The Mystic Marriage Read Online Free

conclusion of the rite. “At first, all I knew was that it felt…wrong. But later, when I’d had a chance to study the text of the expositulum , and then when I witnessed the ceremony again, I noted the way the fluctus convulsed every time the celebration shifted from the older text to the new.”
    There was no response from those watching, so she moved on to the second set of drawings. “Now this is the ceremony the first time that Her Grace presided using the new version based on the Lyon rite exactly as written. You see here and here and here—” she pointed out the sections where the two differed most strongly “—the effects are clearest. Those are the parts where the lay presider—” she nodded in Annek’s direction “—details the markein, giving the physical scope of the requested blessing. The places where the language is most changed from the older version that Prince Aukust used.”
    She rushed through the next set of examples hoping to pass over the political aspects of what they had done. When Aukust had refused to change the words he’d spoken all his life, it could be chalked up to an old man’s stubbornness. “And this is from the ceremony just performed, when Her Grace returned to the older language for her parts.” And that had caused no end of fuss. Whatever the reasons she had given publicly, it had been because she, at least, had been convinced the structure of the mystery was damaged. “We can see that the differences in effect come from the ceremony itself and not from changes in the celebrants.”
    The archbishop finally raised his hand to interrupt her. “This is all very fascinating, but not much to the point. Do we know that the results of the new ceremony are different from those of the older one?”
    “It’s true that I never witnessed the older version in whole,” Margerit admitted. “But mysteries from the Penekiz tradition are used widely in local celebrations. All the Penekiz tutelas have the same general form. And I’ve found at least two village churches dedicated to Saint Mauriz that use a version of the same text as ours—without the elaborations, of course. Akolbin is near enough that I was able to witness theirs on Mauriz’s feast day this year as well as our own.” She began setting out the last sequence of diagrams. “Here and here are the key points, especially the conclusion, the missio , when the charis is granted.” She indicated the swirl of exploding colors in the new image. “Saint Mauriz is supposed to solicit God’s grace to encompass the entire parish the way it does here. Instead, in the Rotenek ceremony, the charis sinks away beside the altar. I believe the change in wording directs the charis to encompass only the buried relics of the saint.”
    The archbishop was signaling for her silence again. “I meant,” he said emphatically, “that you have not demonstrated that any difference in the forms of the celebration would change the results. Do you think divine grace comes and goes at our command?”
    Margerit hesitated, fearing a trap in his words. This wasn’t a question she had expected to answer. Was he suggesting that the visual manifestations of mysteries were meaningless? She recalled Barbara’s comments on why the ancient scholar Fortunatus had couched all his more daring conclusions in the subjunctive. She said cautiously, “If it were only necessary that God look into our hearts, then prayer and worship would be unnecessary, wouldn’t they? If it matters that we give spoken voice to our petitions, then why shouldn’t the form of that speech matter as well? And if the form of speech matters, then wouldn’t it be well to use what tools we have to know what would be most pleasing?” She watched his face carefully, but he gave no sign whether her answer had been acceptable. She reached for an analogy from her readings. “Any arrow you loose will hit something, but if you want to hit the mark, it matters that you can see to