I was serving on a worship commission back in the seventies when a bride requested this processional, “Torn Between Two Lovers and Feelin’ Like a Fool.” It was, she explained of herself and her beloved, “their song,” if not, one devoutly hopes, their fate.
We searched in vain for the Christological meaning in that country classic. The same brave priest who told another couple they could not hoist the bride onto the altar for wedding pictures, gave her the news. She would have to settle for one of the familiars: Pachelbel’s “Canon in D Major” or Bach’s “Air on a G String” or Purcell’s “Trumpet Voluntary.” Along with Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March,” this was music for a red carpet entrance, rather than a procession. This was music for the bride’s grand appearance.
What I’ve seldom heard for the wedding processional is hymnody, particularly Easter hymnody. But how can we hope to make the foolish promise of marriage that we will be true to death, if we have not first known the improbable promise God makes to us in baptism? God’s promise is that nothing, not even death, will part us.
When one of our daughters married, she and her young man took their time planning the celebration. He had only three requests: He wanted to marry in his own suit, not a rented tuxedo. He wanted plenty of good food and liquor at the party. And he wanted to sing the litany of the saints at the liturgy.
Most of us hear the litany of the saints twice a year. We sing, “Pray for us,” at the Easter Vigil as the elect, robed in white, process through the church to the waters of baptism. The cantor calls on the cloud of witnesses to surround them, as the cloud covered and protected the children of Israel in their walk to freedom.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us.
Saint Joseph,
pray for us.
We will hear the names again as we gather around the font. The woman we met by one name goes into the water. The man we met by yet another follows her. They take new names, the names of holy men and women who have gone before them in faith. “Elizabeth Ann Seton,” we hear the priest say, his voice clear, or “Charles Borromeo, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
We sing, “pray for us” as the land awakens in spring and comes again to life. And we sing, “pray for us,” in the gloaming days of November, on the Feast of All Saints. Here in the mountains, the sun does not sink, or set. It drops behind the peaks — all at once — and the light is gone. As the light leaves earlier and earlier each day it is not hard to think on death. But the names come again — the names of angels and apostles and martyrs and doctors — reminding us that they who have died in Christ, are alive in Christ.
The litany of the saints recalls our births. We are baptized into Christ, and so, into his Body and into the company of the saints. Nothing will separate us from the Body, not even death.
None of us had sung the litany of the saints at a wedding. But the young couple was sure. They wanted, our new son-in-law told us, to “get all the help they could, right from the start.”
They had quite a list, from Moses, Ruth and Abraham to Zaccheus, Lawrence and Macrina. We asked the Ugandan Martyrs to pray for us. We asked Blessed Juan Diego and Dorothy Day to meet in prayer. We called upon Maximus the Confessor and Jeanne de Chantal to join the chorus. We sang and sang, linked in praise with the church through all time.
I was glad and grateful these saints had been invited to the celebration. Who better than Ruth to advise a young couple on in-law relations? Who better than Abraham to counsel them on life’s disappointments? Who better than Lawrence to teach them generosity? Who better than Dorothy day to teach them service? I didn’t even know who Maximus the Confessor was until my daughter and son-in-law introduced us. He turned out to be a good guest at the wedding.
We link communion and ordination consciously, and explicitly, to baptism. We know it is one’s baptism that brings Christians to the table and to holy orders. Imagine weddings linked more clearly to baptism than to Walt Disney’s version of “Cinderella.” The choice of hymnody might affect the emphases in the liturgy. Rather than “Princess for a Day,” we might be able to recognize a community of faith welcoming a new household into its midst. Singing the songs of faith, all of us singing, rather than staring, rapt, at the bride’s dress and make-up, we might get the young couple, and the assembly with them, off to a stronger start.
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