MARRIAGES IN LENT.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume 27, Issue 4, 1 April 1937, Page 1

MARRIAGES IN LENT.

(To the Editor.) Dear Sir,—Could not our Bishops and General Synod give us some ruling in' this matter of Marriages m Lent, and more especially Holy Week, and see that it is observed? The whole Church is becoming a laughing .stock to the world, and those few clergy who are loyal are being heavily penalised by the disloyalty of others. If we are Catholics let us be Catholic, and not half-pie non-conformists. We all know that non-conformity reaps a plentiful harvest of those who prefer a cushion to the cross. But is such milk-and-water religion going to save the world? Real Love is not sloppy sentimentality which always gives way to the whimpering, of spoilt children. Holy Saturday is a holiday for one reason only, namely because we wish to commemorate the one day during which our Blessed Lord's Body lay m the grave. It were better to scrap our religious observance of Holy Days altogether than to pander to a world which needs Holy Days a thousand times more than it needs holidays, and cannot endure the sight of a cross.—Yours faithfully, C. G. G. SALT. [Surely our Bishop's ruling is clear enough.—Ed.]

MARRIAGES IN LENT. (Contributed.) Galatians i, 5: "Stand fast therefore m the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." I would like to talk to you this evening about Marriages m Lent. Before Lent started this year I was asked if I would take a wedding m Holy Week, on what is known as Holy Saturday, or the one day m the year which the Church has set apart so that we may commemorate the day on which our Lord's Body lay m the grave. I said I was very sorry, but I felt that I could not do so. There were many reasons. Of course, the first was that to have a big wedding on such a day is, to say the least of it, very disrespectful to our Lord. Then,

also, our Bishop has given us a ruling m this matter of marriages m Lent, and has said that only "quiet" weddings may be solemnised, and that we must ask his permission first; and that no weddings are to be solemnised during Holy Week. These two reasons alone should be sufficient for any of us. But, of course, every rule must have exceptions, and I felt that there was no cause for any exception m this particular case. Neither of the parties concerned were Anglicans. However, my action m the matter has caused a lot of comment, and even unkind thoughts on the part of many of our own people. It has been represented to me that this sort of thing will lose us members for the Church, and also that there are many marriages solemnised m the Church of England during Lent, and also on Holy Saturday. And I know these things are true. lam very sorry that they are true. But because the Church has within it those who are disloyal, I do not feel that is any reason for my being disloyal, or for my being disrespectful to our Lord. I want to plead with' you. I stand fast for the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and I want to avoid as far as possible being entangled again with the yoke of bondage from which He would set us free. But I feel that I owe some explanation to you, for I recognise that this is your Church as much as mine, and that the burden of keeping it falls very largely upon you. You pay my stipend, and ;you, provide the parish with all its funds. May I, then, try to show you, why the Church does not sanction marriages m Lent? In the first place, let us try to realise that there is a difference between Faith and Religion. The difference is slight, perhaps, but it is important. It is much the same difference as lies between fire and heat. You cannot have fire without heat, and the heat of your winter's fire is most gratifying. The heat from the fire m your grate makes you feel comfortable; but you could not stand having the fire itself burning you; nor would that fire be any use if it did not give off its heat. Our Faith, or what we believe, is like the fire, and we read m Hebrews

xii, 29, "For pur God is a consuming fire. Our religion, the Catholic religion which we profess, is like the heat of that fire. We are Catholics, and as such it is up to us to conform to our Catholic Faith and Practice, otherwise we should not be honest unless we joined up with those who are known as "non-conformists." Our Lord Jesus Christ came to set us free — free, shall we say, from the numbing cold of selfishness and sin, which caves us to sleep and die, like the terrible cold of the far north. Christ came to set us free from that terrible destructive cold, and God is the Fire by which we are thawed out. The heat of His burning Love for us draws us to Him. But we cannot as yet be one with Him. He is too glorious for us as yet; His love must be kindled gently m our hearts, and our whole being must be changed before we can be one with Him. In love He draws us gently to Him. Our religion is His love; it is the heat of His fire which we love, and attracts us towards Him.

Christ came to set us free from the lust of the flesh, the bondage of this world. He calls to us to leave all we have arid follow Him — not because He wants to deprive us of our pleasures, but because He knows that m them lies nothing but death. And the Church is, m the first chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, called the Way. Our religion ;is a Way of Life, a great Highway along which 'the "ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with song and everlasting joy upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sadness shall flee away Isa. xxxvi, 10).

Let us take our religion sensibly, and intelligently. Man is born m a state of original sin. He is born the slave to sin; his nature is full of sin. His actions are not really ruled by his conscience, or even by his intelligence. And if they were ruled by his intelligence they would still be full of wrong-doing, for man knows so little. His actions are ruled by his passions, his desires, his appetites. And those things are horribly mixed up with evil. We have to win the mastery over them. We have to learn to control them, to govern them, to free ourselves from their bondage, and, if possible, to make them into

our slaves. We have to make our souls priests and kings over the unruly mob of our desires. Surely none of us believe that because we come to be confirmed, and the Bishop lays his hands on us, that some magical change takes place, and we are henceforth immune from sin? We do not believe m that sort of magic. We believe m God, and that He has shown us the Way of Escape, the Way of Freedom, and gives us His Holy Spirit to strengthen us m our long journey along that glorious Way. He delivers us from the bondage of Pharoah; He gives us Moses to lead us through the wilderness of Sin; He has promised to us that we shall reach the Promised Land. But He has also given us the freedom to choose whether we shall follow Moses or return to .Egypft. The whole Bible is full of this analogy. That Glorious Highway is the Way of the Cross. When the Church is askedi to perform marriages m Lent it is asked to take out of that great Highway one of the greatest stepping-stones to God. My dear people, you ought to know a little about me by now. You know that I have gone without my stipend rather than let your Church remain m debt. You also know my weaknesses. I want to ask you not to tempt me to be disloyal, but rather to help me to be more loyal. Cannot we all see eye to eye m these things? Cannot we all toil along that great Highway together, each helping the other, the strong carrying the weak and tired? Must we always listen to the call of the world? Must we always be slaves to its ideas, and forsake the ideals of Christ and our Church as too high for us? Even if we cannot go on further just now, even if we are weary with the toil for the time being, still "let us stand fast m the liberty which Christ has won for us, and still let us refuse to be entangled again m the yoke of bondage to this world.