The Eternal Wedding

This summer, I knew over 20 couples getting married, and I made it to several of the weddings. I liked many things about the weddings, and many things I would have changed, but having gone to so many weddings made me more aware of something that I had "known" but never really understood. The Mass is a wedding.

"Let us rejoice and be glad and give Him glory. For the wedding day of the Lamb has come, His bride has made herself ready.... Then the angel said to me, 'Write this: Blessed are those who have been called to the wedding feast of the Lamb.' And he said to me, 'These words are true; they come from God.'" (Revelation 19:7,9)

When we go to Mass, Jesus starts out by having His friends read aloud the letters He penned to us across time that profess the greatness of His love for us. He speaks words of love to us publicly, yet intimately. He publicly declares His love for us, but He does not stop at words. No! Rather, He bares His heart for us.

Upon the altar, he reminds us of the way He loves us. He reminds us of how he offered His body so that ours would never die, how He suffered so that we could enjoy eternal life without sorrow. He invites us to join us in His life, to become one with Him. To forsake mother and father and cling to Him.

He then waits at the altar - with the priest - for us to walk down the aisle to Him. There, he offers us His Heart, pierced for us, but whole. There, He takes whatever heart we can give Him and gives us His in return, offering it eternally throughout all time, renewing these vows each time we receive Him in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. He offers His Blood to wash us clean "that [we] may be holy and without blemish" (Eph 5:27), so that we can be presented to His Glorified body on the last day as His eternal bride adorned in white.

Our marriage is consummated as we become one flesh - no longer two but one. Our lives are called to bring that life into the world as we bear Christ's love from the altar to the world. We are truly wed to our Soulmate at that altar. We are His bride.

We get to taste Heaven - literally! - at Mass. Each Mass we go to is a participation in that wedding supper of the Lamb, and each Mass makes us more ready to greet Him in the great consummation of Heaven's eternal wedding when the veil will be drawn away from our eyes and we can gaze upon the face of our Beloved in all His glory.




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