Wedding Words and Works, Part 1

Looking closer at the “wedding work” of marriage preparation

06/07/2025

Several miles ago in this long walk with Jesus, I shared that when I prepare couples for marriage, I break-down that complex, 6-month process by saying we fill in effect three buckets. The first bucket we call the paperwork, the second bucket is the heart work (the hard work!), and the third bucket I refer to as the wedding work, all the details and drama of the big wedding day.

In a sense, Pope St. John Paul II also directs our attention to the wedding work, more precisely, the wedding vows and subsequent sexual consummation, which he appropriately entitles: “The Dimension of the Sign.” Why? Well, the sacramental sign of marriage consists not only in the union of hearts but also in the union of bodies.

But frequently the bride – or more often the mother of the bride – becomes a bridezilla. That is, she gets so caught up in the externals – the dress, the flowers, the photography, the reception, etc. – that she all but forgets the internals – the meaning of the vows, the life-long commitment, the unspoken language of the body, the witness to divine love, etc.

In this third bucket of the wedding work, then, John Paul II does not want us to miss precisely these internals, or what we might call the spirituality of the wedding day. And he does this by demonstrating how the theology of the body becomes body language.

Incidentally, in chapter two we also find those 31 extra pages that did not form part of the pope’s original material on the Theology of the Body. In the interest of other pressing papal priorities, John Paul decided to excise portions of his rich reflections on the Song of Songs and Tobit.

Michael Waldstein, the pope’s translator, however, supplied both the excluded and the included material in his version of John Paul’s masterwork, Man and Woman He Created Them. Waldstein explains why he enlarged the papal book in this manner:

Pope John Paul II had originally prepared six catecheses [Wednesday audience addresses] on the Song of Songs and three on Tobit…on the basis of the pre-papal book manuscript…For actual delivery [however], John Paul II cut the original text to less than half by marking…which paragraphs were to be read…In this edition, the two versions [the delivered and the undelivered] are printed synoptically on facing pages (732).

So, whereas the pope’s book contained 53 pages on chapter two, Waldstein’s edition contains 84 pages. Who knows, maybe by adding duplicating pages, Waldstein could charge a little more for his editor’s cut edition.

In every culture and civilization, social intercourse is governed not only by written, codified rules of engagement – like the U.S. Constitution, and traffic laws like stop at a red light, go at a green light – but also by unspoken, assumed mores, or etiquette. For example, here in the United States, people would be offended if someone burped while eating supper.

Indeed, parents scold small children who think burping at the table is funny and attention-getting. But in other cultures – China, India, Turkey, and generally in the Middle East – people consider burping, even belching, after eating a compliment to the chef. What is traditional and valuable in Asia is taboo and verboten in America.

Many years ago while I was vocation director I visited Bishop J. Peter Sartain at his episcopal residence in Little Rock. We were having a very engaging discussion and Bishop Sartain is always an attentive and jovial interlocutor. At several points I noticed he made several slight yawns.

But I shrugged it off figuring his was a little tired but I felt fine so I kept talking. Later I learned a polite yawn is a signal that it is time to wrap up the conversation and go home. I completely missed that unspoken social cue, the unwritten but critical rules of social intercourse necessary for healthy and happy relationships.

In chapter two of Part Two, John Paul wants to teach us the highly valuable yet unwritten rules of engagement based on the wedding work. He zeroes in on how the words the couple utters in the wedding vows are later expressed exactly by the language of the body, especially – although not exclusively – through sexual intimacy.

In every true marriage, therefore, a couple has to show evidence of their love by both the words of marriage and the works of marriage. In Latin that is called “ratum et consummatum” – marriage is ratified by the words and sealed by sexual intercourse. In a sense, John Paul does not want married couples to miss these social cues for a healthy and happy marriage like I missed my cue with Archbishop Sartain.

The Holy Father maintains further that when these two essential aspects of married life – the spoken vows and the unspoken body language of intimacy – are seamlessly combined, the married couple stands before the world as a sign of God’s grace operative in the world through the sacrament of marriage.

Don’t forget that John Paul titled this chapter “The Dimension of the Sign.” In other words, their wedding words and work constitute a sign language that speaks loudly not only to each other as spouses but to the world, indeed, to the entire cosmos. Thus, John Paul asserts:

[A]t the moment of contracting marriage, the man and woman, with the suitable words and re-reading the perennial “language of the body” form a sign, an unrepeatable sign, which also has a future-oriented meaning, “all the days of my life,” that is, until death. This is the visible and efficacious sign of the covenant with God in Christ, that is, of grace (533-34).

Put differently, the Theology of the Body helps us interpret or translate the marital language of the body – the couple’s wedding words and works – into a very specific sign language, namely, as the sign of grace that guides the social intercourse of heaven. Thus these words and works of marital love alert us not to the mores prevalent in Manhattan or Milan, but rather to the etiquette pervading the high society of eternity.

Praised be Jesus Christ!