Weddings are wonderful occasions. I just attended my sister Ashley’s wedding last September and saw her look into the eyes of her now-husband and pledge before God that she would be faithful to him in sickness and in health, good times and bad, till death do them part. There is a power which pierces to the heart for any who has witnessed this moment in a wedding, man and woman facing each other before a minister, looking into one another’s eyes and giving their love the seal of a holy oath. Human love is consecrated, as it were, and all present – if they are attentive – recognize the mystery and power of the event, even if they are not fully conscious of the sacramental and divine realities present. This recent experience of my sister’s wedding made me reflect particularly upon my own current path; for pursuing religious life under the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience is also a marriage, not between man and woman, but between man and God.

 

There is an event in John’s Gospel which, viewed in one way, eloquently sets forth the interrelation of these dual realities of human and spiritual marriage. At the Wedding Feast of Cana, Jesus is present with his disciples and chooses to inaugurate his public ministry by miraculously changing over 120 gallons of water into wine. Wonderful act! Not only does it bespeak Our God’s hearty approval of human mirth and celebration, but the Church has always seen in the act an implicit affirmation of the sanctity of the marriage covenant: just as Jesus’ supernatural provision for the wedding’s celebration is indispensable for the continued merriment of the feast, though he performs the act hidden from the consciousness of most of the guests; so too the source of endurance and joy for every marriage is the fountain of Christ’s goodness, even marriages where the parties are not fully conscious of his secret working and presence. Spiritually too, the event is pregnant with meaning. It is the first public miracle Our Lord performs, significant of his whole mission. The Divine Bridegroom appears amidst His people, comes for His Bride, to wash her clean of the infidelity into which she had fallen, and to change the water of the Old Covenant legal system – which did not remove the Bride’s guilt – into the wine of the New Covenant whose grace will perpetually adorn and beautify her in His sight.

 

Meditating on this scene recently, it occurred to me that of all the groups of people present, vowed religious might best be represented, not by the bridegroom or bride, nor by the wedding guests, nor even by Christ or his disciples, but by the servants who fill the stone jars with water. In the Banquet of Life, we do not partake as directly in the human aspect of the feast – the marriage between a man and a woman; nor are we so much in the place of Christ, the source of its mirth and joy. Rather, we are the servants who, by a vow of obedience, continually place the stone jars of our souls at Christ’s feet, having emptied them of worldly attachments by the vow of poverty, and filled them with the clean water of a conscience purified by chastity and prayer. All this so that our Bridegroom may permeate what we bring to him with the New Wine of His transformative grace, making us into vessels of holy nourishment and divine joy for God’s people. This is not an easy thing, of course. Our formation period – I discover more and more each day – is a tremendous challenge of spiritual growth in prayer, in community, in study, and in service. The water of our own personalities must be perpetually cleansed when dirtied by self-will and sin. But such is the Lord’s graciousness that He helps us even with this.

 

There is a primary sense, of course, in which every believer is that servant who comes to Jesus for continual sanctification and strength, waiting at His feet for the grace which He is so pleased to bestow. But married couples come to Christ in a unique way, together and through each other. The two are one flesh, and as they live out this marital unity on the human level, their intimate companionship helps them grow into greater and greater unity with God on the spiritual level. The vowed religious comes to Christ in a special sense alone, having looked into the Lord’s eyes at solemn profession and pledged lifelong obedience and fidelity to Him – for the religious pledges fidelity to his superiors, not as human beings, but insofar as Christ’s own will has graced their office and speaks through it. The religious comes with the experience of his community and the charism of his founder and so forth, but he has chosen to give his own body and soul to God alone so that the power of God may permeate his being in an undivided and dramatic way. The means for living out this spiritual marriage vow, within Dominican life, are: community participation in the sacred liturgy, above all the Eucharist; significant time in daily prayer, especially Lectio Divina where the truths of Scripture are dwelt upon and are allowed to sink deeply into the soul; the study of Truth, whether sacred or natural; the apostolic mission of preaching for the salvation of souls.