A correspondent (a very capable liturgical scholar) sent me an email pertaining to my earlier post on the placement of the marriage rite in the daily office. He is in favor of keeping the marriage rite in the place where the LW Agenda has it (after the sermon). However, he gives these useful historical details:

Before the liturgical reforms of Vatican II the marriage rite in the Roman Church preceded the beginning of the Nuptial Mass; however, the Solemn Nuptial Blessing was given immediately after the Our Father and before the celebrant continued with the Libera nos Domine and the Pax Domini.

When the Nuptial Eucharist was restored in some our Synod’s parishes the Roman custom was followed. (This was also Anglican usage until the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.) Fr Paul Lang’s “Ceremony and Celebration” pp. 133ff reflects this custom. It was Fr Piepkorn’s usage.

The Roman Rite made no provision for marriage in connection with the Daily Offices.

The old Lutheran Agenda treated the marriage service as a service in itself, providing 3 different forms (pp.35-52). However, The Order of The Consecration of a Civil Marriage in the old Agenda specified that this rite (pp. 53ff) should follow the Offertory in the “Morning Service” and follow the Canticle at Matins & Vespers. It could also be used as a service in itself. The Agenda made the same provisions for The Order for the Anniversary of a Marriage (pp. 58ff).

Another gem from Sasse, as we reflect this week on the Reformation:

Although in his book on the Babylonian captivity of the church and in the Smalcald Articles, [Luther] unmasked and condemned the idolatry which had crept into the Mass, he admitted that the Roman Mass was still a valid Eucharist. And so he did not, like Zwingli and Calvin, introduce a new liturgy. The Lutheran liturgy was merely a Mass without the invocation of the saints and [without] the Roman conception of sacrifice. To Luther it was unthinkable that the unity of the Western church might be forever destroyed. He wanted to recall this church to what he was convinced was the pure teaching of the Gospel and, at the same time, the ancient teaching of the church.

Only from this point of view can Luther’s actions be understood. He wanted neither to split the church nor to found a new church. Nor was it his ambition to become the reviver, the Reformer of the church. His conscience told him that he was merely carrying out the duties of his office in the church: the pure teaching of the Gospel. According to his own conception, his work consisted only in this: “to have reintroduced the Holy Gospel into the world.”

–Hermann Sasse, “Luther and the Teaching of the Reformation,” in The Lonely Way