Bride and mother: how a woman images the Church

IThe Church is a bride

St Paul reaches for marriage to describe what Christ has done for His people, and then turns the image around to teach husbands and wives:

He ends: "This is a great sacrament; but I speak in Christ and in the church" (Ephesians 5:32, Douay). The Catechism gathers the whole biblical theme together — the prophets, John the Baptist, Christ calling Himself the bridegroom, Paul speaking of the whole Church and of each believer as a bride betrothed to the Lord (CCC 796).

Notice who the bride is. St John Paul II is precise: the bride of Ephesians is the whole People of God, "a community made up of many persons, both women and men" (Mulieris Dignitatem 25). And so:

Hold on to that sentence. Everything else on this page rests on it.

IIThe Church is a mother

The Second Vatican Council teaches that the Church, imitating Mary, "by receiving the word of God in faith becomes herself a mother": by preaching and baptism she brings forth children to a new and immortal life. And she is a virgin, "who keeps the faith given to her by her Spouse whole and entire" (Lumen Gentium 64).

Receiving the Word, bringing forth life, keeping faith whole: that is what the Church does. The Catechism names the woman in whom all three are perfectly seen.

IIIMary, the image

Following St Ambrose, the Council calls Mary "a type of the Church in the order of faith, charity and perfect union with Christ" (Lumen Gentium 63) — the Catechism's word is typus, the Church's "exemplary realization" (CCC 967). In her the Church "has already reached that perfection whereby she is without spot or wrinkle" (Lumen Gentium 65): the very words Paul used for the bride in Ephesians 5:27.

John Paul II draws the consequence: Mary "precedes" everyone on the path to holiness, and so "one can say that the Church is both 'Marian' and 'Apostolic-Petrine'" (Mulieris Dignitatem 27). The Church does have a hierarchical structure, and he adds that it "is totally ordered to the holiness of Christ's members" (MD 27) — the holiness of which Mary is the figure.

IVWhy a woman, especially

If every Christian is part of the bride, why speak of a woman imaging the Church? Because, John Paul II teaches, in the analogy of bridegroom and bride "it is precisely the woman — the bride — who manifests this truth to everyone" (Mulieris Dignitatem 29). He returned to it in his Letter to Women (1995):

That is the claim, stated as the Church states it. A believing woman's womanhood carries a sign. It points to what the whole Church is meant to be before God: one who receives love and gives it back, and through whom new life is born. She is not holier for being a woman; she is a sign that every soul, his and hers, can read.

VWhat this does not mean

A teaching this beautiful is easy to bend. Four guard-rails, each from the Church's own words:

• She is not "the domestic church." The family is. "The family is, so to speak, the domestic church" (Lumen Gentium 11; CCC 1656). Her husband and children are inside it with her, and the Catechism says that there the father, the mother and the children all live out the priesthood that belongs to every baptized person (CCC 1657).
• It is not a priestly office. In the home she shares the common priesthood of the baptized, as her husband and children do, and John Paul II says all share its dignity "equally" (Letter to Women 11). The ministerial priesthood of Holy Orders is another thing.
• It is not servility. Paul's teaching on marriage in Ephesians 5 begins with "Being subject one to another, in the fear of Christ" (Ephesians 5:21, Douay). John Paul II insists that between husband and wife "the 'subjection' is not one-sided but mutual" (Mulieris Dignitatem 24), and the husband's part in the same chapter is to deliver himself up. It is never a license for abuse: Church law recognizes grave danger from a spouse as a legitimate cause for leaving (Code of Canon Law, can. 1153; CCC 2383).
• It is not for wives and mothers only. The Letter to Women names the consecrated woman especially. John Paul II grounds a woman's calling in her womanhood itself, not in marriage alone (Mulieris Dignitatem 29–30), and teaches that "spiritual motherhood takes on many different forms" (MD 21). It belongs to the single woman, the widow and the woman without children as truly as to the mother of many.

In marriage, it is husband and wife together who signify "that unity and fruitful love which exists between Christ and His Church" (Lumen Gentium 11). Within a marriage, a wife does not image the Church against her husband or in rivalry with him.

VIWhat it looks like at Nazareth — and in your house

The Gospels give us Mary's way in a handful of lines, and each one can become a habit in an ordinary home:

• She receives the Word. "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word" (Luke 1:38). Keep the Scriptures where the household can see them, and read a few lines aloud.
• She keeps and ponders. "his mother kept all these words in her heart" (Luke 2:51). A place of prayer in the house — the Catechism calls it a "prayer corner" (CCC 2691) — gives that keeping a home.
• She points to her Son. "Whatsoever he shall say to you, do ye" (John 2:5). Bringing anyone to Him — a child, a friend, a stranger — is the same work.
• She stands at the Cross. "Now there stood by the cross of Jesus, his mother" (John 19:25). The suffering in your house is not outside this calling.
• She prays with the Church. After the Ascension the disciples were "persevering with one mind in prayer with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus" (Acts 1:14). Keep the feasts at home, as Familiaris Consortio asks of families (FC 61).

All Scripture on this page is from the Douay-Rheims.

VIIA prayer to begin