The best way to describe Jesus’ relationship with His Church is in terms of a married couple’s bond with each other, EWTN radio host Dr. David Anders said this past weekend in Columbus.
“The New Testament uses many metaphors for Christ – shepherd, teacher, door, king – but I find that the description of Him as a bridegroom is peculiarly appropriate,” Anders said during a day of reflection on Saturday, March 19 at St. Catharine Church. “If a couple’s relationship is sound, then love, fidelity, trust and union come to the fore. All those are qualities of how Christ relates to the Church.
“The trust and self-giving that are part of a good marriage also serve as a metaphor for acts of faith and free-will response to God,” Anders said. “Love can be elicited but can’t be commanded. It’s the ultimate act of self-donation to another, for the benefit of the other. As Shakespeare put it in one of his sonnets, ‘How do I hold thee but by thy granting?’ It mirrors our relationship to God and His relationship to us.”
Anders, who describes himself as “a convert who read my way into the Church,” has been married for 25 years and has five children. “In marriage, you give yourself through fidelity, desire and hope, as well as through the virtue of long-suffering,” he said. “It does help you learn humility as you deal with your differences with each other for the greater good of your marriage and family.
“Over time, the personality of both of you is transformed in Jesus. It’s transformed in ways you never could have imagined. I never would have been doing a Catholic apostolate without the encouragement of my wife. Another thing about marriage is that you never feel you’ve really arrived. You never stop growing in your relationship.”
Anders cited several Scriptural comparisons of divine love and marital love in his first of two presentations. “The biblical Song of Songs is a long collection of wedding hymns and is allegorical to God’s desire for the love of His people,” he said.
“St. Paul speaks in Ephesians 5 of the relationship between Christ and His Church. That chapter is perhaps the most important text in the New Testament on marital spirituality because it speaks of Jesus’ giving Himself up for His bride, the Church, making her holy and blameless. Skip ahead 2,000 years to Vatican II’s Constitution on the Church and St. John Paul II’s Familiaris Consortio, and they make similar references.
“Sometimes marriage references in the Old Testament aren’t always flattering,” Anders said. “Take the story of Hosea. It’s a disturbing book because Hosea is told to marry a promiscuous woman and have kids with her. Hosea does this as a symbol of the disrespect he believes Israel is showing to God.”
He said a key insight to the Scriptural view of marriage comes from the works of St. Irenaeus, a Greek bishop of the second century. “Christ came to restore the beauty, the purity and the elegance of the soul that was lost through original sin,” Anders said. “As Irenaeus put it, ‘What was lost in Adam – namely, to be according to the image and likeness of God – is regained in Christ.’
“Eventually you get to the New Testament and Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well,” Anders said. “He speaks to a woman who is a foreigner, who is promiscuous – everything the Old Testament repudiates – and offers Himself as living water. This overturns the Old Testament traditions of marriage, going beyond ritual. As Jesus tells the woman, ‘True worship now is in spirit and truth.’ The New Testament Church fathers understand the Samaritan woman as an analogy to the Gentile Church.”
Anders’ second presentation focused on the Catholic view of morality. “The Catholic Church saved my marriage and, quite possibly, my life,” he said. “At one point in our marriage, the biggest thing my wife, Jill, and I had in common was contempt for one another. All that changed as I learned more about the Church, and we came to fully understand its teachings on marriage.”
Anders was a Protestant scholar, earning a doctorate in Reformation history before becoming persuaded by the truth of the Catholic faith to convert to Catholicism. “Martin Luther’s basic principle was Sola Scriptura – all morality can be found solely in Scripture – which leads to what’s known as divine command ethics; that is, something is right because God said so, and if God didn’t say anything about it, you’re free to make your own decision,” he said.
“That creates a problem when talking about marriage, specifically the issue of contraception, because contraception never is mentioned in the Bible. From the divine command ethics point of view, it appears to be morally irrelevant.
“Protestant leaders of the Reformation era repudiated the Catholic understanding of morality, which goes back to the Sermon on the Mount and states that reason can discern the nature of things and what it means for something to flourish,” Anders said.
“As historian Stephanie Coontz pointed out in her book Marriage: A History, until the Industrial Revolution, marriage was considered a valuable institution mainly because that’s how society was replenished. Coontz said a good marriage ideally would result in strengthening a couple’s relationship, but the ultimate reason for marriage was not friendship, not romance, not passion but babies,” Anders said.
“This corresponds to traditional Catholic beliefs about marriage. Without this fundamental purpose of being open to the possibility of children, there can’t be a marriage, no matter what its other virtues.
“If a man and a woman decide to prevent any possibility of having children, it’s not a marriage. That’s also why two people of the same sex can’t have a marriage. That’s not how biology works,” he said. “One of Luther’s core doctrines was that marriage was not a sacrament – a divine institution, but not a sacrament. Luther was adamant about this because he wanted marriage to be regulated by the state, not the Church.
“The Catholic Church sacralized marriage because it fits the definition of a sacrament. It’s an efficacious sign of grace instituted by Christ,” whose first public miracle came at a wedding feast when he changed water into wine at Cana, Anders said.
“A marriage doesn’t have to be sacramental or between Christians to be valid,” he said. “In a sacramental marriage, Christ takes a natural marriage and makes it a sign of union with the Church, giving it His blessing. Couples then make this sign visible to the world, and manifest Christ to the world through their fidelity to each other.”