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The STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI issue article summary
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Abstract: So that They Will Be Given Measure and Offspring to Their Womb, Let Us Pray to the Lord! The Married Couple, Family and Offspring of the Womb as it Is Revealed in the Byzantine Wedding Ceremony. In our secularized world, in today’s society which seems to lose its own values, it is very essential to talk about marriage, family and offsprings. The church makes an effort to present the ideal, tries to complement human weakness, wants to strengthen it with the descent of divine mercy. Nowadays, when more couples break off their marriage during a year than marry even in the Christian called Hungary, the help of the church is particularly important. On the one hand it has determined and engraved the triple viewpoints of marriage on its believers’ heart since ancient times: the acceptance of mutual affection, each other’s helping, and offsprings. However it is true that these three aspects did not appear always and everywhere in the same order. On the other hand the Byzantine church prays for the inseparability and irrevocability of the married couple in its marriage ceremony; for the cleanness of their marriage (which certainly does not mean keeping maiden innocence bodily but preserving moral purity); for the importance of the family; for the abundant offsprings. Of course, meanwhile the church teaches its believers. Next, we wish to present the above mentioned aspects through the analysis of the Byzantine Church’s marriage ceremony. Our analysis, of course, is not a simple text analysis: it does not simply follow the course of the ceremony but it would like to provide a theological synthesis. We add the ceremony of “the new wife’s initiation” to the two big parts – “engagement and coronation” - of the marriage ceremony, which is a Hungarian Greek Catholic peculiarity. From our analysis it can be seen how “serious” the texts of our church, they do not belong to the “easy genre”. It is justified due to the many scriptural quotations the prayers contain on the one hand. On the other hand it can be seen from the fact that our liturgical texts are laced with the ideas from the teaching of the Church. Apostle St. Paul calls the spouses affection “a great mystery” comparing it to Christ’s love towards the Church. It is declared at each marriage ceremony: a stable text that cannot be changed, as an apostolic reading. It would be good if it accompanied each just married couple’s life steadi-ly!
Keywords: marriage, engagement, coronation, family, offsprings, Greek Catholic Church, blessing
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