Are you prepared to accept children lovingly from God and to bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church? The priest invites them to declare their consent: Since it is your intention to enter the covenant of Holy Matrimony, join your right hands, and declare your consent before God and his Church. They join their right hands. Option A The bridegroom says: I, Name , take you, Name , to be my wife. I promise to be faithful to you, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love you and to honor you all the days of my life. I, Name , take you, Name , to be my husband.
Option B The following alternative form may be used: I, Name , take you, Name , for my lawful wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part. I, Name , take you, Name , for my lawful husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.
If, however, it seems preferable for pastoral reasons, the priest may obtain consent from the couple through questions. First, he asks the bridegroom: Name , do you take Name to be your wife? Do you promise to be faithful to her in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love her and to honor her all the days of your life?
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Next, the Priest asks the bride: Name , do you take Name to be your husband? Do you promise to be faithful to him in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love him and to honor him all the days of your life? Name , do you take Name for your lawful wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part? Name , do you take Name for your lawful husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?
Receiving their consent, the priest says to the bride and bridgegroom: May the Lord in his kindness strengthen the consent you have declared before the Church and graciously bring to fulfillment his blessings within you. What God has joined, let no one put asunder. May the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God who joined together our first parents in paradise, strength and bless in Christ the consent you have declared before the Church, so that what God joins together, no one may put asunder.
The Priest invites those present to praise God: Let us bless the Lord. Thanks be to God. Another acclamation may be sung or said.
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May the Lord bless these rings, which you will give to each other as the sign of your love and fidelity. Option 2 Priest: Bless, O Lord, these rings which we bless in your name. Through Christ our Lord. Option 3 Priest: Bless and sanctify your servants in their love, O Lord, and let these rings, a sign of their faithfulness, remind them of their love for one another. The Priest sprinkles the rings, as the circumstances so suggest, and gives them to the bride and bridegroom. The husband places his wife's ring on her ring finger, saying, as the circumstances so suggest: In recent decades, churches have begun to wrestle publicly with the question of same-sex marriage.
New understandings of the complexity of sexual orientation as well as biblical study since the midth century have led to greater acceptance of same-sex couples by some Christians. As same-sex unions or marriages have been recognized in some civil jurisdictions, churches in those contexts have debated whether to provide church ceremonies or blessings of these civil marriages.
Like weddings, funerals mark a human experience and not a distinctively Christian practice. Just as Christian wedding practices were influenced by Jewish practice as well as ancient Roman customs, so too Christian funeral practices have their origins in both Jewish and Roman customs. Little evidence remains of ancient Jewish funeral practice. The Old Testament mentions the burial of patriarchs, judges, and kings in their own land and with their ancestors Gen.
Burial of the dead is a recurring motif in the deuterocanonical book of Tobit 3rd—2nd century bce , the story of a devout Jew for whom burying not only relatives and friends but any deceased Jew was a vital practice. Scattered texts in the New Testament attest to washing and anointing the body John While Christian funeral practices built upon or modified Jewish and Roman practices, Christian theological understanding was also key.
Christian belief in the resurrection shaped their understanding of death, and Christian hope of eternal life with Christ offered consolation in the face of grief and loss, such that the day of death was understood to be the day of birth into eternal life.
Decorations at burial places suggested that Christians had gone to a place of rest, refreshment, light, and peace. Martyrs were understood to enjoy the immediate rewards of paradise with Christ. Simple shrines or tombs were erected at their places of burial, and Christians gathered on the anniversary of their death to celebrate the Eucharist with rejoicing. The expectation of bodily resurrection meant that Christians attended with care to the mortal remains of the faithful departed.
After death, the body was washed, anointed to preserve it before burial, and wrapped in linen. Early Christian leaders such as Tertullian, Augustine, and Ambrose encouraged Christians to modify the Roman practice of funeral feasts that took place at the graveside. Celebration of the Eucharist was encouraged in place of the Roman rites, and Christians were encouraged to use the funeral feast as an occasion to provide food for the poor. Roman practice also influenced Christian development of the viaticum , food for the journey.
The coin placed in the mouth of the dead was sometimes described as the viaticum , which had originally referred to supplies gathered for a journey. Christians came to use the term in reference to practices that sustained them in their Christian journey, in particular the Eucharist. By the time of the Council of Nicaea, the practice of giving communion to the dying as viaticum was well established.
In several 4th and 5th-century texts we find accounts of Christians dying with the Eucharistic bread still in their mouths. The earliest Christian burial practices were developed and elaborated in Eastern Christian traditions, many of which developed separate services for clergy and laity. In his study of Eastern rites, Geoffrey Rowell found a common underlying pattern: Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, commenting on funeral liturgy in 6th-century Syria, describes prayers of thanksgiving and the reading of scripture about the promise of resurrection.
He explains that the body, which had previously been anointed in baptism for sacred combat, is anointed in burial as a proclamation of victory in the fight. Contemporary Eastern rites have maintained the joy and triumph that characterized the earliest Christian funeral practices. In contrast to the Eastern Christian emphasis on the promise of eternal life with Christ, by the 5th century a profound shift was underway in the medieval Western church.
Historian Frederick Paxton explains this development: As death came to be seen as a summons to judgment and punishment for sin, greater ritual attention was given to the dying person. Preparation for death came to include ritual penance, a final anointing that came to be known as extreme unction, giving the viaticum , and reading the Passion gospel.
At the moment of death a prayer of commendation and psalms were said. The body was then prepared for burial by washing it and placing it on a bier while psalms were recited. This ritual action in the home concluded with a brief prayer, and the body was carried to the church as psalms and antiphons were sung. In some places, the deceased remained in the church building as members of the community kept watch, intermittently singing psalms and antiphons.
Manuscript evidence suggests that the rites in the church building underwent gradual changes between the 8th and 13th centuries as the Roman burial liturgy spread throughout Europe and incorporated elements of practices from other parts of Europe. Monasteries played a significant role in these developments, for they provided communities of care for whom liturgy was an important element of daily life.
While the body lay in the church building for several days, the daily prayer of the monks was supplemented by special offices for the dead and vigil prayers for the deceased. The rites in the church were followed by burial. Before the elaboration of the liturgy, the procession from the home to the church was the principal movement, and burial near the church building followed immediately upon a short service of prayers in the church. But as the liturgy developed, an additional set of suffrages was introduced at the conclusion of the funeral mass before removing the body for burial.
While the basic pattern of the funeral liturgy was set by the 13th century, local churches continued to adapt the liturgy to meet their needs. After the Roman Ritual was promulgated in , local adaptations were subject to the normative funeral liturgy in that book, which began with the parish priest and other ministers meeting the body at the home of the deceased. The body was carried to the church in procession as psalms and antiphons were recited. At the church, the Office of the Dead was prayed, and the body remained for the funeral Mass.
The absolutio , the final service of prayer pleading for deliverance from eternal death, continued to be integral to the liturgy. The body was carried with processional chants to the grave, where additional prayers were accompanied by sprinkling the body and the grave with holy water and incensing them. The 16th-century Reformation liturgies were shaped by the medieval Western fear of death and the accompanying themes of divine judgment and eternal punishment.
However, the Reformers rejected the Roman practice of prayer for the dead, and they also eliminated all references to purgatory. Lutheran funeral rites were simple, taking place entirely or primarily at the graveside. Lutheran church orders employed biblical phraseology while also making use of some medieval Western material.
A sermon, an innovation in Western funeral practice, was obligatory in the Lutheran church orders, and prayers emphasized admonishment of the living more than commendation of the deceased. The Reformed tradition eliminated virtually all liturgy associated with death, retaining only a very simple practice of burial as needed for proper disposal of the body.
The and prayer books of the Church of England make no mention of rites in the home. In both books, the priest is directed to meet the body at the church stile and lead the procession either into the church or directly to the graveyard. In the rite, after reciting sentences from the medieval office of the dead, the priest casts earth on the body and commends the deceased to God.
Additional prayers of commendation follow. Several psalms and the reading of 1 Corinthians 15, all taken from medieval offices for the dead, appear next, to be said either before or after the burial of the body. The celebration of communion follows. The book abbreviates this liturgy considerably. After the opening sentences, the remainder of the liturgy takes place at the graveside. Psalms are omitted, though 1 Corinthians 15 is read, and communion is not celebrated.
Medieval Western practice as well as the burial practices of the Reformers reflected an acceptance of death as a natural part of life. This acceptance began to change with the individualist and rationalist emphases of the Enlightenment, as liturgical scholar Karen Westerfield Tucker explains: Whereas in previous generations death was regarded as an unavoidable part of the fabric of life, in the early modern period death became taboo, a forbidden subject. In his study of funeral practices in the United States, Thomas Long identifies several contributing factors to this significant change in attitudes about death.
The death and devastation of the American Civil War — accelerated a crisis of faith as Christians struggled to reconcile their experience with their belief in a benevolent God. The concept of heaven was not abandoned, Long asserts, but rather domesticated, so that heaven was reimagined as a better version of the best of earthly delights.
In addition, during the late 19th century cemeteries began to be located in rural locations, away from cities and towns, with the result that the funeral ritual became separate from burial, which was increasingly optional. Long calls for the recovery of a robust Christian understanding of the communion of saints, the resurrection of the body, and the journey of the dead to life everlasting.
Because the Eucharist, along with baptism, is the primary Christian celebration of the paschal mystery, it is customarily celebrated at the death of a Christian. The ritual texts also include prayers for a wake, a final commendation, procession to the grave, and prayers at the graveside. Local episcopal conferences may adapt the liturgy to incorporate regional circumstances and practices. In the United States, for example, a provisional Rite of Funerals used between and was replaced in by the Order of Christian Funerals. Funeral liturgies in many Anglican and Protestant churches have also been revised in light of the 20th-century liturgical renewal with its emphasis on participation in the paschal mystery.
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Contemporary rites customarily include a service of the word, and preaching continues to be a hallmark of Protestant liturgy, although in some contexts this takes the form of a eulogy extolling the deceased more than a proclamation of Christian teaching. Anglicans and some Protestants have also begun to include the celebration of the Eucharist as part of funeral liturgy. Christians since the earliest centuries have practiced the burial of the body rather than cremation, a preference that Thomas Long attributes, at least in part, to superstitions about the fires of cremation symbolizing the fires of hell, or that cremation makes a bodily resurrection impossible.
In the Roman Catholic Church allowed Catholics to opt for cremation; the ritual requires that the remains be interred rather than scattered or preserved in some form. In his classic study Les rites de passage , 25 Belgian anthropologist Arnold van Gennep observed that such rites customarily include three stages: Theorists of ritual since then have developed various schema to categorize the diversity of ritual experience in different socio-cultural contexts and have utilized different methods to interpret the varieties of human ritual experience.
But most theorists continue to identify rites of passage as major type or genre of ritual.
In her study of ritual, Catherine Bell observed: This study remains the standard text on Christian marriage rites. A few year later, Stevenson drew upon this work to present the background and development of the post—Vatican II Roman rite of marriage. Other scholars have explored the development of marriage as a Christian institution. The final section of his book focuses on rituals and the overall process of becoming married.
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While Witte focuses on legal and canonical matters, he also touches on ritual practice. However, two other significant studies of Christian burial liturgies make no mention of van Gennep or rites of passage. In The Death of a Christian Richard Rutherford explores this history as it relates to Roman Catholic funeral liturgies; the first edition considers the history with regard to the Rite of Funerals , while the second, revised edition takes account of the Order of Christian Funerals.
These latter studies provide the most comprehensive historical treatment from the origins of Christianity to the present. During those long centuries, the living and the dead coexisted in close proximity, and in many ways death was seen as a natural part of life, accepted and understood. Mark Searle and Kenneth W.
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Stevenson, Documents of the Marriage Liturgy , 28 includes ritual texts in English translation from the 1st century through the 16th. A brief introductory essay provides an overview of the history of marriage liturgies, focusing on the texts in this collection. Stevenson also includes a few texts in an appendix to his study Nuptial Blessing. Love, Sex and Marriage in the Middle Ages: A Sourcebook , 29 edited by Conor McCarthy, includes writings of Christian theologians; legal texts; letters, chronicles, biography, and books about conduct; literary sources; and medical writings.
Together these texts give the reader access to diverse perspectives on love, sex, and marriage, providing context for understanding the development of the marriage liturgy, although liturgical texts are not part of this collection. No comparable compendium of primary sources in English translation exists for burial liturgies. Geoffrey Rowell includes a number of texts in his historical study The Liturgy of Christian Burial , and he also provides a few tables comparing Eastern prayers as well as midth-century Anglican revisions.
In The Death of a Christian: The Order of Christian Funerals , Richard Rutherford provides brief excerpts and summarizes several primary sources. A Source Book About Christian Death , 30 edited by Virginia Sloyan, includes biblical passages, Jewish and Christian prayers, hymn texts, poetry, and other writings about death arranged thematically, without a critical apparatus. Its primary intent is devotional, with its audience those who are dying, those who mourn, and those preparing rituals related to death and dying. The Hour of Our Death. Translated by Helen Weaver. Life Cycles in Jewish and Christian Worship.
Two Liturgical Traditions, Vol. University of Notre Dame Press, Paul on Marriage and Celibacy: The Hellenistic Background of 1 Corinthians 7. Deeply into the Bone: Re-Inventing Rites of Passage. University of California Press, Cornell University Press, Marriage in the Western Church: The Liturgy of Christian Burial. Alcuin Club Collections The Death of a Christian: The Order of Christian Funerals.
Liturgiewissenschaftliche Quellen und Forschungen A Study of Christian Marriage Rites. Oxford University Press, The Rite of Marriage. The Rites of Passage. Translated by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. University of Chicago Press, From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition. Westminster John Knox, Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, a History: Viking, , Kenneth Stevenson, Nuptial Blessing: Oxford University Press, , Liturgical Press, , — Searle and Stevenson, Documents of the Marriage Liturgy , — Stevenson, Nuptial Blessing , John Witte, From Sacrament to Contract: Westminster John Knox, , Saint Andrew Press, Ronald Grimes, Deeply into the Bone: University of California Press, , — The Rite of Funerals New York: Pueblo, , 4—5.
The Rite of Funerals , 2nd ed. Liturgical Press, , SPCK, , 13—