[Footnote 548: These, besides their great length, are not required for the explication of our more immediate subject.]
7. The sacrament of choice only is matrimony; and it is said to be of choice, because anyone may be saved without it. Indeed a man seeking to marry is not inclined to tend towards the kingdom of heaven.
With respect to this it is to be remarked that, according to the canons, the solemnity of marriage ought not to be celebrated from Septuagesima Sunday, because it is a season of sorrow, until the octave of Easter, nor in the three weeks before the Feast of S. John. [Footnote 549] But according to the custom of the Catholic Church, marriages may be solemnised in the church from the morrow of Low Sunday, namely, from the octave of Easter, until the first Rogation Day. And from the morning of the first Rogation Day this rite is prohibited until the octave of Whitsuntide inclusively: and so saith Pope Clement in his Decretal. Again, marriages ought not to be celebrated [{155}] from the First Sunday in Advent until the Epiphany: nor would they have been allowed until the octave of the Epiphany had not the Lord honoured a marriage with His presence, and even with a miracle. [Footnote 550] Whence they then chant, 'To-day the Church is united to her Heavenly Spouse.' Some, however, say that it is more holy to extend this prohibition unto the octave of the Epiphany.
[Footnote 549: Bp. Cosins says that marriages are not to be solemnised from Advent Sunday, until eight days after (or the octave of) the Epiphany; from Septuagesima Sunday until eight days after Easter; and from Rogation Sunday until Trinity Sunday. Some of these being times of solemn fasting and abstinence, some of holy festivity and joy, both fit to be spent in such holy exercises, without other avocations. See his 'Devotions,' republished by Messrs Rivington.]
[Footnote 550: We are accustomed to celebrate only the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, on the Epiphany. But S. Isidore (De Off. Ecc. i, 26) gives two other objects of commemoration upon this day: viz. the baptism of our Lord, and his first miracle at the marriage in Cana. And so the hymn in the Breviary:
Ibant Magi, quam viderant,
Lumen requirunt lumine,
Lavacra puri gurgitis
Peccata quae non detulit,
Novum genus potentiae!
Vinumque jussa fundere
Stellam sequentes praeviam;
Deum fatentur munere.
Caelestis Agnus attigit;
Nos abluendo sustulit.
Aquae rubescunt hydriae,
Nutavit unda originem.
Our own Church, however, retains the old Gospel for the second Sunday after the Epiphany.]
In the aforesaid times, therefore, marriages are not to be contracted; because these seasons are set apart for prayer.
8. [Footnote 551] But although the solemnising of marriages is prohibited in these intervals, yet a contract of marriage holds good at whatever time it may have been duly made. But in that it is ordered by the canons that weddings should not be celebrated in the three weeks before the Festival of S. John Baptist, the rule was made that men might be more at leisure for prayer. For the Church had formerly appointed two periods of forty days, besides the great one of Lent:—the one preceding the nativity, usually called S. Martin's, and lasting from his day to the nativity; [Footnote 552] the other, forty days before the Feast of S. John Baptist:—in which men should give especial heed unto prayers, alms, and fastings. But in regard of the frailty of man, these two seasons have been reduced to one, and that one again divided into the three weeks of advent, and three before the nativity of S. John: at which times men ought to fast and abstain from marriage.
[Footnote 551: A few passages have been omitted in the course of this chapter.]
[Footnote 552: Martinmas is the 11th November. The forty days are not exactly made out between this and the Nativity. ]