the civil steps come first. You must give Notice of Marriage at the Register Office for the district where you live, and bring us the Marriage Schedule. Without that document the wedding cannot take place, so please do not leave it late. You will also need your baptismal certificate dated within six months of the wedding day, and you will attend a Marriage Preparation Day.
Everything is set out in order, with addresses, telephone numbers and fees, on our guidance page:
Getting Married at St Anthony’s: full guidance and the steps in order →
You can also download and keep the same information as a printable document:
Getting Married Guidance Notes (PDF) →
When your certificates are ready and we have your Marriage Schedule, contact the Parish Office on 01753 267 918 to book the meeting at which we complete the paperwork and go through the ceremony with you. If you would simply like to ask a question first, that is perfectly welcome. Come and find us after any of our weekend Masses.
Worth Doing Properly
A wedding lasts an afternoon. A marriage is meant to last until one of you is carried out of the church for the last time. That is a daunting thought if you are relying on your own resources, and an entirely different thought if you understand what the sacrament gives you.
Come and be married at the altar. Bring your families, bring your nerves, bring whatever faith you have at the moment. God will supply the rest, as He always has, and we will be glad to stand with you while He does.
“Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.” (Song of Songs 8:7)
Written by parishioners of St Anthony of Padua, Slough.