Ruth Institute Blog

by Mary Kochan

They grace the cover of Time magazine this week, do Kate and William, with not one but two full-page spreads inside: of the coach ride after the wedding and of the Westminster Abbey recession.

Days after the grand affair, the world still gawks and talks.  Much of the talk is about what the newlyweds have done and yet could do for the image and the substance of the British monarchy so bound up with the identity of the country itself and so besmeared with scandal and stupidity in recent decades. Thus it is that the royal family and much of Britain took this wedding and take this marriage very seriously.  There is a keen sense that in some way the future of their society, as they know it, depends on this marriage.

This is worthy of worldwide attention then, because the wedding of Kate Middleton to the heir of the house of Windsor demonstrated with a great deal of very British precision and no lack of careful punctuation, exactly how to take a marriage, and for that matter, marriage itself, seriously.

There was no pretending that this marriage was merely about the two young lovers and their “feelings.” Despite the fairy-tale aspects and all the Cinderella references, this wedding anchored their marriage into a familial and social order that goes way beyond them in time and geography.  Contra the modern conception of the atomized individual, both families were present and involved as though “t]he future of humanity passes by way of the family” (Familiaris Consortio), because indeed it does. Human beings do not create themselves; they do not create their own identities. They discover who they are and for (blessedly, still) most that discovery takes place in a family context, where roles of son or daughter, nephew or niece, brother or sister, weave the texture of life.

Just as human beings do not create themselves, they do not create marriage. Marriage is an estate given to man by his Creator and human beings stand under the judgment of God regarding how seriously they take it.  There was no mincing of words on that score and everything attending the ceremony underscored the sacred nature of the proceedings. The couple did not use the wedding to showcase their hobbies or any other frivolity.  They married in a sacred place, the most opulent and venerable space available to them given their station in life. Their wedding was presided over by the highest ranking clerics available to them. And the ceremony was accompanied by beautiful sacred music, some traditional and some composed especially to mark the occasion – but composed, as was their own prayer, in accord with the religious tradition they both inherited and assented to, screwed deeply into the sacred history of that heritage and thus timeless.  Timeless the music, timeless the readings, timeless the prayers, and even the dress, for it is by such timelessness that we celebrate what is transcendent.

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