Every Mass a wedding
April 4, 2012, 8:25 am
Posted by Joseph A. Komonchak
Concerning the Bride, let us see what He says; that you, when you know the Bridegroom and the Bride, may not without reason come to the marriage. For every celebration is a celebration of marriage: the Church’s nuptials are being celebrated. The King’s Son is about to marry a wife, that King’s Son is Himself a King; and the guests frequenting the marriage are themselves the Bride. It’s not as in an ordinary marriage where some are guests, and another is she that is being married; in the Church they that come as guests, if they come to good purpose, become the Bride. For all the Church is Christ’s Bride. (Augustine on I John, Hom. 2, 2; PL 35, 1990)
This is brilliant!
Marriage has been called the “primordial sacrament,” and it really does best describe the relationship that humanity is called to have with God, the “spousal meaning of the body” really does best describe our vocation to the fullness of love for God and others, a love that is, by its very nature, both unitive and fruitful.
11. If the first page of the Book of Genesis presents God’s “work” as an example for man, the same is true of God’s “rest”: “On the seventh day God finished his work which he had done” (Gn 2:2). Here too we find an anthropomorphism charged with a wealth of meaning.
It would be banal to interpret God’s “rest” as a kind of divine “inactivity”. By its nature, the creative act which founds the world is unceasing and God is always at work, as Jesus himself declares in speaking of the Sabbath precept: “My Father is working still, and I am working” (Jn 5:17). The divine rest of the seventh day does not allude to an inactive God, but emphasizes the fullness of what has been accomplished. It speaks, as it were, of God’s lingering before the “very good” work (Gn 1:31) which his hand has wrought, in order to cast upon it a gaze full of joyous delight. This is a “contemplative” gaze which does not look to new accomplishments but enjoys the beauty of what has already been achieved. It is a gaze which God casts upon all things, but in a special way upon man, the crown of creation. It is a gaze which already discloses something of the nuptial shape of the relationship which God wants to establish with the creature made in his own image, by calling that creature to enter a pact of love. . . .
12. As certain elements of the same Jewish tradition suggest,(12) to reach the heart of the “shabbat”, of God’s “rest”, we need to recognize in both the Old and the New Testament the nuptial intensity which marks the relationship between God and his people. Hosea, for instance, puts it thus in this marvellous passage: “I will make for you a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground; and I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land; and I will make you lie down in safety. And I will betroth you to me for ever; I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness; and you shall know the Lord” (2:18-20). . . .
14. In the first place, therefore, Sunday is the day of rest because it is the day “blessed” by God and “made holy” by him, set apart from the other days to be, among all of them, “the Lord’s Day”. . . . Therefore, if God “sanctifies” the seventh day with a special blessing and makes it “his day” par excellence, this must be understood within the deep dynamic of the dialogue of the Covenant, indeed the dialogue of “marriage”. This is the dialogue of love which knows no interruption, yet is never monotonous. In fact, it employs the different registers of love, from the ordinary and indirect to those more intense, which the words of Scripture and the witness of so many mystics do not hesitate to describe in imagery drawn from the experience of married love. . . .
75. Since Sunday is the weekly Easter, recalling and making present the day upon which Christ rose from the dead, it is also the day which reveals the meaning of time. It has nothing in common with the cosmic cycles according to which natural religion and human culture tend to impose a structure on time, succumbing perhaps to the myth of eternal return. The Christian Sunday is wholly other! Springing from the Resurrection, it cuts through human time, the months, the years, the centuries, like a directional arrow which points them towards their target: Christ’s Second Coming. . . .
37. As the Church journeys through time, the reference to Christ’s Resurrection and the weekly recurrence of this solemn memorial help to remind us of the pilgrim and eschatological character of the People of God. Sunday after Sunday the Church moves towards the final “Lord’s Day”, that Sunday which knows no end. The expectation of Christ’s coming is inscribed in the very mystery of the Church(55) and is evidenced in every Eucharistic celebration. But, with its specific remembrance of the glory of the Risen Christ, the Lord’s Day recalls with greater intensity the future glory of his “return”. This makes Sunday the day on which the Church, showing forth more clearly her identity as “Bride”, anticipates in some sense the eschatological reality of the heavenly Jerusalem. Gathering her children into the Eucharistic assembly and teaching them to wait for the “divine Bridegroom”, she engages in a kind of “exercise of desire”,(56) receiving a foretaste of the joy of the new heavens and new earth, when the holy city, the new Jerusalem, will come down from God, “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev 21:2).
–Pope John Paul II, Dies Domini (1998)
When I was in college, I asked a priest why women weren’t priests, he used the wedding imagery-Church as bride, priest as proxy bridegroom- to explain why the priests have to be men. I never really liked the wedding metaphor after that.
It’s interesting that Augustine doesn’t draw that conclusion about the priest’s being a “proxy bridegroom.” In fact, he seemed leery of any identification of the priest or bishop with Christ, who, he said, were not the Bridegroom but “the friend of the Bridegroom,” that is, his close attendant, which is what John the Baptist called himself and what St. Paul was when he spoke of betrothing the Corinthians to Christ. The marriage-metaphor referred to the whole Church, clergy included, in relation to the Bridegroom; for Augustine it was not used to distinguish clergy and laity in the Bride.
Good point, Irene. The metaphorical use of marital imagery in a religious context is a tricky business in many ways. Apart from its misuse in “explaining” why women can’t be priests, it often reveals more than they realize about the imaginative life of those who use it. Great writers may be deep and compelling. Lesser lights can be downright embarrassing to read. Even popes.
The bride analogy is a cringer, imho.
(Why has the real bride Jesus married been erased from history? Why do the men who rule the Church prefer to think of themselves as brides or as part of a big metaphorical bride, instead of teaching about the real culture in which Jesus was born, circumcised, redeemed, taught a trade, taught Torah, and married?)
Gerelyn, the Reptoids don’t want to be exposed (duh!), which is why they have kept their Vatican puppets from teaching about the Mystical Dynasty of Jesus the Aquarian King.
JAK –
You point out a fundamental problem with metapors. While the liveliness of metaphorical images make them great teaching tools, and while they can be largely true, they can also be largely false, even malignantly false. The very attractiveness of the images can lead us to misinterpret them. A wedding image is always quite attractive, but this “marrying” of clergy to the bride-Church has always struck me as nonsensical. One man can’t marry a group of men and women, and when we pretend that *many* men hz dond that the resulting mishmash of an image is ludicrous. Further (I do digress a bit) the image of nuns professing their vows and thus “marrying” Christ, who is their brother, is downright incestuous. Commitments, yes, marriages, no.
I’m all for real poetry, but one can carry a metaphor much, much too far, so far that the meaning ends up ludicrous.
I take it that you will decline the following wedding invitation —
ALMIGHTY GOD
Creator of Heaven and Earth
Supreme Sovereign of the Universe
and
THE MOST GLORIOUS VIRGIN MARY
Queen of the Court of Heaven
Announce to you the Spiritual Marriage of their august Son
JESUS
KING OF KINGS and LORD OF LORDS
with
Little Thérèse Martin
now Princess and Lady of the Kingdoms of the Childhood of Jesus and His Passion, given to her as a dowry by her divine Spouse from which she holds her titles of nobility OF THE CHILD JESUS and OF THE HOLY FACE.
It was not possible to invite you to the wedding feast held on the Mountain of Carmel, September 8, 1890, as only the heavenly Court was admitted, but you are nevertheless invited to the At Home tomorrow, the Day of Eternity when Jesus, the Son of God, will come in the clouds of heaven to judge the living and the dead in the full splendor of His majesty.
The hour being uncertain, you are asked to hold yourself in readiness and to watch.
Women religious are “incestuous”? (Shakes his head sadly)
Must everything around here be joyless bile all the time, even during Holy Week?
Will there be an open bar, Bender?
Ann: If someone concludes from the use of sheep as a metaphor for Christ’s disciples (as in: “Feed my sheep”) that Christian disciples grow wool, I would say that the fault lies not with the metaphor but with the person misinterpreting it in so silly a manner. “He had the heart of a lion” does not make me eager to see the results of the autopsy so that I can verify if this was true of the dead hero. Intelligent people tend to understand metaphors. Conversely, unintelligent people are likely to misunderstand literal language, too.
St. Paul had no problem imagining Christ marrying a group of men and women. “I have betrothed you [plural] to one husband, presenting you [plural] as a chaste virgin to Christ” (2 Cor 11:2). Interpreters note the easy translation from the plural “you” to the singular “virgin.” St. Augustine knew that the Church could not be considered a virgin unless her members were virgins, something manifestly not true of them in the physical sense. The Church is a virgin, he said, if and to the degree that her members preserve the integrity of their faith, hope, and love–it is a virginitas mentis or cordis that makes the many of them a single virgin.
Gerelyn: You ask about “the real bride” of Jesus who’s been “erased from history.” If you take this to be a fact, it obviously hasn’t been erased, and there must be some evidence for it. Could you share it with us? The New Testament, of course, is silent about whether Jesus married or not.
Hi, Joseph:
Talmud: Kiddushin 29a
“Our Rabbis taught:
A father has the following obligations towards his son-
to circumcise him, to redeem him, if he is a firstborn, to teach him Torah, to find him a wife, and to teach him a craft or a trade.
And there are some who say that he must also teach him how to swim.”
http://www.mishpacha.org/parenttexts.shtml
We know from the gospels that Mary and Joseph obeyed the Law. They circumcised Jesus, redeemed him, taught him Torah, and taught him the carpenter’s trade. Should we imagine they neglected to find him a wife and teach him to swim, because those are not mentioned in the heavily edited versions of the gospels that have come down to us?
“According to the Shulhan Aruk, the standard Jewish law code, every Jewish youth was obligated to have a wife by his eighteenth year, and becoming married between the ages of thirteen and eighteen was laudable. Authorities could comple a single man who was over twenty to get married.”
–William E. Phipps, in The Sexuality of Jesus, quoting from The Jewish Family, by Benjamin Schlesinger, U of Toronto Press, 1971.
JAK –
Thanks for informing me that metaphors are not to be interpreted literally. I never would have guessed.
Paul’s consideration of the Church as bride of Christ is (dare I say it/) not entirely consonant with what the Church has generally taught and still teaches. He equates purity/chastity with virginity, but although choosing to remain a virgin is virtuous before marriage, it is not virtuous after marriage. So his interpretation of the metaphor is much too simple.
As I see it, this passage just conirms the notion that celibacy is somehow intrinsically superior to marriage, a teaching that still plagues the thinking of many clergy and lay people in spite of V II.
Sorry, Bender, but it’s piety like that which keeps adults as children.
“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.”
You can’t have it both ways. Yes, Therese of Lisieux was, among other things, childlike in some ways. She also had some emotional problems. In spite of it all she was one of the greatest of the saints, and that’s what’s important about her, not her being something like a little pretend princess.
So, Gerelyn, there is no evidence that Jesus married? That Jewish males were taught that they should marry did not prevent certain Jewish groups of Jesus’ time from honoring and practicing celibacy, nor would it have prevented John the Baptist, or Jesus, from choosing not to marry, perhaps even in imitation of Jeremiah. No ancient texts, canonical or otherwise, settle the issue; the most we can hope for is an argument from probability. See the reasons John P. Meier gives in the first volume of his The Marginal Jew for thinking it more likely that Jesus did not marry.
So, Joseph, there is no evidence that Jesus did not marry?
Sorry, but “thinking it more likely” isn’t good enough. Jesus was married. John the B., too, and all of Jesus’ brothers and sisters, and all the apostles.
(Funny how attractive bride metaphors are to some, except when it comes to real life. Then, eeeuwww. No grils aloud.)
Ann: I was not thinking of you when I used the example of wool-growing as not part of the metaphor of the Christian as one of Christ’s sheep. I was simply pointing out that the fault for such a mistaken interpretation would not lie–as I took you to be saying with your critique of metaphor–with the metaphor itself but with incomprehension on the part of a reader. Literal language is subject to similar incomprehension on the part of the silly.
I have no idea why you think that 2 Cor 11:2-3 has anything to do with celibacy at all, much less with its superiority. Look at the verses in context. Paul is expressing the fear that the Corinthians, whom he had betrothed to Christ as a virgin, might lose that virginity by departing from the faith: “I fear that as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds might be corrupted and you might fall from your sincerity in Christ” (v. 3), and he goes on to make it clear that he’s afraid that they’ll go off after “a gospel other than the Gospel you accepted [from me]” (v. 4).
Needless to say (or is it?), he did not think that a married woman would or should remain a virgin after her marriage. But he was not talking about her remaining a virgin after the marriage but before it, during the time of her betrothal. C.K. Barrett comments: “The presentation [of the Church] to Christ [by Paul] will presumably take place at his coming; the betrothal correspondingly refers to the conversion of the Corinthians and the establishing of their church [by Paul]. In the meantime, during the period of the engagement, it is the duty of the Corinthians to keep themselves completely loyal to the one to whom they are to be united–within Paul’s metaphor, to preserve their virgin status. It is because Paul doubts their will, or ability, to do this that he writes.” In doing so, Paul is fulfilling the role assigned to the “friend of the Bridegroom” who was to do all he could to preserve the virginity of the woman who has been betrothed. I do not think Paul’s use of the metaphor is at all “simple.”
Certainly Paul is assuming the value of pre-marital virginity, but Vatican II said or did nothing to call that into question.
Gerelyn: And the evidence for all those marriages is? Evidence, not inference.
Gerelyn, a few things:
1. Using the Talmud to explain a first-century Jewish text is almost always a mistake: the Talmud postdates Jesus by centuries. You cannot assume that the codification (or the interpretation of the codification) found in rabbinic literature is applicable to a first century context.
2. Related to that, even if such codification was around in the time of Jesus, you can’t assume that everyone and their uncle followed it. There’s just no question that a variety of interpretations pertaining to how to live as a Jew were active then (just as now). Also, the fact that marriage is the norm doesn’t mean much–marriage is pretty much always the norm (but not everyone gets married).
3. You’re trying to “correct” tradition (literary and otherwise) by making it match up with what you think is a reconstructed historical reality. But that supposed reality is pretty much beyond reach, and trying to drum it up out of the void of time just means that the “reality” that we do have (which is communicated tradition) gets overlooked.
Let me put it this way. You don’t find it in the New Testament, but not long after, early Christian literature starts to describe Mary and Joseph’s married life as being sans sex. Now, it is pretty bloody historically unlikely that a Jewish husband and wife would be celibate–much, much less likely than that a Jewish man might not be married for one reason or another by his early 30s. That fact, however, is totally irrelevant to understanding whatever story it is that you have at hand (say, the Infancy Gospel of James)–you don’t understand that text better by “correcting” it, you understand it by pursuing why it’s important to the text that Mary have a sealed womb. (For what it’s worth, I think this entire point is not that relevant to your claim, because should we choose to use your own lens–straight-up historical reconstruction–we find that celibacy is not the unicorn that you are claiming it is.
4. Seriously, I wasn’t kidding–don’t use rabbinic literature to read the New Testament.
Father K., no woman like for her wedding ring to be scorned by others, and that goes for Catherine of Siena as much as anyone else. She’s all huffy now!
Joseph, when you ask for evidence, do you mean something like this? “That Jewish males were taught that they should marry did not prevent certain Jewish groups of Jesus’ time from honoring and practicing celibacy, . . .”
Surely you’re not suggesting that Jesus belonged to one of those fringe groups? We know from the first gospel that he was an ordinary man. If he had been an Essene, e.g., the people in his home town would not have been surprised at his teachings. (And he would not have been teaching in their synagogue in the first place. An unmarried rabbi?)
“Where did this man get these things?” they asked. “What’s this wisdom that has been given him? What are these remarkable miracles he is performing? Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?”
Of course, whatever scholars and historians tell us about the culture in which Jesus lived, there are some who can’t believe he was a normal Jew, a carpenter, married, etc. There are some who don’t believe in Jesus’ brothers and sisters. Easier to think about ruminants and snakes than a normal man living a normal life with a normal woman.
And “all those marriages”? The apostles were normal Jews, too. Married. Sons, fathers, brothers.
Hi, Abe:
2) Too much evidence in the gospels about how observant Mary and Joseph were to ignore it and imagine their son was different. E.g., the annual trip to Jerusalem. The redemption with two turtledoves. Etc.
4) I don’t try to use one religion’ scriptures, traditions, etc., to explain another’s. (But on a personal note, I’ll say this: the first time I attended a seder, when the host blessed and broke the matzoh, the cracking sound struck me, and I thought of “This is my body”. I didn’t mention that, of course, but for the first time I had an inkling of what Jesus may have meant.)
But my point is that observance in the 1st century is not what observance was in the 5th. Joseph can observe the traditions surrounding temple cult, but he can’t observe rabbinic teachings that don’t yet exist. And if you want to take one literary depiction of religious practice to deconstruct another in the same text, then you’re starting a strange cycle. You’re also rolling a snowball down a hill, because if Jesus’ not getting married is untenable because of what you’ve determined is Jewish law at the time, then so is an awful lot of everything else that Jesus did/taught. Rather, the literary situation matches up more with the historical than you think in that it portrays the diversity of Jewish religiosity.
Hate to break it to you, but the matzah wouldn’t have been “cracker-like” like what you buy in a store today; it would have been soft!
It’s a relevant observation, though, and a timely one: around this time of year, Christians (some of them at least) like to re-live Jesus’ Pesach experience by performing ritual acts (i.e. the seder order) that didn’t exist at his time! It’s kind of like applying the Talmud to the Gospels: some things will match up no doubt, but you can’t find anyway of systematically finding the connections.
(Tomorrow night when the matzoh cracks, I’ll ruminate on how soft it was in Jesus’ time.)
(I wonder if his wife used parsley in her matzoh balls. And pomegranate juice in her harozeth.)
John the Baptist was so ordinary that he got his head chopped off. Jesus of Nazareth was so normal that he was nailed to a cross.
By the way, it is possible to think both about Jesus and about ruminants and snakes. I’ve done both, and continue to do both.
Bender: Prior to turning your lecturn towards Ann’ remarks suggesting an inablity appreciate humor, you might have looked for a few of her post. I’m not defending her, she doesn’t need it. Not to mention you might want to take a gander at Joseph’s recent post “What if”.
Joseph: “What if”. Really? I do so hope this is not an example of the stuff you aim at children. If not, good. However, you do realize some adults have children. That separation from the face of God would engender all the Hell one would ever need is both eloquent and, likely, the best of advice. One need hardly wrap it in such terrifying imagery. Children quite literally cannot, and I do mean cannot, be relied upon to discern imagery from reality. And some adults, for reasons small and grand, remain for all practical purposes children. That I would obtain a useful understanding and appreciation of that timeless fellow Augustine comparable to yours would require more of a lifetime than I most likely have remaining. But, like Christ, he was a reflection of and a good bit more of a devoted follower of God. But he was not God. As I understand it we have the Trinity for that purpose. And, surely, all that the Trinity provides is enough for mere mortals.
I can understand Jesus not having a wife and family even if it wasn’t the norm back then. The lifestyle he lived and work he did would make it very hard to do right by a family. And didn’t he tell others to give up everything- including family- to follow him?
John the Baptist was so ordinary that he got his head chopped off. Jesus of Nazareth was so normal that he was nailed to a cross.
Body Count of the Roman Empire:
http://necrometrics.com/romestat.htm
By the way, it is possible to think both about Jesus and about ruminants and snakes. I’ve done both, and continue to do both.
Yes, I think about ruminants, too. In every herd of cows, there’s a boss. And cows have friends. An Irish farmer told me that when he sold one of his cows, her friend was mad at him and carried a grudge. She would do stuff to get even. I think it would be funny to buy the boss cow from several herds and put them together to see which Bossy would emerge as the boss of bosses.
Gerelyn, I have enjoyed those analogies with concrete objects and with animals in nature. They take an idea that may seem abstract and bring it home vividly.
I will not forget the snake slithering out of its skin as an image encouraging us to consider purification and renewal during Lent. I can only imagine how spell-bound our congregation might have been if our pastor had startled us by using such an analogy in one of his Lenten homilies! It’s not offensive against anyone, it’s not dull, it’s not self-centered: what’s not to like?
As to the ruminant image for meditating on Scripture, it fits so well and is so natural for me that I actually had it in mind long before I heard of Augustine’s analogy. (Unless I unwittingly extracted it from some forgotten past memories.)
In any case, it is vastly more effective than some marriage analogy, when marriage is itself such a challenging concept. I don’t think that the relationship between spouses is any easier to understand than the relationship between Christ and the faithful…
Claire, the fact that I don’t like the analogies does not mean I think others shouldn’t. After all, life is like a box of chocolates.
But… but… then we can’t have an argument! :)