The Orthodox tradition upholds the
priestly blessing as the constitutive element of the sacrament of marriage, and
the bishop or priest as the minister of marriage. . . . the marital bond cannot
be contracted solely through the consent of the spouses, because marriage is an
eschatological reality and <<transcends both fleshly union and
contractual legal association>> (J. Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology,
197). . . . . the consent of the spouses is not sufficient because God is
<<the Celebrant>> and <<the true minister of the
sacrament>> who bestows the gift of marriage upon the couple (cf. Mt 19,
11) (T. Sylianopoulos, <<Towards a Theology>>, 275-276). For John
Chrysostom, the act of crowning by the bishop or priest was a symbol of the
real crowning of the spouses by Christ himself (John Chrysostom, Homilia 9
in Epistolam Primam ad Timotheum, 546). (Kevin Schembri, Oikonomia,
Divorce and Remarriage in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition [Kanonika 23;
Valore, Italy: Pontificio Instituto Orientale, 2017], 56)
