grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. (Phil 2:6–8)
Kimberly Hahn has a lovely description of this act of nuptial union and communion:
Love leads to life; life leads to sacrifice. Jesus does in the flesh what He has always done in his divinity: He loves with complete self-donation. Of course the difficulty with loving with complete self-donation is that it requires the ultimate sacrifice of life in death. When Jesus took on human flesh in the Incarnation, His self-offering involved His life, death, and resurrection as the supreme gift of His love for us. It is this self-offering that He took into the Holy of Holies in heaven when He ascended to the Father (see Heb. 9:11–14). 9
This sacrifice was not done as a judge for a plaintiff, or a warrior for a king, but as a bridegroom for his bride. According to the apostle Paul, the marital embrace is the pre-eminent earthly symbol to describe the indescribable union between Christ and His Church (Eph. 5:31–33). Paul builds upon the bridal imagery foreshadowed in the Old Testament where God’s love for Israel is likened to a husband’s love for his bride (see Is. 61:10–11; Hos. 2:16–20; Song of Solomon, etc.). It also appears later in Saint John’s apocalyptic vision: “And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.… Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues, and spoke to me, saying, ‘Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb’” (Rev. 21:2, 9).
Christopher West, accenting Pope John Paul’s theology of the body, ties together the marital themes of both Testaments:
Just as God organically inscribed the marital union of Adam and Eve in the mystery of creation, he organically inscribes the “marital” union of the new Adam and the new Eve (Christ and the Church) in the mystery of redemption. Spousal union, in fact, becomes the foundation upon which God constructs the entire mystery of our salvation in Christ. 10
As the bridal, so the maternal. Christ constitutes the Church as Bride by Christ so she could become our Mother. This Mother then gives supernatural birth to new children by the “womb” of her baptismal font, so women share in this bridal maternity by being called to motherhood, whether spiritual or biological. Saint Paul does not hesitate to say that “woman will be saved through bearing children” (1 Tim. 2:15).
The “unbreakable connection” between the procreative and unitive meanings of the marital act taught by Humanae Vitae is the logical outgrowth of Jesus’ teaching of the indissolubility of marriage in Matthew 19:5–6, which harkened back to the way it was “in the beginning.” For the invisible love of husband for wife, and wife for husband, is so charged with promise that the two do become one in a breathtakingly literal way—in the form of a diaper-clad nap enthusiast! From this angle, every child is a kind of Incarnation in miniature. 11
Taking a provocative step further, Saint Augustine referred to the cross as the marriage bed of Christ. “Like a bridegroom Christ went forth from his chamber, he went out with a presage of his nuptials into the field of the world,” wrote the saint of Hippo. “He came to the marriage bed of the cross, and there, in mounting it, he consummated his marriage. And where he perceived the sighs of the creature, he lovingly gave himself up in place of his bride, and he joined himself to the woman forever.” 12
Augustine’s comparison is worth lingering on. On a symbolic level, does it not intimate something of the outlook we ought to have toward the life-bedecked consequences of each act of intercourse? More, if the cross stands for Christ’s mystical
Kimberly Hahn has a lovely description of this act of nuptial union and communion:
Love leads to life; life leads to sacrifice. Jesus does in the flesh what He has always done in his divinity: He loves with complete self-donation. Of course the difficulty with loving with complete self-donation is that it requires the ultimate sacrifice of life in death. When Jesus took on human flesh in the Incarnation, His self-offering involved His life, death, and resurrection as the supreme gift of His love for us. It is this self-offering that He took into the Holy of Holies in heaven when He ascended to the Father (see Heb. 9:11–14). 9
This sacrifice was not done as a judge for a plaintiff, or a warrior for a king, but as a bridegroom for his bride. According to the apostle Paul, the marital embrace is the pre-eminent earthly symbol to describe the indescribable union between Christ and His Church (Eph. 5:31–33). Paul builds upon the bridal imagery foreshadowed in the Old Testament where God’s love for Israel is likened to a husband’s love for his bride (see Is. 61:10–11; Hos. 2:16–20; Song of Solomon, etc.). It also appears later in Saint John’s apocalyptic vision: “And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.… Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues, and spoke to me, saying, ‘Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb’” (Rev. 21:2, 9).
Christopher West, accenting Pope John Paul’s theology of the body, ties together the marital themes of both Testaments:
Just as God organically inscribed the marital union of Adam and Eve in the mystery of creation, he organically inscribes the “marital” union of the new Adam and the new Eve (Christ and the Church) in the mystery of redemption. Spousal union, in fact, becomes the foundation upon which God constructs the entire mystery of our salvation in Christ. 10
As the bridal, so the maternal. Christ constitutes the Church as Bride by Christ so she could become our Mother. This Mother then gives supernatural birth to new children by the “womb” of her baptismal font, so women share in this bridal maternity by being called to motherhood, whether spiritual or biological. Saint Paul does not hesitate to say that “woman will be saved through bearing children” (1 Tim. 2:15).
The “unbreakable connection” between the procreative and unitive meanings of the marital act taught by Humanae Vitae is the logical outgrowth of Jesus’ teaching of the indissolubility of marriage in Matthew 19:5–6, which harkened back to the way it was “in the beginning.” For the invisible love of husband for wife, and wife for husband, is so charged with promise that the two do become one in a breathtakingly literal way—in the form of a diaper-clad nap enthusiast! From this angle, every child is a kind of Incarnation in miniature. 11
Taking a provocative step further, Saint Augustine referred to the cross as the marriage bed of Christ. “Like a bridegroom Christ went forth from his chamber, he went out with a presage of his nuptials into the field of the world,” wrote the saint of Hippo. “He came to the marriage bed of the cross, and there, in mounting it, he consummated his marriage. And where he perceived the sighs of the creature, he lovingly gave himself up in place of his bride, and he joined himself to the woman forever.” 12
Augustine’s comparison is worth lingering on. On a symbolic level, does it not intimate something of the outlook we ought to have toward the life-bedecked consequences of each act of intercourse? More, if the cross stands for Christ’s mystical
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