The Way of the Bride

“Hello! Anybody home?”

Peeping carefully through your curtains you think, OMG. It’s him! Right outside.

Jesus.

What will you do? Of course being the good person that you are (ahem) you would welcome him in, pour a cup of hot coffee (or bring out a couple of cold Coronas!), and be both humbled and thrilled with his personal visit. But imagine, after some friendly chit-chat, that he leans forward, looks you square in the eyes, and says excitedly, “Enough of our small talk. I’ve been waiting so long to have this time with you! Let’s go….sell all your possessions…and come, follow me!”

Gulp!

God wants all of us.

This is not just a clever, little scenario; it’s what God asks of you and me every day. Most of the time, though, we don’t even see or hear him since we’re locked happily inside our lives, the TV blaring, the text messages pouring in, and the to-do list at the center of our day.

But with grace working in us many have learned to hear his voice and have opened the door to the Lord. We do make time for him in our thoughts and prayers and have allowed him access to different parts of our lives. But he wants all of us…our whole “mind, heart, and soul” (Matt 22:37). I still struggle with this, realizing that what keeps holding me back from this full openness to him is fear. Too many times I’ve had to admit that I don’t trust God to “go all the way” with him. It’s scary. What am I so attached to that I would I have to give up, stop doing, or lose forever? What, go into the deep? Face the unknown? Thanks, but no thanks. And so he keeps knocking at the door of my heart—and yours, I suspect—waiting patiently for us to open.

We know Matthew’s story of the rich young ruler who asked Jesus how to have eternal life. The man obviously desired heaven but wasn’t prepared for Jesus’ invitation to open up his heart even more than he had to that point. The young man’s face fell at the thought of having to give up what he loved most—earthly riches. The thought of more profoundly opening to God made him turn and walk away. It was just too hard to bear. I always hope that we’ll find out the rest of the story some day; that perhaps the man tossed and turned in his sleep for many nights in row, agonizing about letting go, but in the process began to realize his deep desire for God and did, in fact, sell all his things and join up with Jesus a few months later.

So let’s go there—to God’s ever-present invitation for you to open wider—and see how ancient wisdom can tell us something about our modern hearts.

Jesus is forever our Bridegroom.

How can one open his or her heart even wider to the love of God?

I like to think of the “spousal analogy” found in Scripture—and even written in our bodies as male and female. God revealed himself as “husband of Israel” (Isaiah 54:5). Jesus comes to us (every soul and the Church at large) as our “Bridegroom.” (Eph 5 and John 3:29). This is a beautiful, passionate, and tender image to see ourselves as one would see a bride, longing for her love to carry her away, placing her whole trust in him, desiring him above all others, and with her heart and body completely open to his loving, life-giving embrace. Now that’s being “open”.

Whenever you sense that God may be calling you to come closer to him—and you feel a bit of resistance, fear, or uncertainty—you can draw on what you know about deep desires for love, the passion and patience of a persistent lover, and the beautiful promises of marriage. In fact, to help you begin to realize his great love for you, God wants you to understand the correlation between married love and his longing for you. In case we miss the signs in other places, this spousal analogy is everywhere in creation. Our visible world always points us to the spiritual and this should be no surprise because as body and soul we know we’re both visible and invisible beings. The material world is God’s gift to us, overflowing with things to feed, delight, and even heal us . . . and it‘s part of and points to the corresponding spiritual realities. Can you see the connection?

All of creation is a wedding proposal

Let’s start with our world…like a “husband”, the heavens embrace the earth, which opens up to receive life-giving light and water and become fertile. She returns the embrace with gifts of fruit, flowers, beautiful aromas, and all manner of beauty and life. But in places that are hard, rocky, or closed off, no life can grow. This cosmic “marriage” of the physical heavens and earth—and all the signs in nature of this call to communion—reveal the greater marriage of divinity and humanity. Of God with every human soul.

Even our bodies as male and female make no sense without the other, a pretty clear (maybe even “neon”?) sign that we are called to come together in self-giving way that brings no harm to the other. In a way that never uses, abandons, or wounds the dignity of the other. There’s only one such relationship: marriage between one man and one woman. And this highest visible relationship points us even higher to that permanent, life-giving union of the soul with God. What are these signs saying? Simply and mysteriously at the same time, that God is the perfect lover, and he made us—and even all of creation—to reveal his loving invitation to open up to receive his love, to be filled with his divine life, and to be “espoused” to him. He wants to marry us and make us fruitful forever! This is the very meaning of life: to hear the invitation and to open up to him. Even if one does not enter earthly marriage, everyone—young, old, single, consecrated, or married—is first called to say “Yes!” to this mystical marriage.

We don’t believe his love.

The problem? No bride in her right mind would open up to a love she didn’t know. One she couldn’t trust. A bridegroom who was selfish, cruel, disinterested, or simply boring.

We have been used (and worse), used others, and because we have trouble trusting others, we also have trouble believing in the goodness of God. So we allow ourselves to be seduced and sated by the pleasures of this world—they seem safer, more manageable, and more readily accessible. We love what God gives us more than we love him. We pray for good jobs, happy marriages, healthy kids, and big bank accounts, and we naturally draw closer to him when these things are threatened. I’m too often guilty of this; I long for the created things he gives me more than I long for intimacy with him. In that way I remain a little girl, trusting that Father God will make me happy with presents, but afraid to grow up, surrender everything to him, and become his Bride. God wants our mature love so that we can receive even more of him. He wants open hands, open hearts, and total surrender. When we’re still attached to the goods he gives us, or our own ways, we’re afraid to open that wide. After all, total surrender would change everything.

So we turn away from him, maybe not completely closed, but with our eyes on something else, and we seek satisfaction in other lesser “spouses”…people and things to and with whom we can join and find some sort of security, purpose, and pleasure.

Some people even make earthly marriage their end goal and never see it as a beautiful sign to the superior, eternal marriage. Whether we realize or believe it or not, the deep desire for authentic love and communion in our hearts is a natural response to God’s passionate longing for us. As a husband longs for his bride, so God longs for you!

He will woo us once again.

But my heart—your heart—is always in need of what one might understand as tender, patient foreplay; a softening and stretching of our desires for him. Just like the Israelites who also struggled with trusting and opening up completely to God. In the book of Hosea, God showed his people that they were like an unfaithful harlot chasing after false lovers. But in his mercy—like a loving husband—he promises to stop our running away, pin us in from our infidelities, and once again tenderly woo us back to him. God is waiting for us to finally lose faith in the false love and once again, long deeply first and foremost for him. Only then would we as a bride be properly disposed and ready to receive his happily-ever-after as our wedding gift. This is the story of God’s people then, now, and in the future: His tender mercies despite our hard hearts.

This bridal imagery is certainly not limited to women but everyone who has a heart. We’re meant to open our hearts to God like a bride on her wedding night. The beauty of natural family planning is that it helps us enter and understand that invisible openness of heart through our visible bodies. Husbands are a gift that should never be wasted, self-directed, or rejected by his bride. Wives should be open to receive the total gift of her husband, not pieces or parts or with certain limitations or conditions. This is the reality of being visible and invisible beings: what we do in our bodies reveals what is happening in our hearts. Thus every act of married love between husband and wife can—and should—take them into the mystical realm of the heart that is completely open and receptive to the God who can be trusted.

In your heart, are you like a bride filled with desire, anticipating the pleasure of being with him, hopeful of a long and joyous life, and totally trusting in your True Love? What selfishness, pride, or fears still act as “contraceptive” barriers to a full communion with him? He will not let you down. He’ll take care of you. He’ll fill you with all good things, including a share in his divine life. Forever. Earthly marriage was given to us to point us to this mysterious truth: God wants to “marry” you in the eternal mystical marriage. And he’s knocking on the door of your heart right now—his hands holding an eternal dowry and his heart bursting with desire for you.

Fear not. Open the door.