If Jesus did marry

[narrowpath]

In a discussion on the Da Vinci Code, a friend once said (after explaining why the book was wrong on almost everything), “and if Jesus did marry…SO WHAT?”

Would Jesus marrying go against any Church dogmas?

 

[LilyM]

Yup. It’s totally unscriptural to believe that Jesus married.

Jesus had only one bride, His church. He referred to Himself frequently as the UNIVERSAL bridegroom, which would have been impossible and inappropriate if He had been the bridegroom of any particular woman :yup:

And if He HAD married, why on earth did St Paul say ‘husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church’? Would it not have been more appropriate - and helpful - to say ‘husbands, love your wives as Christ loved Mary Magdalene’?

 

[Matrix_Refugee]

Also, Christ’s vocation was to offer up His life in order to save us from our sins. If He married, He’d have had to leave poor Mary Magdalen, say, behind, feeling abandoned by Him, which might have eroded her faith in Him. It was rough enough on His Mother and she knew what He came here to do in the first place.

Plus, there’s something, I dunno, cringe-inducing about the idea of Jesus marrying. It takes away from His divine nature and while, yes, He was as human as the rest of us, we have to remember He was also God and there’s something a bit… creepy about God having a physical marital relationship with someone.

 

[narrowpath]

Also, Christ’s vocation was to offer up His life in order to save us from our sins. If He married, He’d have had to leave poor Mary Magdalen, say, behind, feeling abandoned by Him, which might have eroded her faith in Him. It was rough enough on His Mother and she knew what He came here to do in the first place.

Plus, there’s something, I dunno, cringe-inducing about the idea of Jesus marrying. It takes away from His divine nature and while, yes, He was as human as the rest of us, we have to remember He was also God and there’s something a bit… creepy about God having a physical marital relationship with someone.

Why? Jesus was fully human as well as fully divine. And keeping sexual relations to marrige is no sin (actually blessed by God). And Mary Magdalene was among his disciples.

I’m not saying he was married to Mary Magdalene. One priest who’s name I have forgotten had a theory that maybe Jesus was married, then in a tragedy his wife/children died, inspiring him to undertake his mission and ministry, and making him realize who he was.

Again, is there any dogma that says Jesus remained celibate, unmarried all his life?

 

[thistle]

Why? Jesus was fully human as well as fully divine. And keeping sexual relations to marrige is no sin (actually blessed by God). And Mary Magdalene was among his disciples.

I’m not saying he was married to Mary Magdalene. One priest who’s name I have forgotten had a theory that maybe Jesus was married, then in a tragedy his wife/children died, inspiring him to undertake his mission and ministry, and making him realize who he was.

Again, is there any dogma that says Jesus remained celibate, unmarried all his life?

Is that a joke because its a ridiculous question to ask.

 

[narrowpath]

Is that a joke because its a ridiculous question to ask.

Worst. Answer. Ever.

 

[Matrix_Refugee]

I’m not saying he was married to Mary Magdalene. One priest who’s name I have forgotten had a theory that maybe Jesus was married, then in a tragedy his wife/children died, inspiring him to undertake his mission and ministry, and making him realize who he was.

Again, is there any dogma that says Jesus remained celibate, unmarried all his life?

Considering that the Gospels are partly an biography of Christ, I would think the writers thereof would have mentioned something as life-changing as that. It also reads a little too much like the plot of a religious-themed novel, but that’s just met saying it.

 

[LilyM]

Why? Jesus was fully human as well as fully divine. And keeping sexual relations to marrige is no sin (actually blessed by God). And Mary Magdalene was among his disciples.

I’m not saying he was married to Mary Magdalene. One priest who’s name I have forgotten had a theory that maybe Jesus was married, then in a tragedy his wife/children died, inspiring him to undertake his mission and ministry, and making him realize who he was.

Again, is there any dogma that says Jesus remained celibate, unmarried all his life?

The idea that He married flies in the face of who He was and what He did. No creature marries its creator. No creature has sex with its creator.

Jesus knew the full perfection of total intimacy with God, which marriage is only a pale foreshadowing of. THAT is why there is no marriage in heaven, there is no need of it. Having the real deal, the fullness of that for which marriage is meant to prepare us, why would He settle for the way inferior good of sexual intimacy with a human?

Jesus already knew perfectly well who He was well before His ministry - why else when He was found in the Temple did He acknowledge no father but God?

Scripture does not indicate anywhere that Jesus married, rather everything in the Gospels points to the contrary. He was a very widely travelled preacher, difficult if not impossible with a wife to support. He talked to all sorts of people, strange women of dubious reputation among them. What wife would put up with that?

How could he travel as He did, how could He give up His life as He did, having a wife to consider? If He had a wife where was she, and why did He not mention her (or even, seemingly, think of her) in his dying moments? Why did He not provide for her as He did for His mother?

 

[FCEGM]

Why? Jesus was fully human as well as fully divine. And keeping sexual relations to marrige is no sin (actually blessed by God). And Mary Magdalene was among his disciples.

I’m not saying he was married to Mary Magdalene. One priest who’s name I have forgotten had a theory that maybe Jesus was married, then in a tragedy his wife/children died, inspiring him to undertake his mission and ministry, and making him realize who he was.

Again, is there any dogma that says Jesus remained celibate, unmarried all his life?

It is the doctrine of the Church that Our Lord was chaste and celibate - period. The notion that He had to be awakened to His identity through some kind of personal tragedy is truly loopy, at best. This from Fr. Andre Louf’s Teach Us to Pray, Paulist Press, might help you understand why:

Jesus not only became a human being, but also a man, a person of the male sex. That is not something either accidental or arbitrary. The possibility that God could become a human being was latent only in the male sex. The man, after all, is a symbol of God’s mighty Love, the Love that redeems and saves. Whereas woman represents the humanity that God has chosen for redemption and bliss [the Church]. That is why Jesus was bound to become a man. In the male sex the profound mystery of His being was prefigured: Jesus is the very image of the Father, His Love, faithful and strong, for human beings.

"But there the symbolic value of Jesus’ masculinity stops. Or rather, it is already as complete as it could be. To take one step further and enter upon marriage here on earth with a concrete woman, that for Jesus would have been a nonsense. In the mystery of His proper nature, He, The God-Man, has received more than marriage with just one woman could give. For it is He Himself who give purpose and meaning to every marriege between human beings.

"On the one hand the fulness of God’s Love was in Him, God’s tenderness as well as His toughness, for He was Himself God. On the other hand in His twofold nature, as God and man, He was the peerless marriage, the perfect conjunction, in His own person, between the redeeming God and redeemed humanity. In His divine nature He is the gift beyond measure, and in His humanity He is receptiveness par excellence. Thus in His emotional and sexual life as a man all tension was resolved. For His love was already satisfied and sated, was deeper and wider than He could have experience in a marriage. His physical status as man-and-celibate is the token of this.

"Therefore Jesus qua man had also to remain virginal. In that virginity of His, the conscious and unconscious sexual dynamic, the masculine and the feminine pole in Him, are put wholly at the service of the spiritual reality which He is and to which He comes to bear witness: He is the Son of His Father and His image; among human beings He is the firstborn from the dead, the new man, or rather: the Man, simply the Man, Ecce Homo!

"Jesus’ unique situation did not preclude a bond with woman. He counted women among His acquaintances, intimate friends, fellow-workers. In particular He had a mother; for like all human beings He was born of a woman. What is most remarkable is that this bond with His mother soon expanded into something much broader and universal. For from the very start every woman was more to Him that she was in her concrete and limited femininity. And all that she could be for Him Jesus had already been provided with in His own person. Thus Mary was not only His mother, but still more His sister, His bride, His daughter, and eventually His most intimate companion and the mother of all people.

“We see in Jesus how sexual abstinence can bring out the profound spiritual reality of a person. It helps to lift man’s whole sexual potential on to another plane, where it can develop and be fulfilled without ceasing to be male or female. This fulfilment of human sexuality far transcends the gratification of its transient and constricted eroticism - a fact that will surprise no one who realizes how closely the whole of sex is interwoven with the image of God in man,”

 

[thistle]

Worst. Answer. Ever.

Worst question. Ever.

 

[Fidelis]

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

**1618 **Christ is the center of all Christian life. The bond with him takes precedence over all other bonds, familial or social. From the very beginning of the Church there have been men and women who have renounced the great good of marriage to follow the Lamb wherever he goes, to be intent on the things of the Lord, to seek to please him, and to go out to meet the Bridegroom who is coming. Christ himself has invited certain persons to follow him in this way of life, of which he remains the model.

There are other historical Church documents (papal encyclicals and the like that you can research on your own) that flesh this out more completely, but the the gist of it is stated here.

 

[narrowpath]

THAT’S what I needed to know! Thanks a ton, Fidelis!

 

[Artemus86]

The Da Vinci Code are ordinary book written by ordinary man. This man are just finding publicity and income…

You can read it as it is a good Man Made Story.

Should we trust all of it’s content? No

 

[narrowpath]

I totally agree. The book is idiotic . But many people don’t know Church history and could be decieved.