was a wonderful one, for both
Jesus and Mary were there. It was therefore the ideal of all weddings
which seem to lack the true note of the new matrimony which springs from
the Incarnation if they take place without such guests. As in
imagination we follow Mary as she goes quietly about the house, which
like her own was a home of the poor, helping in the arrangements of the
wedding, one cannot help recalling many weddings with which one has had
something to do, and in the arrangements of which we cannot think of
Mary as having any part. They were the arrangements of the weddings of
Christians, and the weddings took place in a Christian church; but
neither is Mary there nor Jesus called. We are unable to think of Mary
as present amid the tumult of worldiness and frivolity, the endless
chatter over dress and decoration, which so commonly precedes the
celebration of a sacrament which is the symbol of "the mystical union
that there is betwixt Christ and His Church." That deep piety which puts
God and God's will before all else would strike a jarring note here,
where the dominant note is still the pagan note of the decking of the
slave for her new master. It is perhaps not without significance of the
direction of the movement of the modern mind that the protests of the
emancipated woman are against the Christian, not the pagan elements in
matrimony: she tends to regard marriage as a state of temporary luxury
rather than the perfect union of two souls in Christ. Clearly in
marriages which are regarded as purely temporary engagements, dependent
on the will of the parties for their continuance, there is no place for
the mother of Jesus. The purity that emanates from her will be a silent
but keenly felt criticism on the whole conception underlying a vast
number of modern marriages. Even as I write I read that in a certain
great city in the United States the number of divorces granted was one
fourth of the number of the marriages celebrated.

Clearly at marriages which are surrounded with this atmosphere of
paganism, be they celebrated where they may, there is no place for the
Blessed Mother; and neither is Jesus called. His priest, unfortunately,
is often called, and dares celebrate a sacrament which in the
circumstances he can hardly help feeling is a sacrilege. There are many
cases in which what purports to be Christian marriage is between those
who are not Christians, or of whom only one is a Christian in any
complete sense.