Inclusive Marriage - II

From a homily on the wedding at Cana.

We go to St. Bernard of Clairvaux in our consideration of this miracle at Cana.

In one homily of his on this Gospel passage[1], St. Bernard clearly places the miracle performed by Jesus as a continuation of the manifestations of His divinity. He writes: “It was truly a great sign of divine power, that at the word of the Lord water is changed into wine…” But St. Bernard looks beyond the miraculous changing of water into wine to its deeper meaning. And so the saint continues: “But there is a more perfect change wrought by the hand of the Almighty which He prefigured in this wonder.” And what is the deeper significance of the action of Jesus?
 
Why is it that Jesus performed this miracle? To please His mother? To please the people gathered at the wedding? To show off some magical powers? St. Bernard points to the desire of God to be united in love to each one of us. He writes:
 
            For we are all of us invited to spiritual nuptials, in which the Bridegroom is none other than Christ the Lord…And we are the Spouse, and, if this does not appear incredible to you, all together we are one Spouse, and the soul of each single one of us is itself a Spouse.
 
And the saint adds:
 
            But when can our misery know this of its God, that He loves us as the Bridegroom loves the Spouse?
 
God loves us as the Bridegroom loves the Spouse.
 
For St. Bernard this is the deeper meaning of the miracle of the wedding at Cana, that God invites each one of us into a loving spousal relationship. God indeed invites each one of us to share in His Divine Life, to become one with His Divinity. This is what is implied by using the analogy of a spousal relationship to talk of God’s desire for relationship with each one of us. Each one of us is called into an individual spousal relationship with God; all of us, together, are one Spouse, that is, the Church; each of our souls is also a Spouse of Christ.
 
The imagery of Christ’s spousal union with the Church is used in the understanding of Marriage as a divine institution. In Catholic Christian theology, marriage is considered to have been elevated by Christ Himself to be one of the seven Sacraments, precisely in His participation in the wedding at Cana. A marriage between two Christians, therefore, has a supernatural element – a divine element – as well as a natural one.[2]
 
As a Sacrament, marriage is a source of sanctifying grace, grace from God. This grace helps each spouse to assist the other grow in holiness, and it helps them together to cooperate in God's plan of redemption by being an embodiment of God’s incarnational love. In this way, sacramental marriage is more than simply a natural union of two persons; it is, in fact, a type and a symbol of the divine union between Christ, the Bridegroom, and His Church, the Spouse.
 
For many Churches, this Sacrament is restricted to the union between a man and a woman, with procreation as a determining factor. And so, the understanding of this Sacrament and of the sanctifying grace it promises is determined and consequently restricted by biology. By this interpretation, the New Law opened to us by Christ symbolized by the water-turned-into-wine as opposed to the Old Law symbolized by the water, this New Law, that of God’s call for us to be in union with Him through Christ, is trumped by biology. God’s desire for us to image and experience His spousal relationship with us through our own loving, committed relationships is restricted to those persons attracted to the opposite gender. This is primarily based on the capacity for natural procreation.
 
St. Bernard, in his exposition of the deeper meaning of Jesus’ miracle at the wedding at Cana, in using this spousal imagery, does not do so in an exclusionary manner. The spousal relationship offered to us by God through Christ is offered to all irrespective of gender. Because this relationship is open to all on a spiritual level, it is also open to all on a natural level, such that the spiritual and the natural realms are in continuity with one another. Therefore, this spousal relationship is offered not only to all individuals in their spiritual relationship to Christ, but it is also to be discovered, lived, and imaged in spousal relationship to another person, irrespective of the gender of the spouses.
 
The spousal relationship which God invites us into trumps biology. Divinity trumps biology; this in the sense that what is true in the spiritual realm is also possible in the natural realm. This follows from the Incarnation. As a man, I am called to be spouse of Jesus Christ in my spiritual relationship to Christ. I am also called to live and experience this spousal relationship in marriage to another man.
 
We have in this exposition a sacramentality of same-gender marriage, or more precisely, for a sacramentality of marriage irrespective of the gender of the spouses. All spousal unions are an image and a type of the spousal union of Christ and His Church. This is the message which comes to us from the miracle of Jesus at the wedding at Cana. It is the message which is opened to us in our consideration of the reflection of St. Bernard on this miracle; that God invites each one of us without exception in spousal relationship with Him through Christ, and that. Consequent to this, all of our spousal relationships are images of that divine union, whether those relationships in marriage be between a man and a woman, a man and a man, a woman and a woman.
 
May our reflection on the miracle of Jesus at the wedding at Cana penetrate our hearts, may it liberate us from the restrictions imposed on our thinking by the natural order, and may the natural order be infused by the divine meaning of Jesus’ action. This we pray. Amen.


[1] PL 183, 157 in The Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers, Volume One: From the First Sunday of Advent to Quinquagesima by M. F. Toal, D.D. (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1964), pp. 281-286.

[2] http://catholicism.about.com/od/beliefsteachings/p/Sac_Marriage.htm