Preparing for a Wedding

I just officiated at a wedding this past weekend. The wedding and reception were simpler than many I had seen, but the experience was equally meaningful. Then today I came across thoughts on preparing for a wedding. At first I thought it was from a recent writing, only to discover it was written by St. John Chrysostom who lived in the 4th Century! This advice is as relevant and thought provoking today as it must have been 1600 years ago:

When you prepare for the wedding, don’t run to your neighbor’s houses borrowing extra mirrors, or spend endless hours worrying about dresses. A wedding is not a pageant or a theatrical performance. Instead, make your house as beautiful as you can, and then invite your family and your neighbors and friends. Invite as many people as you know that have good character, and they will be content with what you set before them. Don’t hire bands or orchestras; such an expense is excessive and unbecoming. Before anything else, invite Christ. Do you know how to invite Him? “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers,” He said, “You do to me.” Don’t think that it is annoying to invite the poor for Christ’s sake. Don’t adorn the bride with golden ornaments, but dress her modestly. Thus from the beginning of her married life she will shun excess. Let there be no disorderly uproar. When everything is ready, call the bridegroom to receive the virgin. Let there be no drunkenness at the banquets and suppers, but an abundance of spiritual joy. Think of the many good things that will result from weddings like this! The way most weddings-if we can even call them weddings, and not spectacles-are celebrated nowadays ends in nothing but evil. As soon as the banquet is over, the bride’s mother has to worry whether anything she has borrowed has been lost or broken, and whatever pleasure she may have had is replaced with distress when she sees what disarray her house is in. So when Christ is present at a wedding, He brings cheerfulness, pleasure, moderation, modesty, sobriety, and health; but Satan brings anxiety, pain, excessive expense, indecency, envy, and drunkenness. Let us remember all these thing, and avoid such evils, that we may please God and be counted worthy to obtain the good things He has promised to those who love Him, through the grace and love for mankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom, together with the Holy Spirit, be glory, honor and power to the Father, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

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