Church of the Province of Southern Africa
THE NUPTIAL BLESSING
The Priest, standing before the couple gives the Nuptial Blessing as follows
Merciful Lord and heavenly Father, by your gracious gift humankind is increased: bestow upon N and N the gift of children; and grant that they may so live together in godly love and honesty, that they may bring up their children in faith and virtue, to your praise and honour, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen
God our maker, you have consecrated marriage
as a wonderful mystery
a sign of the spiritual unity
between Christ and his Church:
look in mercy on these your servants
that N may love his wife
as Christ loved his bride the Church
and also that N may love her husband
as the Church is called to love her Lord.
Bless them both
that they may inherit your eternal kingdom;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen
The Priest may add further prayers at this discretion.
Almighty God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ
sanctify and bless you
that you may please him both in body and soul
and live together in holy love to your lives' end.
Amen
The Priest blesses the congregation.
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Unfortunately, the liturgical working group of the Ordinariates has chosen to abandon all contemporary English forms in favour of personal in-house recension of Anglican traditional liturgical language. A thinking person would assume that some effort would be made at least to draw those best elements from Holy Matrimony Rite Two in The Book of Divine Worship into the new Marriage rite, but instead the Ordinariates have been given what one may find more or less in the Shorter Prayer Book, Series One and Rite One in the Book of Divine Worship. Unfortunately there are some unnecessary touches from the Ordinary Form of the Roman Missal in English.
The Southern African An Anglican Prayer Book, 1989 is exclusively a modern idiom book. It has moments where the language seems strangely dull, but it also has moments of sheer genius as in the contemporary recension of the nuptial prayer printed above. Consider the effortless simplicity and elegance of this expression of the Ephesians teaching on husbands and wives:
that N may love his wife
as Christ loved his bride the Church
and also that N may love her husband
as the Church is called to love her Lord.
I had high hopes that the new liturgies would bring together the fulness of the traditional Anglican liturgical patrimony with the very best of contemporary expressions of Anglican liturgical writing. It would be easy to recast the above prayer in traditional language and use it during the unspecified "Prayers of the people" for the Ordinariate marriage liturgy when Nuptial Blessing A is employed. I prefer paragraph form but for ease of reading I provide an example as follows according to line sense:
Most merciful God, our Maker and our Judge,
thou hast consecrated the holy covenant of Marriage,
that wonderful and sacred Mystery,
that in it is manifested the spiritual marriage and unity
betwixt Christ and his Church:
Look in thine abundant charity
upon thy servant and handmaiden
that N may love his wife
that N may love his wife
as Christ loved his Bride the Church
and that N may love her husband
as the Church is called to love her Lord.
Bless them both
that they may inherit thine endless kingdom;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
+Lord, in thy mercy, hear our prayer.
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