About the Author

Quinton Peralta is a Byzantine Catholic residing in Toronto, Canada. He is a current doctoral student in the Political Science Department of the University of Toronto. His present work focuses largely on the virtue of moderation and its connection to personal and political identity formation, though his interests span widely in the History of Political Thought. Quinton and his wife, Jasmine, have recently been blessed with their first child, Thomas.

Re-Creation In The Byzantine Rite Of Crowning: A Reflection On The ‘Baptism’ Of Marriage

You who dwell in the garden,

The companions give heed to your voice;

Cause me to hear.

(Song of Songs 8:13)

Marriage Without Meaning       

Twenty-first century North America is arguably experiencing a meaning crisis. I believe this is only because the modern world, in its confusion, has conflated the action of indulging one’s base appetites with the embrace of ‘life.’ When pleasure becomes moral ground, however, we quickly devolve into conflict and narcissism; this is a vision with no plan or development for one’s life. No doubt, this is the delusion that is destroying so many of society’s central institutions, for the idea of an institution connotes endurance, constancy, and longevity. A suffering institution of supreme importance today, in my view, is marriage.  Today, we are told that marriage is about our ‘happiness’ and should primarily aim at gratifying the members of that union; that outdated notions of marriage which advocate for life-long commitment are uncaring and insensitive to the ‘reality’ of fallible human relations; that we should not base intimacy on the claims of old superstitions that misunderstand human nature – but I say no. What these criticisms lack is the perception of marriage as an institution integrated with the deepest desires of humanity, nor do they recognize the vision in which marriage rests. The Christian, however, has been graced with such an understanding of marriage. In fact, when seen correctly, the beauty of this vision is so overwhelming that we feel obliged to share what is evidently good news.

But what is this ‘good news?’ A world so replete with marital and sexual sin needs help to reperceive marriage; we believers must present to our neighbours an image of such beauty that its truth and goodness become burdensome to deny. But where can this image, this icon, be seen? I believe that one such icon is found in the Byzantine Christian tradition’s Rite of Crowning. My intent here therefore is to describe this rite, the sacramental service of marriage for Eastern Christians, to explain how it participates in and images the salvific Theo-drama that is fully revealed in the life of Jesus Christ Who makes marriage whole and life-giving. The liturgical service first speaks of the original beauty and righteousness of marriage, though this was all regrettably stained by that first sin and subsequent Fall of Adam and Eve; but the Rite then turns to the revelation of Our Lord Who blessed and repaired – one may say baptized – marriage by his presence at the Wedding in Cana. In a world struggling with the effects of sin, especially so with regard to marriage, the Rite of Crowning images how our tainted nature – stained, though good in its essence – can be healed and returned to its original perfection in being ordered toward the self-sacrificial love that Christ alone has revealed and calls forth in the mystery of marriage.

Firstly, I wish to allay some confusions that I anticipate will emerge. The Rite of Crowning is a different ceremony from the Betrothal, which is when the rings are exchanged. In the Byzantine Tradition, unlike in the Western tradition, the exchange of rings involves an entirely separate service from the marriage itself. The rings instead act as a promissory symbol; marriage itself, however, occurs with the crowning. Though I outline parts of the Rite of Crowning, I am skimming over many details – an interpretive choice – which should not be mistaken as an indication of their actual duration or importance. I am merely drawing out one theme of the Rite of Crowning to contemplate how it portrays the fulness of marriage as participating in Christ’s redemptive suffering.

The Rite of Crowning

The betrothed couple enter the church and walk through the midst of the people toward the altar while Psalm 128 is sung:

Blessed is every one who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways! / You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; / you shall be happy, and it shall be well with you. / Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; / your children will be like olive shoots around your table. / Lo, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. / The Lord bless you from Zion! / May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life! / May you see your children’s children! / Peace be upon Israel!

The couple hears these instructions coming from ancient Israel as they follow the priest into the nave. The Psalmist’s teaching is no less wise than it was in millennia past: to heed this is to be instructed about that into which one is entering. The couple, contemplating the Psalm, halt when they near the tetrapod, a small table used for various liturgical purposes that sits at the front of the nave but outside the sanctuary (which is itself separated by an icon screen or iconostas in Byzantine Churches). There follows a brief declaration of consent (a more recent liturgical accretion) and then a litany.   

The priest subsequently chants the “Three Prayers for Fruitfulness” over the engaged couple. The first two prayers focus on the goodness of God’s creation, including Adam and Eve in their unity as one flesh. This notion of the original purity of humanity’s creation is echoed by St. John Chrysostom when he exhorts men to remember that “your wife is God’s creation. If you reproach her, you are not condemning her but him who made her.” Moreover, these prayers emphasize the oneness of man and woman, for God made her when He “changed the rib of our forefather Adam into a woman.” The goodness of creation includes the goodness of the unity of man and woman, which is good in essence because they reflect the perfect intent of their Creator; moreover, man and woman were to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28), to be cocreators with God. This teaching is a central prerequisite for seeing that dimorphic human sexuality is itself a participation in the Divine Will – marriage is the proper formal unity between man and woman that harkens back to the Garden in which man dwelt so closely with God as described in Genesis.

We know from the Scriptures, however, that this Garden did not last. Eve and Adam, from fear of their own inadequacies, sought knowledge they were not due; they ate the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and were expelled from that place of natural perfection (Genesis, Chapter 3). With this came enmity and strife, not only between God and humanity but also within humanity; it takes just one generation from Adam and Eve for a man to murder his brother (Genesis, Chapter 4). The subsequent generations then perpetuate this sinfulness after the Fall – sexual and marital disorder are ever-present here. Despite this, an intimation is found in the patriarchs of Israel wherein marriage and its lifegiving reality are continually recognized as necessary to live a godly life. This can be seen in Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph – the last finally settling monogamously with his wife alone, at least as far as the text reveals (Genesis 41:50-52). We see, in the favouring of their wives and the offspring from those first loves, a desire to return to that Edenic hope of man and woman, one flesh, living harmoniously with God, participating fully in His life-giving ways. For this reason, the words for the Rite of Crowning invoke the guidance of these figures in hopes that their wisdom might become our own:

By opening Sarah’s womb you blessed your servant Abraham and made him the father of many nations. You gave Isaac to Rebecca and blessed her when she bore children. You joined Jacob to Rachel and drew the twelve Patriarchs from his line. You made Joseph one with Asenath and gave them Ephraim and Manasseh as the fruit of childbirth.

These are desirable but still imperfect marriages. As observed by the late theologian Alexander Schmemann, we cannot forget that sin infects everything; even marriage “today…is, as everything else in ‘this world,’ a fallen marriage, and that it needs…to be…restored.” We, in ourselves apart from God, can only enter into marriage imperfectly and with the risk of our pride destroying the proper love due to one’s spouse – an ailment rife in today’s culture.

This battle against our fallenness is further described in the third prayer chanted by the priest. The Rite of Crowning then articulates how man cannot complete himself and begins speaking of a new creation, a remaking by God, that good might be brought out of our tainted selves by Him:

Holy God, you built man out of dust and out of his rib you built woman. You joined her to him as a suitable helpmate because you, in your majesty, saw fit that the man should not be alone on the earth. And now, O Master, unite this servant of yours, and this handmaid of yours, for you are the One who match a wife to a husband. Unite them in concord, weave them into one flesh and give them the reward of fine children.

 In this prayer, the need for God to intervene and the people to depend on his grace is made clear – there is an awareness that they, if they rely only on themselves, shall turn away from God like Adam and Eve. Marriage, even for our fathers and mothers before Christ, was understood as all for naught if they had not God’s will in mind at all times within their union.

Such a view of marriage has been carried into the Byzantine Rite through the couple’s vows, which directly follow the three prayers of the priest. Intriguingly, vows are not present in the original tradition of the Rite of Crowning, and this is still the case among Greek Christians. The use of vows was likely added later due to Latin influence. This has implications I cannot fully explicate here, but it does suggest that, as indicated in the crowning itself, God unites the man and woman. Marriage in the Byzantine Rite does not emphasize the wills of the couple. The vows used today in the Rite of Crowning contain clear promise and direction of one’s will, but ultimately all is subject to the aid and guidance of God. Thus the groom’s vow:

I take you to be my wife, and promise that in marriage I will love you, be true to you, honour you, and be faithful to you all the days of my life; so help me God, one in the Holy Trinty and all the saints.

We might note here that this promise can only be made with a faith in an eternal source of love: nothing in this vow is conditional. The absolute nature of these claims indicates that this is an indissoluble bond, one only made possible by a commitment to something deeper than either individual: God himself. Yet, simultaneously, there is nothing in this that could not have been recognized by Isaac and Sarah (despite their own difficulties). These vows suggest a love that God has been revealing since He began His work to redeem humanity from the Fall.

 The vows are quickly followed by the portion of the Rite that properly marries the couple: the Crowning. Herein, crowns (either of woven greenery or metal) are placed on the heads of both the groom and bride by the priest as he says, “The servant of God is crowned for the handmaid of God in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” These crowns invoke both royalty like David as well as those thorns placed upon our Lord’s head; the crowns are meant to call us both to the highs and lows that are sure in any marriage. When the crowns have been properly placed on the heads of the groom and bride, the priest sings: “Lord our God, crown them with glory and honour!” The marital vocation is blessed and honoured by God Himself, and He reforms the couple as one flesh through His priest. This is markedly distinct from the Roman Catholic and broadly Western Christian practice wherein the words of the groom and bride are what binds them together regardless of the celebrant. This, however, becomes a moment of transition; God has made this union, but now the fulness of that union must be revealed. The Word must now enter into this scene to direct it toward perfection.

The couple’s crowns remain on as everyone sits down to hear the Epistle and rises once more to hear the Gospel. In the case of the former, the reading is usually Ephesians 5:20-33 which focuses upon the unity of man and woman in marriage as a single body. What is more important and inflexible, on the other hand, is the Gospel reading from John 2:1-11: the Wedding at Cana; this is the only reading prescribed at Byzantine weddings, and it is an essential part of the Rite’s spiritual movement. There is too much here to unpack in an essay of this brevity, but, in the view of Alexander Schmemann, St. John’s words indicate that marriage, even as it pre-existed Christ’s incarnation, was itself good and that He came to return it to its original perfection by His presence and grace. What has changed, therefore, is precisely this: Christ’s presence. Much like in the Gospel wherein the wedding would have been incomplete without Christ providing the wine, so is every marriage incomplete without the presence of Jesus Christ. We may then ask: what is this presence of Christ? What does it mean for Him to be present in a marriage?

Immediately after the reading of the Gospel, two back-to-back litanies are chanted before two profound moments are enacted: the drinking of the common cup and the couple’s procession. Both of these actions, in conjunction with one another, indicate what it means for Christ to be present in one’s marriage. First, the common cup is a chalice filled with wine which the couple must jointly drink until empty (typically with the groom drinking first and then the bride, each taking three drinks from the cup). The chalice invokes the scene from Cana; one might even imagine the wine to be from Christ Himself. In drinking this cup together, the newly married couple perceives that all comes from God, from Jesus Christ, and that they must drink fully from Him together.

Having tasted that they must now share all aspects of life that have been given to them by God, the priest then takes them by their hands and begins to process around the tetrapod three times, an act sometimes colloquially called the ‘first dance.’ With their crowns still on, this suggests two clear images: one is that of royalty being paraded around in celebration; the other is that of Christ being led to His Cross on Calvary – both images are true. The Rite of Crowning clarifies this, if there was any ambiguity, by prescribing that the people sing three evocative hymns while the couple processes: “Dance, Isaiah! A Virgin has conceived and will bear a Son, Emmanuel, who is God and Man, His Name is ‘Orient.’ When we extol Him, we call that Virgin Blessed”; “O holy Martyrs! You fought well and have received your crowns. On our behalf entreat the Lord, to have mercy on our souls”; and, lastly, “Glory to You, O Christ God! The Apostles’ boast, the Martyrs’ joy. They whose preaching was the Trinity, One in Being.”

The procession with these hymns indicates that Christ’s presence is the glorification of love, but only if it is accepted with the acknowledgement that each member to the marriage will suffer willingly for the other – just as Christ suffered for all humanity in His Passion. Performing this dance after drinking fully of that common cup, the couple recognizes this image of self-sacrifice to be their mutual vocation. With the pleasures and joys of love come the need to suffer for it, and the couple reflect on this as they process with their crowns; the martyrs are invoked for they so clearly teach us how to witness to the truth of Christ by the sacrifice of their very lives for love of God.  Saint John Chrysostom, for example, asks, “If a man willingly suffers for his wife, whom he loves, how much more willingly should we suffer for Christ?” Marriage, therefore, is the glorification of a self-giving love, even unto death, what the Scriptures and Church Fathers call agape, in which man and woman are entirely given to one another and whose children will be the fruit of their love – a reality imperfectly foreshadowed by the ancient patriarchs and matriarchs of Israel that is now come to perfection in Christ. The Rite of Crowning concludes with the priest prayerfully removing the crowns from the newly married couple’s heads, and the congregation then singing a joyous dismissal.

Implications of this Liturgical Icon

In short, the Rite of Crowning provides an icon of the whole of salvation history as channeled toward a fulsome understanding of marriage, one that the bridal couple explicitly enacts in the service. They begin by recalling the original goodness in humanity’s origin, the “one flesh” of man and woman created as co-creators who ought to multiply in the Garden; this was, however, tainted by that sin which made each man use and abuse his fellow human beings for his own ends. Marriage was perceived by the patriarchs, even if imperfectly, as a way for men and women to move beyond exploitation and harm; yet, as seen throughout the Old Testament, the curse of sin was never truly overcome. The Rite then shifts to the crowning, to man and woman being brought together as Adam and Eve were: one flesh – but this is not enough. More important is that third person in the marriage, Jesus Christ, God Himself, Who revealed His approval and perfecting of marriage at Cana. The groom and bride then drink deeply of this revelation and welcome the journey that God ordained, one of love that will contain much joy insofar as each member is willing to suffer for the sake of the other without condition. I believe we should consider this entrance of Jesus into marriage as its baptism, a cleansing renewal, that is one of the greatest gifts given to humanity by our Saviour.

Such a great story, this glorious icon, is the good news and a beautiful answer to our present cultural confusion about marriage and its place in our complex lives. Many people today think, like Adam and Eve, that enough knowledge will set us ‘free’ and that we will determine how to remake life as we see fit; marriage is seen as a hindrance as opposed to a freedom. This, however, could not be further from the truth; we are now stumbling upon these deleterious effects for our society, children, and the couples themselves – love is waning, not waxing. We must be healed from this self-conceit. We need a better narrative in which to recognize ourselves rather than relying on the idea of perpetual gratification as we understand it. My contention is that the Byzantine Rite of Crowning provides this story: it reveals that Christ, our Physician, reforms our fallenness even within marriage. He heals our wounded and errant vision so that we may once again behold that true end which we knew but briefly in the Garden: to live in harmony, man and woman, co-creators with the Creator from Whom comes every joy and delight.

In the world you will have tribulation;

but be of good cheer,

I have overcome the world.

(John 16:33)

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Sources Cited

Chrysostom, John. (1986). On Marriage and Family Life. St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.

Galadza, P. (1996). “Marriage Rites in the Byzantine Tradition.” Liturgical Ministry 5, 27-33.

Schmemann, A. (2018). For the Life of the World. St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.