Holy Thursday, 2013
In short, the one-flesh marital union of sex and love in
the Divine plan has everything to do with the Sacred Triduum! In fact, our Christian understanding of the
very meaning of sex comes from the one-flesh union of all time and eternity
shared between Christ and his Church.
What is more, this one-flesh union of marital love is consummated “not
on the nuptial bed of pleasure, but on the nuptial bed of pain, there on the
cross by Christ Jesus,” said the late, great, Archbishop Fulton Sheen. If we Christians want to understand the
meaning of sexual union, we claim that this “great mystery” (Ep. 5:21-33) is revealed
to us on the cross of Christ, especially at the moment of Jesus’s death - at 3:00
pm in the afternoon, Good Friday. But
that’s still not all! We Christians are
so strange; we assert that the one-flesh nuptial union of sex and love in the
Divine plan reveals to us the very meaning of our entire lives! (Not that “having sex” is the meaning of
life; but that “consummation” – or, making our love complete in a total gift of
self to the other(s) – is the meaning of life.)
Blessed John Paul II once wrote, in a document he was
using to teach the Church about the dignity of women, that: “Christ is the Bridegroom because ‘he has given himself’: his body has
been ‘given’, his blood has been ‘poured out’. . . The sincere gift contained
in the sacrifice of the Cross gives definitive prominence to the spousal
meaning of God’s love. As the Redeemer
of the world, Christ is the Bridegroom of the Church. The
Eucharist is the Sacrament of our Redemption.
It is the Sacrament of the Bridegroom and of the Bride.” (See, Mulieris
Dignitatem. N. 26) Since Jesus is the Messiah “Bridegroom,” who
has come for his Bride, the Church - Christ longs to fulfill a marriage covenant
with humanity. God wants to marry us all
and the way he can accomplish this marriage is in the one-flesh union of Christ
and His Church – the Eucharistic Sacrifice.
But, the Eucharist – Jesus’s Body and Blood “given” and “poured
out” (or “shed”) for the world - can’t be accomplished except through his death: the death of a person – the Second Person of
the Trinity. Why does the Church call
the day Jesus dies – “good,” as in “Good Friday”? Today is Thursday of the Sacred Triduum,
which is a day of celebration in this three day long Feast. Jesus institutes the Eucharist at the Last
Supper and he simultaneously institutes the Priesthood. But, tomorrow, on Good Friday, we celebrate the
day that God died. Are we sad on Good
Friday? Absolutely not! Don’t be sad on Good Friday. Jesus has to give himself to us, completely
in love, even to the point of his death on a cross so that the memorial of His
Body and Blood can also be given through the ages, perpetuated and “consummated”
in a one-flesh union of love with his Bride, the Church. (Please note that the term "memorial," in this context, doesn't mean: "to simply remember," it means: "to make the reality actually present outside of time and space.") How can we “consummate” our marriage with
Christ? In the Eucharist is where we
become one-flesh with our Bridegroom, who gives himself to us completely in love.
In this paradigm, Jesus - the Word made flesh - is the “seed”
given to us by the Father (see John 1:1-14).
What am I talking about here?
Jesus is the seed of the Father who inseminates the world – literally –
in the one-flesh union of the Bridegroom and the Bride, the Eucharist. Jesus inseminates us, his Spouse, the
Church. Jesus, the Word made flesh, is
the “seed” given to us by the Father.
We, the Church, who are the followers of Christ who receive his marital
covenant offer made complete in the Eucharist, receive his seed into our bodies
when we eat his Body and drink his Blood.
We then nourish his divine life inside of ourselves, we love Jesus there,
we bring him to more and more fruition inside and then bring him to life in the
world. All of this also happens in the
womb of any mother when she bears the fruit of her womb in the gift of a
child. It is the same kind of
relationship between Christ and his Spouse, the Church – who receives Jesus,
the seed, the Word. The Church then
brings Jesus to life in the world, just like a good mother, a good spouse. We listen to His life-giving Word in the Bible
and receive his very Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity into ourselves in the
Eucharist. In the “Erotic Order,” (another
way to describe God’s plan and design for sex and love) a man and his wife
offer a particular way of bearing fruit.
This fruit, primarily, is children.
The erotic order is created for this end and this type of fruit in the Sacrament
of Marriage which signifies Christ’s love for his own Bride, the Church.
This Triduum, as every Triduum before - and every day a
Mass has been celebrated since the very first Mass – the Mass of the Lord’s
Supper, and the second Mass which occurred on the way to Emmaus (see Lk. 24:13-35) with two
disciples the day Jesus rose from the dead, and so on, and so forth – the Bridegroom
desires to make His marriage complete with us and the only way He can
accomplish this is by way of the Eucharist.
So, we can all reflect this Triduum on the past, as well as on the
present and the future – Jesus in the Eucharistic Sacrifice who consummates a
marital covenant with the Church, and inseminates his Bride (that’s us) to bear
Jesus to the world.