Marriage and the Mystical Body

CHRIST came to restore the divine life lost to us by sin. But how? He did not save us only by some act external to Himself as one might lay down a sum of money to ransom a slave but by incorporating us in Himself, by making all of us with Him a single organism. “I am the Vine, you are the branches.” Christ is the Head, we the members and together we are the whole body, Christ. The aggregate of all the members, all the branches united constitutes the Church joined by an unbreakable bond to Christ, its Leader and Head.

And Christian marriage will be . . . and will only be . . . but the symbol of this union of Christ with His Church, of the Church with its Head Saint. Paul at the end of his Epistle to the Christians at Ephesus gives no other rule of love and of security in their union to the married than the counsel to copy this union in their life.

He says to wives, “Let women be subject to their husbands as to the Lord because the husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the Church being Himself Savior of the body. But just as the Church is subject to Christ, so also let wives be to their husbands in all things.”

Then addressing himself to husbands, he continues, “Husbands love your wives, just as Christ also loved the Church and delivered Himself up for her.” This is the way husbands ought to love their wives and recalling the words of Genesis. “They shall be two in one flesh,” Saint Paul concludes, “This is a great mystery…. I mean in reference to Christ and to the Church.”

Is it possible to imagine a divorce between Christ and the Church, between the Church and Christ? By the same token, it should be impossible to conceive of a divorce between a man and woman in Christian marriage, the man being but a double, an image of Christ; the woman a double, an image of the Church.

This is but a negative aspect . . . not to be disunited. The union of Christ with the Church which baptism symbolizes invites the married to have for each other the most profound and entire consecration to each other. It is this entire consecration to each other which Saint Paul demands.

It is not without reason that the liturgy of the nuptial mass contains this particular epistle of Saint Paul.

Unfortunately how few understand something of the significance of these texts!

How much more fitting would it be, at the time of the marriage, to profit by the marriage discourse to explain to those concerned the sublime meaning of the ceremony and the obligations which will ensue instead of handing out just so much twaddle and bestowing so many compliments!

The whole difficulty is that it would necessitate touching upon the profound Gospel spirit and, for the majority of persons, the Gospel is a dead letter. As a consequence, everyone keeps to the low level of hackneyed themes understandable to all.

I shall come back often to this Epistle of my nuptial Mass; it will help me to deepen my Christianity.