Last week we began exploring the Nuptial Blessing, a powerful prayer of blessing prayed by the priest or deacon over the couple on their wedding day. Establishing marriage in the order of creation and redemption, the Church explains God’s unfailing care for married couples and the model He gave them through Jesus His Son and Bridegroom of the Church. Now let’s look at what the Church asks for the couple:

Graciously stretch out your right hand over these your servants (Name and Name), we pray, and pour into their hearts the power of the Holy Spirit. Grant, O Lord, that, as they enter upon this sacramental union, they may share with one another the gifts of your love and, by being for each other a sign of your presence, become one heart and one mind.

   Like the three Sacraments of Initiation (Baptism, the Eucharist, and Confirmation), the Church asks God in Marriage to pour out the Holy Spirit into the hearts of the faithful (cf. Rom. 5:5) like oil poured upon priests, kings, and prophets in the Old Testament. Jesus, the Anointed One, pours the Spirit upon married couples as the virtue of charity that enables us to love God and others with His love. He also brings the gift of unity, by which husband and wife can become one heart and one mind as well as one body.

May they also sustain, O Lord, by their deeds the home they are forming and prepare their children to become members of your heavenly household by raising them in the way of the Gospel. 

   Most of married life takes place in the home, often called the domestic church. So the first place where families need God’s blessing is in their homes and in their children. Children are the crown of marriage and the greatest opportunity for married couples to grow in holiness (often to their chagrin). Raising children in the faith is the greatest responsibility of husband and wife after getting their spouse to Heaven.

Graciously crown with your blessings your daughter Name, so that, by being a good wife and mother, she may bring warmth to her home with a love that is pure and adorn it with welcoming graciousness. Bestow a heavenly blessing also, O Lord, on Name, your servant, that he may be a worthy, good and faithful husband and a provident father.

Though husband and wife are now one flesh (Gen. 2:24), they remain unique individuals loved by God, and so Holy Mother Church asks specific blessings for each spouse. Men and women require different graces to live out their identity most fully, and while not every family structure looks like a Hallmark movie, both home and work require God’s blessing! Finally, the Church links the earthly Mass they attend each Sunday with the heavenly Mass they will one day share in the life to come.

Grant, holy Father, that, desiring to approach your table as a couple joined in Marriage in your presence, they may one day have the joy of taking part in your great banquet in heaven. Through Christ our Lord.

Next week, we’ll look more carefully at how parents can transform an already warm and loving home into a domestic church in which children are brought closer to God!

   -Fr. Stephen