In the last few weeks, we have celebrated two very special sacraments that are deeply connected. Archbishop Hebda ordained seven new priests at the Cathedral May 29, and the following Saturday, June 5, also at the Cathedral, he celebrated the gift of the sacrament of marriage at a special Marriage Day Mass. Many people, however, might not see the deep connection between these two sacraments.
In modern times, perhaps no one has written more beautifully about marriage than St. John Paul II in what has become known as his “theology of the body.” Between 1979 and 1984, he gave 129 lectures in his Wednesday audiences that provide an in-depth exploration of the complementarity of man and woman and the beauty of the vocation of marriage. However, the pope’s insights are not only valid for those called to live the sacrament of marriage. He points out that marriage is the paradigm for salvation given us in the Scriptures, and thus becomes the paradigm for every vocation, including consecrated persons and priests.
St. John Paul’s insight is biblically based. He points out that the Bible is fundamentally a story about marriage. The Bible is the story of God’s covenant with us, and the main image used in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation to describe the covenant is the image of marriage. The story of salvation is a story of God’s pursuit of his people whom he has espoused as his own. Isaiah 54:5 says, “For your husband is your Maker; the LORD of hosts is his name,” and whenever the people are unfaithful to God’s covenant, he accuses them of adultery.
The salvific meaning of marriage takes on even deeper meaning through Jesus’ incarnation. St. John the Baptist identifies Jesus as the bridegroom who has come for his bride (Jn 3), as his act of creating new wine at the Wedding Feast of Cana clearly symbolizes (Jn 2). St. Paul brings together this marital theology of the Old and New Testament when he explains the sacrament of marriage in Ephesians Chapter 5. There he points out how husbands must love their wives, “even as Christ loved the Church and handed himself over for her.” All this culminates in the book of Revelation, which describes heaven as a great wedding when the Church-bride, and all her members, becomes one with her bridegroom eternally.
It was the centrality of the image of marriage in the Scriptures which caused the Fathers of the Church and St. John Paul II to say that in some way every person is living marriage through baptism. For the Fathers of the Church, the cross was the consummation of the marriage of Christ with the Church. This was the moment when Christ poured out his life for the Church, his Bride. They saw in the water and blood that flowed from the side of Christ on the cross a fulfillment of the story of Eve being taken from the side of Adam. Here the new Eve, the Church, is taken from the side of the new Adam, her bridegroom. This is symbolized by the water of baptism and the blood of the Eucharist, which make the Church his bride.
The Church Fathers also explained how the Eucharist, which makes present the sacrifice of the cross, was a wedding feast, where we become one flesh with Christ, our bridegroom, through holy Communion. (As a side note, this is why our Cathedral has an elaborate baldacchino over the high altar. It models the Jewish custom of having a canopy over the couple who says their marriage vows. The canopy over the altar is the sign that what happens under it is a marriage.)
It was this insight — that the Eucharist is a wedding feast — that led the Fathers of the Church and St. John Paul to speak about the priest as a living image of the bridegroom of the Church. When a priest stands at the altar and says the words of Jesus in his person, and through the power of the sacrament re-presents the wedding feast of the Cross, he is standing there representing Christ the bridegroom.
This is central to the reason that the priest lives celibacy. Like Christ, who through his celibacy and also his obedience and poverty, lived completely for his bride the Church, the priest, too, who stands at the altar and acts in the person of Christ, must imitate his way of life. This was the subject of a book I wrote this last year, “A Living Image of The Bridegroom: The Priesthood and the Evangelical Counsels” (The Institute for Priestly Formation, 2020). In this book, I explore how the salvific truth of marriage in the Scripture, most especially the life of Christ, the bridegroom of the Church, calls a priest to make a gift of his life through living the evangelical counsels of obedience, celibacy and poverty. This was originally my doctoral dissertation published in 2008, but I tried to make it more readable for the average person.
The point is to say that those who live marriage and the priesthood have a lot in common. Both of them are trying to live out the truth of marriage revealed in the Bible — most especially, the truth of the love of Christ, who lays down his life for the Church his bride. Wives and husbands are called to imitate this through the daily sacrifice they make for each other and for their children. Priests and religious are called to imitate this in the daily sacrifices they make for Christ and his Church. Even single people must learn to make a gift of themselves for Christ in some way to fulfill their baptismal call to union with their bridegroom.
All of us who seek to live our vocations well are preparing ourselves for marriage, the great wedding feast of the Lamb where we will be one with him forever.
