This comes from the website Our Lady's Apostolate for No TV, and
was sourced from The Catholic, a periodical that was sent out by the
Redemptorists of Papa Stronsay before they followed +Fellay's bad
advice and capitulated with modernist Rome.  Now they're "straight-
jacketed and duct-taped."  So, no more Catholic, I guess..................





http://www.ourladysapostolatefornotv.org/catholicspirituality.htm





The Bride of the King

By Mgr Robert Mäder

 

The Marriage at Cana: As important as a Christian marriage may be for the renewal of human society, at Cana much more was at stake. The couple at Cana are [also] models and signs. Their marriage gave Jesus the opportunity at the beginning of His public ministry to reveal the great mystery and goal of His Incarnation: the marriage of the King’s Son, the union of God with mankind. The Son of Heaven came down to earth so that the sons of earth could rise up to Heaven. The work of redemption is nothing less than the marriage of mankind with the Son of God. Thus does Jesus appear at Cana as the Divine Bridegroom Whose bride, the Church that is coming into being, is led to Him.

Only now can we really understand why Mary, the Mother of the Bridegroom as well as the Bride, and the Apostles, Christ’s servants and dispensers of the secrets of God, had to be present in Cana. To the greatest joys of the priesthood belongs the revealing and furthering of the wonderful secret of Christianity, the relationship between the Bridegroom and Bride, between Christ and His Christian people, between Jesus and the individual soul. In this sense, let us think about this marriage day in Cana.

It should be emphasized from the beginning that what will be said about Bride and Groom are not just poetical images, but rather fundamental truths of the Christian faith, basic facts and laws of the world of the supernatural.


The Source of Life

Jesus is the Bridegroom. Jesus as Bridegroom is Head of the Church, as the man is head of the woman [Eph. V, 23].

Bridegroom and Bride, Head and Body, Christ and Church, remain an inseparable unity - two who are actually one! We cannot talk of the one without at the same time thinking of the other. We cannot talk about a body without thinking about the head, of a bride without a bridegroom, of the King without His Queen, of the Church without remembering Jesus. The bride is only a bride insofar as she has a bridegroom. The body lives only insofar as it is joined to the head. We speak of the Queen only because she belongs to the King. The Church exists only because and insofar as she is dependent on Jesus.

Every other society may continue to exist independent of its founder, for better or for worse, for a shorter or a longer period, on the basis of the vitality it possesses, just as a child, once it has come into the world, can continue to exist even without its mother. This does not apply to the Church. The Church is a supernatural society and therefore possesses no life independent of her Founder. She lives and moves and has her being exclusively in Jesus. Jesus is the life of the Church. Everything that is done by the Church is done by Jesus. When the Church baptizes, it is Jesus Who baptizes. When the Church confirms, it is Jesus Who confirms. When the Church sacrifices and transubstantiates, it is Jesus Who sacrifices and transubstantiates. When the Church absolves, it is Jesus Who absolves. When the Church blesses, it is Jesus Who blesses. When the Church prays, it is Jesus Who prays. The King does everything through the Queen.


In the Name of God

The priest, the bishop or the pope is only a representative, an organ of the living and acting Christ. Certainly he is a necessary organ, but nevertheless only an organ, a member, a tool. Jesus comes into the life of the Church as the life-giving, moving Principle Who is so much in the foreground that the Church is referred to as Christ living on. Just as in marriage the family name of the bride gives way to the husband’s name, so in the history of the Church, which began on Pentecost - which was both the birthday and the wedding day of the Church - the name and the work of the Bride must recede into the background, giving place to those of the King.

The Bride and the children of the Bride must bear the name of the Bridegroom Jesus. All other names, if they do not disappear, must give Him pride of place. The Personality and the Name before which all knees must bend is the Name Jesus! Jesus is all in all for Church history.

Whatever else is great, worthy and holy was and is so only insofar as it comes from Jesus. It must be a member of his Mystical Body, the Church, which is flooded with divine life. We know that the Church serves no idols in its saints.

Basically, the Bride knows only her Bridegroom Jesus. It is impossible to have a more wonderful and more universal concept of the place of Christ in Christianity than the Catholic Church has always had since the days of the Apostles and the ancient Church Fathers. The Church wants only to be Christ living on! That is the great mystery of which St Paul repeatedly speaks in his epistles: Jesus cares for the Christians as for His own Body. The Christians are members in Christ. The Christians are something of Jesus.

If one learns to know the King, one also becomes acquainted with the Queen. If Jesus is the life principle of the Church - so much so that all supernatural actions of the body and the members, the Church and the Christians, may and must be regarded also as His actions, - then the task of the Church consists singularly and exclusively in binding herself most devotedly to Christ her Head. There is no warning that St Paul writes more urgently or more often in his letters than to be and live in Christ Jesus. The same applies to the writings of St John. [...] We only fulfill our God-willed functions as members of Christ to the extent that our union with the Head has been established.


The Modern Divorce

On the other hand, we are ill, lame or dead to the extent that the connection of the member with the Head is disturbed, suspended or destroyed. [...] And that is the great evil of our naturalist, modernist times! The hand acts alone. We are very busy in all sorts of fields. Yet the hands of the Christians are not usually moved by the Head, not by Jesus, but rather by nature, the spirit of the times, our own stubbornness, our own will, our own interests. Our activities, especially our public ones, our economic, political and everyday doings and comings and goings do not really live in Jesus anymore. The relationship with the King is missing.

The People of God - a frequent concept in the Old Testament - looks to others and runs after others. Seized by the modern spirit, it follows adulterous ways. It is thinking of separation and divorce. Christ and Christendom belong together as an indissoluble union like head and body. That is the meaning of the motto of Pope St Pius X: “Restore all things in Christ.”

The Bride, Christendom, should return to her Bridegroom. She should combat all liberal and modern desires to commit adultery, all flirting with the world. Whatever she does, whether eating and drinking or anything else, however she works, amuses herself, buys or sells, writes or talks, makes politics or prays, her entire day’s activities should be in Jesus! The Bride belongs to the Bridegroom. That and that alone is Christianity! Back to the King! †   Taken from The Catholic