Pastor’s Letter: July 19, 2026

Pastor’s Letter: July 19, 2026

17 Jul 2026 | Posted by: chadmin

Dear St. Philomena Parish Family,

May the Lord’s blessing and peace be in all your hearts this day! This past weekend I had the joy of officiating a wedding for a wonderful couple, Patrick and Alyssa. I have known Alyssa for a good number of years and enjoyed getting to know Patrick during the preparation process. Their wedding was just the picture of a great wedding you would imagine—a joyful celebration with their family and friends. In the midst of marriage preparation, I will often ask a couple how things are going with their details and decision making. It is always interesting how couples handle decisions like where the reception will be, what is on the menu, what the decorations will be like, etc. For some couples, the bride-to-be will take the lead for decisions of things like the color choices and dresses. For others, they have a team of helpers including family and close friends. The groom-to-be often has the largest range of involvement, from being more quietly supportive to being actively involved. I will say, many a groom-to-be will volunteer that he enjoyed tasting the different cake options!

However a couple is planning their wedding, there are many decisions to make for the ceremony. For special events like weddings, we often all prepare by wearing special clothes. There will be specially chosen music, flowers, etc.—all of those external details help convey to us in our hearts how special the moment truly is. Those details also serve as a reminder of how a sacrament works—there are external signs (details if you will) that help us recognize what is happening interiorly in the hearts of the bride and groom—Jesus is there at work with His grace forging two hearts into one. Just as special dresses and suits/tuxes help us recognize that a wedding day is different from any other Saturday, so too do the exchange of vows and exchange of rings help us see how God is at work bringing this couple into the special union of Marriage.

What are the details of the Wedding liturgy? The overall layout of the liturgy shares many similarities with a typical Sunday Mass:  Entrance procession, Introductory Rites and Gloria, Opening Collect, and the Liturgy of the Word, followed by the Celebration of Matrimony with the Consent and Giving of Rings. For those celebrations that are within Mass, we continue with the General Intercessions, Offertory, Eucharistic Prayer, Nuptial Blessing, Communion, Prayer after Communion and Blessing, followed by the Presentation of the Couple and the Recessional. Celebrations that are outside of Mass will move to the Nuptial Blessing after the General Intercessions, followed by the Blessing and Presentation of the Couple.

One interesting thing you may have noticed about weddings—Have you noticed who goes last in the Procession/Recession? If you said the bride and groom, you are correct!  This is different than a typical Mass, where the priest main celebrant goes last in the procession, giving us a clue as to who are the main celebrants of a wedding: “According to the Latin tradition, the spouses as ministers of Christ’s grace mutually confer upon each other the sacrament of Matrimony by expressing their consent before the Church” (CCC, 1623). That is, the bride and the groom are the celebrants of the Sacrament of Marriage, different from all other sacraments where a Bishop, Priest, or Deacon is the celebrant. This is why a priest or deacon at a wedding is properly called the “Officiant” and is one who witnesses the vows on behalf of the Church.

Are there options for the vows and the exchange of rings? Yes! We actually have several options for the vows that can be used in a Catholic wedding. For the first version, the groom and bride (let’s call them John and Sarah) both repeat after the priest/deacon (or they could memorize):  I, John, take you, Sarah, to be my wife. I promise to be faithful to you, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love you and to honor you all the days of my life.

There is also an alternative set of vows that can be used:  I, John, take you, Sarah, for my lawful wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish until death do us part.

Either of these two sets of vows can also be asked in the form of questions with the groom and bride responding “I do.” For example, for the first version of the vows:  John, do you take Sarah, to be your wife? Do you promise to be faithful to her in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love her and to honor her all the days of your life? The groom would then respond: I do.

When it comes to the exchange of the rings, there are three options for the blessing of the rings, with the most commonly used one being: “May the Lord bless + these rings, which you will give to each other as a sign of love and fidelity.” The husband and the wife then take turns placing the rings on each other’s ring fingers, while repeating the words: “Sarah, receive this ring as a sign of my love and fidelity. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

Next week, we’ll take a closer look at the Nuptial Blessing—just what that is and how it asks God to strengthen the newly married couple. Know of my prayers and blessing for you all this week!

In Christ,
Father Luke