A Wedding Tradition Worth Adopting

During my first Pilgrimage to Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 2010, a dear friend of mine urged me to buy a special crucifix made in the nearby town of Široki-Brijeg. She encouraged me to purchase a crucifix for each of my children and then gift the handmade cross to them on the day of their wedding. The crucifix would play an important role in their ceremony.

My friend shared that everyone who was married in this town holding the crucifix during their sacrament of marriage remained married to this day. There were NO recorded divorces! Zero! None!

Of course, I bought three of the special crucifixes (one for each of my children), and I promised myself I would learn more about this tradition and how it was part of the Catholic wedding ceremony.

Here is what I learned, and I am convinced this tradition is worth adopting!

“What is involved here, as the testimony of countless couples will tell you, is that the actual exchange of vows takes place while the couple are literally clinging to the Cross. Listening, moreover, with rapt attention to the priest, as he wraps their hands around the Cross, reminding each: “You have found your Cross! It is a Cross you must love and take with you every day of your lives. Know how to appreciate it!” And then, having kissed the Cross taken from the altar, the couple enthrone it in a place of honor in their home, secure in the knowledge that to abandon one or the other is to abandon Christ. It is He alone who can sustain — and sanctify — their marriage.

They are to go to the cross whenever troubles arrive, kneeling before it to ask Jesus to help them carry it. As a sure token of their appreciation, they are to give gifts to the one whom they have been enjoined by God to embrace before and upon that very cross.

It is not an option, the couples of Široki-Brijeg are saying, to live like this. 

It is the only way to live. 

To live each day from the reality of an already deeply intimate participation in the life of Christ, allowing him to live now in us. Faith in Christ, therefore, which serves as a springboard for the promised fidelity to one another, is no longer an ideal to which one strives haplessly to conform; it is the very center from which they find themselves already living.

And, yes, there is much joy — and not a little laughter — amid a life shared in that Christ-centered way.” —www.ncregister.com/blog/the-city-without-divorce

—Amy D'Ambra/MSMH Founder and Co-Owner