Analogy of Spousal Love
Indicates the Radical Character of Grace
General Audience, September 29, 1982
1. In the Letter to the Ephesians
(5:21-33)—as in the prophets of the Old Testament (e.g., in
Isaiah)—we find the great analogy of marriage or of the spousal love
between Christ and the Church.
What function does this analogy fulfill in regard to the mystery
revealed in the old and the new covenants? The answer to this
question must be gradual. First of all, the analogy of spousal or
conjugal love helps to penetrate the essence of the mystery. It
helps to understand it up to a certain point, naturally, in an
analogical way. It is obvious that the analogy of earthly human love
of the husband for his wife, of human spousal love, cannot provide
an adequate and complete understanding of that absolutely
transcendent Reality which is the divine mystery, both as hidden for
ages in God, and in its historical fulfillment in time, when "Christ
so loved the Church and gave himself up for her" (Eph 5:25). The
mystery remains transcendent in regard to this analogy as in regard
to any other analogy, whereby we seek to express it in human
language. At the same time, however, this analogy offers the
possibility of a certain cognoscitive penetration into the essence
of the mystery.
Realized by Christ
2. The analogy of spousal love permits us to understand in a certain
way the mystery which for ages was hidden in God, and which in turn
was realized by Christ, as a love proper to a total and irrevocable
gift of self on the part of God to man in Christ. It is a question
of "man" in the personal and at the same time communitarian
dimension. (This communitarian dimension is expressed in the Book of
Isaiah and in the prophets as "Israel," and in the Letter to the
Ephesians as the "Church"; one could say: the People of God of the
old and of the new covenant.) We may add that in both conceptions,
in a certain sense the communitarian dimension is placed in the
forefront. But it is not to such an extent as completely to hide the
personal dimension, which, on the other hand, pertains simply to the
essence of conjugal love. In both cases we are dealing rather with a
significant "reduction of the community to the person":(1) Israel
and the Church are considered as bride-person in relation to the
bridegroom-person (Yahweh and Christ). Every concrete "I" should
find itself in that biblical "we."
God of the covenant
3. So then, the analogy which we are speaking of permits us to
understand in a certain degree the revealed mystery of the living
God who is Creator and Redeemer. (And as such he is, at the same
time, God of the covenant.) It permits us to understand this mystery
in the manner of a spousal love, just as it allows us to understand
it also in the manner of a love of "compassion" (according to the
text of Isaiah), or in the manner of a "paternal" love (according to
the Letter to the Ephesians, especially in the first chapter). The
above-mentioned ways of understanding the mystery are also without
doubt analogical. The analogy of spousal love contains in itself a
characteristic of the mystery, which is not directly emphasized
either by the analogy of the love of compassion or by the analogy of
paternal love (or by any other analogy used in the Bible to which we
would have referred).
Radical and total gift
4. The analogy of spousal love seems to emphasize especially the
aspect of the gift of self on the part of God to man, "for ages"
chosen in Christ (literally: to "Israel," to the "Church")—a total
(or rather radical) and irrevocable gift in its essential character,
that is, as a gift. This gift is certainly radical and therefore
total. We cannot speak of that totality in a metaphysical sense.
Indeed, as a creature man is not capable of receiving the gift of
God in the transcendental fullness of his divinity. Such a total
gift (uncreated) is shared only by God himself in the triune
communion of the Persons. On the contrary, God's gift of himself to
man, which the analogy of spousal love speaks of, can only have the
form of a participation in the divine nature (cf. 2 Pt 1:4), as
theology makes clear with very great precision. Nevertheless,
according to this measure, the gift made to man on the part of God
in Christ is a total, that is, a radical gift, as the analogy of
spousal love indicates. In a certain sense, it is all that God could
give of himself to man, considering the limited faculties of man, a
creature. In this way, the analogy of spousal love indicates the
radical character of grace, of the whole order of created grace.
Sacrament and mystery
5. The foregoing seems to be what can be said in reference to the
primary function of our great analogy, which has passed from the
writings of the prophets of the Old Testament to the Letter to the
Ephesians, where, as has already been noted, it underwent a
significant transformation. The analogy of marriage, as a human
reality in which spousal love is incarnated, helps to a certain
degree and in a certain way to understand the mystery of grace as an
eternal reality in God and as a historical fruit of mankind's
redemption in Christ. However, we said before that this biblical
analogy not only "explains" the mystery. On the other hand the
mystery defines and determines the adequate manner of understanding
the analogy, and precisely this element, in which the biblical
authors see "the image and likeness" of the divine mystery. So then,
the comparison of marriage (because of spousal love) to the
relationship of Yahweh-Israel in the old covenant and of
Christ-Church in the new covenant decides, at the same time, the
manner of understanding marriage itself and determines this manner.
6. This is the second function of our great analogy. In the
perspective of this function we approach the problem of sacrament
and mystery, that is, in the general and fundamental sense, the
problem of the sacramentality of marriage. This seems especially
justified in the light of the analysis of the Letter to the
Ephesians (5:21-33). Indeed, in presenting the relationship of
Christ to the Church in the image of the conjugal union of husband
and wife, the author of this letter speaks in the most general and
at the same time fundamental way. He speaks not only of the
fulfillment of the eternal divine mystery, but also of the way in
which that mystery is expressed in the visible order, of the way in
which it has become visible, and therefore has entered into the
sphere of sign.
Visibility of the mystery
7. By the term "sign" we mean here simply the "visibility of the
Invisible." The mystery for ages hidden in God—that is,
invisible—has become visible first of all in the historical event of
Christ. The relationship of Christ to the Church, which is defined
in the Letter to the Ephesians as "a great mystery," constitutes the
fulfillment and the concretization of the visibility of the mystery
itself. The author of the Letter to the Ephesians compares the
indissoluble relationship of Christ and the Church to the
relationship between husband and wife, that is, to
marriage—referring at the same time to the words of Genesis (2:24),
which by God's creative act originally instituted marriage—turns our
attention to what was already presented—in the context of the
mystery of creation—as the "visibility of the Invisible," to the
very "origin" of the theological history of man.
It can be said that the visible sign of marriage "in the beginning,"
inasmuch as it is linked to the visible sign of Christ and of the
Church, to the summit of the salvific economy of God, transfers the
eternal plan of love into the historical dimension and makes it the
foundation of the whole sacramental order. It is a special merit of
the author of the Letter to the Ephesians that he brought these two
signs together, and made of them one great sign—that is, a great
sacrament (sacramentum magnum).
Note
1. It is not merely a question of the personification of human
society, which constitutes a fairly common phenomenon in world
literature, but of a specific "corporate personality" of the Bible,
marked by a continual reciprocal relationship of the individual to
the group (cf. H. Wheeler Robinson, "The Hebrew Conception of
Corporate Personality," BZAW 66 [1936], pp. 49-62; cf. also J. L.
McKenzie, "Aspects of Old Testament Thought," The Jerome Biblical
Commentary, Vol. 2 [London: 1970], p. 748).
Taken from: L'Osservatore Romano Weekly Edition in English 4 October
1982, page 1
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