The Sacrament of Holy Matrimony

I'm getting tired of pretending I'm an evangelical. My whole family are Baptists and while they know their bibles a fair bit, they are completely ignorant (save my brother) of Church History and Systematic Theology. So everytime we get together I mention something from history or theology or church history that goes against the Neo-Con Evangelical mold, and it causes a really awkward moment. Tonight, I tried really hard the whole evening not to say anything. They mocked the Unitarians and I wanted to tell them that that's where sola scriptura leads, but I didn't. They laughed at Italian Catholics, but I said nothing (though I'm no lover of them either so it was easier). FINALLY. We're watching a video of their wedding.

First of all it was a Baptist church but they had a big cross and candles specially for the occasion - both of which they forbid in Sunday uses as idolatry (or at least Baptists traditionally did). Then the pastor almost quoted the Book of Common Prayer (CofE/Anglican) verbatim for the ceremony (remember a Baptist by the name of John Bunyon who let his family starve rather than submit to the Anglican Church). Finally they had vows (which need I remind you are 'forbidden' "let your yes be yes and your no be no") and a sacramental declaration of their marriage by the minister.

So I finally enlightened them - to their anger - that at best they were being pseudo-Anglicans (my brother doesn't believe Anglicans are Christians) and at worst crypto-Romanists. I showed them all the sacramental references or occurances in their ceremony and how it even mirrored the Mass. By the end of it, there was silence you could cut with a knife, and everyone just moved on to a new topic.

People certainly hate learning things, especially about theology. Much easier not to think about why your tradition rejected Holy Matrimony as a sacrament.

We even learned that some Anabaptists used to publically fornicate (have sex with) their elders to 'prove' that vows were meaningless (including marriage vows) and to show that it was NOT a sacrament. I'm not even going to begin on why Protestants celebrate Christmas... complete inconsistency to their traditions...

And for all the demands for biblical support, St. Paul says in Ephesians 5:23 concerning marriage: "sacramentum hoc magnum est" (Vulg.) "this is a great sacrament". It reminds me of the great Aquinas quote: "marriage is a sacrament for Holy Scripture sayeth "marriage is a great sacrament"". (Mysterion for you Greeks out there)

Necessity of Sacrament to Word

Today I was at my parents Baptist church/ecclessial community, and the sermon was good. An old fashioned pietistic/wesleyan call to repent sin, accept Christ into your heart, and put you're life under his lordship. They had salvation in three steps (as all good Evangelicals know - you have to have the 3 point sermon), and they were called the ABCs of salvation. While the sermon was fine in itself and well done for the time they had, I thought a good analogy would be that if it was the ABC of the Christian faith, Classic Protestantism (not to be confused with North American Evangelicalism) would be D-G, and Catholicism would be H-Z. In our gigantic Roman Church we have so much to learn about (today I was just learning about analytic vs transcendental vs existential thomism alone!), and I once again understood what Chesterton meant when he said that the Church is much bigger from the inside. So many many many people have been through it and contributed to it, it's more a Kingdom than a Church. I also noticed that all the talk about accepting Jesus into one's heart, could've been so easily tied to Transubstantiation and the reception of Christ in the Sacrament.

As Karl Rahner reminds us, grace is the communication of God-self to ourselves, and in the words of the consecration 'this is my body', the aramaic meaning is "this is my SELF". Luckily I was able to receive the Eucharist yesterday, and truly accept Jesus, his very body, blood and divinity. (Though hillariously our priest accidentally prayed "O Lloyd" instead of "O Lord", and he forgot the sign of the cross at the beginning of the Mass, he was retired but he came back and I guess his memory was failing.)

May we receive the Word of Christ in the story of Christmas, that he may dwell in our hearts by faith, and may we receive the Word in the Sacrament, that Jesus may dwell in our bodies as 'one flesh' as he did so blessed in Our Lady.