What is the male perspective on being the bride of Christ?

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I’ve asked this question before to people I know, but perhaps it’s a difficult question. I mean no offense. :o I just wondered sincerely how does the Catholic man process this aspect of our faith.
 
I_love_rocks said:
I’ve asked this question before to people I know, but perhaps it’s a difficult question. I mean no offense. :o I just wondered sincerely how does the Catholic man process this aspect of our faith.
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the Church is the Bride of Christ, not each individual Christian. The priest who conforms to Christ takes mystically the Church in that bridal sense of service and union, as the religious sister, in some orders, takes Christ mystically as her spouse. It is important to realize however that every soul is feminine (not female) in relationship to God, who is masculine (not male) in relationship to every soul. He initiates, she responds, he approaches, she is receptive, he woos, she surrenders. This language is in the writings of mystics who come closest to union with God and understanding of the journey toward this union which all souls undertake. So it is essential not to confuse constructs of male and female that depend on secondary physical traits, with the essentials of gender, masculine and feminine. The best expression of this use of the language of love in the spiritual sense outside the Song of Songs is the writings of John of the Cross.

I think it is no accident that our late beloved now Blessed Pope John Paul II whose early studies focused on Juan de la Cruz understood this perspective so well and later was moved to reflect and teach on the Theology of the Body which reinterprets the relationships of man and woman in light of that understanding. This marital analogy of course begins with Christ in the gospels particularly the parables about the kingdom as wedding feast, and is embraced by Paul.
 
Thank you all for your answers. I did read the thread provided. It’s difficult to read with all of the arguing and nonsensical and vehement pragmatism, but I did read it. I get distracted by people arguing in threads. Doesn’t that break the rules of the forum? Anyways…There was one answer that paralleled Puzzleannie’s answer, but not as profoundly as Puzzleannie’s answer above in this thread…
Puzzleannie.That was a magnificent answer. I understand it now from that perspective. I just had one tiny nagging question. we are to look at it as a collective bride of Christ?
I thought, like the saints say - as with many mysteries, to go deeper and to look at it from a few perspectives/ relationally…
are we not also to look at our individual place within the body of Christ?
When we receive the Body of Christ in Eucharist, if we receive a portion of the blessed host, we have still received Him fully. We ARE to look at the Body of Christ as the Whole Church,
but You, I, all otherindividuals who are IN Christ, make up that body and if there was one faithful believer left on Earth, and all else were in Heaven, that one would make up the visible body of Christ on Earth…
I look at each of our roles in the whole and individually… our priestly duties… to minister to God’s flock through corporal and spiritual acts of mercy - at the bedside of the elderly, in the nursery, etc. …, our role as prophet - to proclaim the Gospel and that He WILL come again…individually at work and the ball games…
Is it bad thrology to view both the complete and the individual so long as the individual which we contemplate IS a part of the whole- The Church?
 
Well, if He is a Lord, then you can be His serf. Being a knight or equerry might give you delusions. Serf is best, I think. I’m serious.

Then you can try cadging stuff off Him, while doing His bidding. 😉
 
As with the creation of a child, a male signifies a giving aspect and in the actual creation of that child is the principle aspect.
Both mother and father are active agents of conception (contrary to what Aristotle thought). But the father, being male, initiates procreation; he enters and impregnates the woman, while the woman is entered and impregnated. There is an initiatory activity by the man and a receptive activity by the woman. Furthermore, modern biology tells us that the father determines the gender of the offspring (as Aristotle held, though for a different reason).
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Thus, while father and mother are both parents of their offspring and both necessary for procreation, the father has a certain priority as the “source” or “principle” of procreation. (This “priority as source” is complemented by the mother’s priority as first nurturer, due to her procreating within herself and carrying the child within herself for nine months.)
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Source

As such, by analogy, God is the giving, male, principle source of life and we, whether man or woman, are feminine in our receiving of this life in God, which is eternal life. This applies both to the Church collectively and as to each of us individually.

If we love Him and keep His word, He comes to us to make His home in us, John 14:23. It seems to me that in this path to eternal life we stand individually before the judgment of God as one who either accepted or rejected His offer of salvation that incorporates us into the Church, which is the Bride of Christ for each and all.
 
God and his relationship with man, individual and collectively, is not an analogy for our human terrestrial concepts of male and female, it is the other way around. Read the creation account in Genesis. The constructs of gender, the characteristics that make male and female complementary, are analogy of God. We (the triune Godheade) created human beings, male and female “in our own image”. The interplay in the human family and by extension the animal and even plant kingdom of male and female, in the generative and in the personal sense, reflects the Divinity, the Trinity, which is the definitive relationship in which coexist eternal complete giving, complete creativity and complete receptiveness.

none of this is mine but from recent homilies based on written commentaries by our very gifted pastor. Next browse Paul and find where he uses the matrimonial analogy in reference to the Eucharist and by extension Christ’s relationship with the Church, and include in your prayerful reading the commentary on the body and the various parts and how they interact as one whole.
 
Wonderful! Thanks everybody. I think we can close this thread now. God bless.👍
 
puzzleannie said:
God and his relationship with man, individual and collectively, is not an analogy for our human terrestrial concepts of male and female, it is the other way around.
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Yes, the other way around. The Nature of God is in an analogous way reflected in His Creation which is us, the Church, the world, and the universe. God is the principle and His creation reflects this principle in a lesser way. It is in this that we can come to know of God by His Creation using our natural reason.
puzzleannie said:
Read the creation account in Genesis. The constructs of gender, the characteristics that make male and female complementary, are analogy of God. We (the triune Godheade) created human beings, male and female “in our own image”. The interplay in the human family and by extension the animal and even plant kingdom of male and female, in the generative and in the personal sense, reflects the Divinity, the Trinity, which is the definitive relationship in which coexist eternal complete giving, complete creativity and complete receptiveness.

none of this is mine but from recent homilies based on written commentaries by our very gifted pastor. Next browse Paul and find where he uses the matrimonial analogy in reference to the Eucharist and by extension Christ’s relationship with the Church, and include in your prayerful reading the commentary on the body and the various parts and how they interact as one whole.
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All this is true.

It is also true that by our individual acts we create that which is either good or bad. This creative aspect of our acts also reflects the Trinity as Creator. It is in our act of accepting Christ that we cooperate in creating a new person of ourselves. This is the receiving aspect reflected in the feminine and the giving by God is reflected in the masculine. The “Catholic man” in the OP can process this “bride of Christ” individually as a spiritual receiving of God in Christ into his heart in this way.
 
I_love_rocks said:
I’ve asked this question before to people I know, but perhaps it’s a difficult question. I mean no offense. :o I just wondered sincerely how does the Catholic man process this aspect of our faith.
Click to expand...
We do call the Church the Mother Church. The idea of being married to her is an idea of service to her and her people as directed from God through Christ.
 
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