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being held in the Cambrai Cathedral (Notre-Dame de Grâce chapel)
13 October 1918
[Image from Wikipedia and
the Archives of Ontario Visual Database]
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I got an invitation to a Fall wedding this past summer, which also involved traveling out to beautiful British Columbia. Everything looked great, including the venue for the wedding, which required flying out to northern B.C., then a ferry ride to the location. I was really looking forward to it, but there was something missing. I turned the invitation upside-down, back and front, looking for this decisive information.
There would be no church service. The wedding would be a "secular" event. I wasn't even sure how the actual wedding vows would be exchanged. I suspect some wedding officiant would be there to perform the "vows."
So, I declined the invitation. I didn't want to participate in one more event that would facilitate what I'm now openly beginning to call evil.
But, the interesting thing was that the wedding was to take place on Thanksgiving week-end. Canadian Thanksgiving Day was last Monday. Thanksgiving Day was set for the second Monday in October, (which also happens to be Columbus Day in the US). It is mostly a secular holiday now, although originally, as proclaimed by the Canadian Parliament in 1957, it was:
A Day of General Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed – to be observed on the 2nd Monday in October.Rather than set up a Christian wedding, this couple preferred to latch on to some kind of religious semblance, since although Thanksgiving was originally celebrated with prayers and thanks to God, now more and more people are using its secular motifs.
People cannot do without a higher, transcendental order. They cannot, innately, do without God. Yet, having rejected the one true God, they have to replace him with whatever they find suits their individual (or cultural) life. Thanksgiving became the perfect latch-on for this couple: giving thanks to something, yet with no commitment to God.
It cost me a lot to refuse this invitation. But, it costs more to participate in what they were expecting me to participate in.