The Bride of Christ, Part 3

Exploring the model of the bride of Christ

02/19/2024

When Fr. Daniel asked me to teach some classes on the Church – ecclesiology is the technical term for the study of the Church – he suggested I use Cardinal Avery Dulles’ book Models of the Church. That was an excellent suggestion because Dulles highlights five different models or ways we understand the Church. Think about each model as a facet of the diamond of the Church. As we explore each model we are, in effect, turning this brilliant diamond in our hand and admiring it from different sides as the light of faith refracts off it and deepens our understanding. Those five sides or facets are: (1) an institution, (2) a mystical communion, (3) a sacrament, (4) a herald, and (5) a servant.

But as I read through Dulles’ exposition, one model of the Church was conspicuously absent, namely, as the bride of Christ. Still, I became hopeful when I saw Dulles included an appendix called, “The ecclesiology of Pope John Paul II.” I thought: “Surely, there he will discuss the church as the bride of Christ,” one of John Paul’s favorite descriptors for the Church. But sadly, he only made a brief passing remark, noting: “In this receptive aspect, the Church may be understood as bride” (p. 228). That was all the attention Dulles accorded the Church as the bride of Christ, and in my opinion, that was a glaring oversight. So, before we begin to admire these five facets of the diamond of the Church as institution, mystical communion, sacrament, herald, and servant, I want to give adequate attention to the Church as bride of Christ, which, I believe (and sorry for changing metaphors), stands like the Himalayan mountains next to the peaks of the Ozarks, which would be these other models.

Before going further let me head off a potential objection to seeing the Church as bride. Some modern feminists might feel that image or model belittles or denigrates the Church and places it in a subservient role. After all, didn’t St. Paul teach, “let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands” (Ep 5:24)? But I found a helpful balance to St. Paul’s perspective in G. K. Chesterton. He made this astounding observation about the meaning of wearing a skirt or dress. Chesterton points out: "It is quite certain that the skirt means female dignity, not female submission; it can be proven by the simplest of all tests…[W]hen men wish to be safely impressive as judges, priests, or kings, they do wear skirts, the long trailing robes of female dignity. The whole world is under petticoat government; for even men wear petticoats when they wish to govern.” And we witness this female monarchy operative in the animal kingdom, too, where among ants and bees the queen rules and the males are the subjects. In other words, when we regard the Church under the aspect of the bride of Christ – as a woman who wears a skirt – that model in no way lowers her status in society or even in the great chain of being, but rather elevates her to the highest rung of that social ladder. And I believe even St. Paul would agree with this assessment, as we will see shortly.

I would like to consider two sources that can teach us about the Church as bride, first in the liturgy, and second in the Scriptures. Have you ever noticed the pronoun we use at Mass when we refer to the whole Church? We use the feminine singular “she” or “her.” We do not employ “he” or much less “it.” And I believe that is both very deliberate and very significant. For example, in Eucharistic Prayer II, you will recall the priest saying: “Remember, Lord, your Church, spread throughout the world, and bring HER to the fullness of charity…” (emphasis added). In our modern culture of gender fluidity – he/she/they – there is nothing fluid about the use of the feminine singular to refer to the Church. that humble fixed pronoun reveals the Church’s deepest identity as the bride of Christ.

Even our roles as participants in the liturgy reinforce this image of the Church as bride. How so? In the Catholic Church only men are ordained as priests. That male-only priesthood is not an indication that Catholics are just old fashioned and cannot get with the times. That rule reflects, rather, the deeper reality of who Christ is and who we are corporately in relation to him, that is, a bride. In other words, just as Jesus’ masculinity (in his human nature) is constitutive of his identity as the Son of God, so the Church’s femininity is essential to her identity as the bride of Christ. To disregard her femininity would be an affront not only to the Church but also to her Savior, and her Spouse. The two go hand-in-hand. C. S. Lewis touched on these irreversible roles in the liturgy remarking: “[I]t is an old saying in the army that you salute the uniform and not the wearer. Only one wearing the masculine uniform can (provisionally and until the Parousia) represent the Lord to the Church: for we are all corporately and individually feminine to Him” (God in the Dock, 239). That is, one reason – perhaps the chief reason – we do not have women priests is because it would blur the true identity not only of Christ but also of his Church.

The second source from which we can explore this model of the Church as the bride of Christ is Sacred Scripture, the foundation of all Christian faith and life. The two inspired authors who most frequently employed the image of the bride of Christ for the Church were St. Paul and St. John. Combined, they penned eighteen of the twenty-seven books (roughly two-thirds) of the New Testament. So their perspective permeates and even predominates the New Testament. One particularly noteworthy episode in John’s gospel is John the Baptist’s final testimony about Jesus. In Jn 2:29, we read: “He who has the bride is the bridegroom; the friend (or best man) of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice; therefore this joy of mine is now full.” Notice John the Baptist’s extended analogy, where he describes Jesus as the Bridegroom, the Church as his bride, and himself as the friend or best man! I was the best man at my brother’s wedding, and in a sense, I am the liturgical equivalent to a best man at every wedding I celebrate because I rejoice to see Jesus symbolically present in every human bridegroom, and the Church represented by every human bride. Like John the Baptist my “joy is made full” at every wedding, where I get a front row seat to a preview of the end of the world. How so? St. John again uses this analogy in the book of Revelation, writing: “Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls of the seven last plagues, and spoke to me, saying, ‘Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb’” (Rv 21:9). In other words, the best way to describe the end of the world is as a cosmic wedding, where Jesus is the eternal Groom, and the Church is his eternal Bride.

St. Paul develops the model of the Church as the bride of Christ in a profound way in Ephesians 5. There he advises husbands to love their wives like Jesus loves us: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her” (Ep 5:25). That is, men called to Christian marriage should love their wives sacrificially, like Jesus who died on the cross for us, his bride. After exploring this analogy in terms of Baptism – how Jesus washes the Church – and Eucharistic themes – how Jesus feeds and nourishes his Church – St. Paul concludes: “This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the Church” (Ep 5:31). One of the most touching gestures at the wedding reception is when a bride and groom feed each other the first piece of wedding cake. St. Paul picks up on that gesture and compares it to the Eucharist. In other words, at every Mass when you come forward for Holy Communion it is Jesus in the priest who is feeding you wedding cake in that Holy Wafer. By the way, this is why the traditional way of receiving Holy Communion was directly on the tongue. The bride at the wedding reception does not say: “Give me the cake; I’ll put it in my own mouth. I’ve got better aim.” Please don’t misunderstand, you are welcome to receive Holy Communion on the hand, I just wanted to explain the scriptural origin of receiving on the tongue. In other words, receiving Holy Communion on the tongue emphasizes who the Church truly is, namely, the bride of Christ. And perhaps this is why the Eucharist is best described as a wedding banquet. To return to St. John’s Revelation, we read: “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rv 19:9).

I would suggest to you that it is not only John and Paul who are preoccupied with this model of the Church as the bride of Christ. But in a real sense, this image or model can be traced like a golden thread running through virtually every page of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation. Pope St. John Paul II with good reason, therefore, called marriage “the primordial sacrament,” because it was present in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, it is embodied in every human marriage like each of yours, and it will be fully manifested in the eternal marriage of Jesus the Bridegroom and the Church the bride of Christ at the end of time. This is why I am convinced that to miss the model of the Church as the bride of Christ is to miss virtually the overriding message of the liturgy and the Bible. That is, we risk missing who Jesus truly is, and who we are as his Church. And hence the Second Vatican Council taught: “Christ…fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear” (Gaudium et Spes, 22). And I would only add that our “supreme calling” is to be the bride of Christ.

Praised be Jesus Christ!