YOUCAT Question n. 127 - Part I. What does it mean to say that the Church is the “Bride of Christ”?
(Youcat
answer) Jesus Christ loves the Church as a bridegroom loves his bride. He binds
himself to her forever and gives his life for her.
A deepening through CCC
(CCC 795 a)
Christ and his Church thus together make up the "whole Christ" (Christus totus). The Church is one with
Christ. The saints are acutely aware of this unity: Let us rejoice then and
give thanks that we have become not only Christians, but Christ himself. Do you
understand and grasp, brethren, God's grace toward us? Marvel and rejoice: we
have become Christ. For if he is the head, we are the members; he and we
together are the whole man.... The fullness of Christ then is the head and the
members. But what does "head and members" mean? Christ and the Church
(St. Augustine, In Jo. Ev, 21, 8: PL
35, 1568).
Reflecting and meditating
(Youcat comment)
Anyone who has ever
been in love has some idea of what love is. Jesus knows it and calls himself a
bridegroom who lovingly and longingly courts his bride and desires to celebrate
the feast of love with her. We are his Bride, the Church. In the Old Testament God’s love for
his people is compared to the love between husband and wife. If Jesus seeks the
love of each one of us, how often is he then unhappily in love—that is to say, with all those
who want nothing to do with his love and do not reciprocate it?!
(CCC Comment)
(CCC 795 b)
Our redeemer has shown himself to be one person with the holy Church whom he
has taken to himself (Pope St. Gregory the Great Moralia in Job, praef., 14: PL 75, 525A). Head and members form as
it were one and the same mystical person (St. Thomas Aquinas, STh III, 48, 2). A reply of St. Joan of
Arc to her judges sums up the faith of the holy doctors and the good sense of
the believer: "About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they're
just one thing, and we shouldn't complicate the matter" (Acts of the Trial
of Joan of Arc).
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