Disclaimer: To my knowledge, nothing in the following article contradicts the official teachings of the Catholic Church. However, some statements are speculative. The final decision on these matters belongs to Holy Mother Church, and I lovingly submit to her wise judgment.
Scripture presents the relationship of Jesus Christ to the Church in many different ways. A very beautiful, meaningful one is that of the Bridegroom and Bride. Yet this is more than a metaphor; for Christ is indeed the New Adam, the Father of the new humanity, and Ecclesia (the Church) is our holy Mother, the New Eve. We are their spiritual children, born of their fruitful, mystical union.
Eucharist as Nuptial Union
The Church's liturgy reveals this union in two ways. The first is the Blessed Sacrament, as Pope John Paul II comments:
The "sincere gift" contained in the Sacrifice of the Cross gives definitive prominence to the spousal meaning of God's love. As the Redeemer of the world, Christ is the Bridegroom of the Church. The Eucharist is the Sacrament of our Redemption. It is the Sacrament of the Bridegroom and of the Bride. The Eucharist makes present and realizes anew in a sacramental manner the redemptive act of Christ, who "creates" the Church, his body. Christ is united with this "body" as the bridegroom with the bride. (1)As husband and wife are "one flesh", so Christ is "one flesh" with Ecclesia (Ephesians 5:30-32) for He gives Himself to her the Eucharist (John 6:56).
Easter Vigil Symbolism
The other deeply symbolic illustration of the holy and chaste union between Christ and the Church occurs during the Easter Vigil, the solemn Mass performed after nightfall on Holy Saturday. At the beginning of the liturgy the priest lights and blesses the "new fire" outside the sanctuary. He then uses the blessed flame to kindle the Paschal Candle, a large candle which symbolizes the Risen Christ.
Later on, the priest blesses the water of the baptismal font in preparation for the baptism of catechumens (new converts). While blessing the water, the priest takes the Paschal Candle - still blazing with sacred fire - and dips the bottom part of the Candle into the font three times, invoking Jesus Christ to send the Holy Spirit upon the water. After this, he proceeds to baptize the catechumens.
What does the immersion of the Paschal Candle in the baptismal font signify? For one thing, it symbolizes Jesus' descent into death and rising from the dead, even as our baptism is a "dying" and "rising" with Christ (Romans 6:3-5) (2). A liturgical act can have multiple significance, however. If we examine the symbolism more closely, I believe we will discover a deep mystery.
As stated above, the Candle symbolizes Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Light of the World. But what does the font symbolize? Since the days of the early Church, the baptismal font has been considered the mystical "womb" of Mother Church, from which her children are born again of water and the Spirit into eternal life (John 3:3-8). One early Christian writes that "the water of baptism is like a virginal womb, and the same Spirit who came down upon Mary, fills the sacred font" (3). The blessed waters are therefore the "womb-waters" of Ecclesia, which re-generate us: "Just as the gestation of our first birth took place in water, so the water of Baptism truly signifies that our birth into the divine life is given to us in the Holy Spirit" (4).
Although the present Order of the Mass does not bring this out, the "womb" symbolism occurs prominently in the Tridentine Rite Easter Vigil. In that liturgy, the priest would pray these words while blessing the waters of the font:
May (the Spirit), by a secret mixture of His divine power, render this water fruitful for the regeneration of men, so that a heavenly offspring, conceived in sanctification, may emerge from the immaculate womb of this divine font, reborn a new creature; and grace as a mother may bring forth everyone, however distinguished either by sex in body, or by age in time, to the same infancy" (5)This blessing quite explicitly calls the baptismal font an "immaculate womb"! Plus, the rest of the prayer uses such words as fruitful, offspring, conceived, reborn, mother and infancy, which serve to emphasize the maternal/natal connotations of both the font and the Sacrament of Baptism itself.
(We should also note that the entire Easter Vigil is a kind-of mystical "marriage" between Christ and the Church. The beautiful Easter Proclamation sung at the beginning extols the sacred night with the words: "Night truly blessed when heaven is wedded to earth and man is reconciled to God" (6). And the fact that saints have referred to the Easter Season - the fifty days after Easter - as the "honeymoon of the Church" further accentuates the mystical, nuptial significance of the Easter Vigil.)
So if the Paschal Candle lit with new fire (traditionally considered a "masculine" element) signifies Christ the Bridegroom, and the font filled with water (a "feminine" element) is the sacred "womb" of Ecclesia the Bride, then the immersing of the Paschal Candle into the font during the "nuptial" Easter Vigil seems to symbolize the mystical union of Christ the Bridegroom with Ecclesia the Bride - a union which makes the Bride fruitful to bear children in Baptism.
(This symbolism must not be taken hyper-literally. Mother Church is not a human woman with a physical body, so she can by no means have literal relations with anyone - that is not what this article is saying at all! Jesus Christ was, is and always will be celibate, and the Church Fathers always called Ecclesia a virgin in her faithfulness to Christ's teaching and purity of doctrine, untainted by heresy. Such symbolic virginity does not rule out her mystical union with Christ, but - paradoxically? - arises from it!)
Though the Virgin Ecclesia does not have actual relations with Christ, human conjugal union is still an icon of their mystical, fruitful unity. Both Jews and Christians have long considered the Song of Songs, which contains nuptial imagery, to be a parable of God's relationship with Israel and/or Christ's relationship with Ecclesia. Conjugal relations are not dirty or shameful, but a beautiful reflection of the love between the New Adam and the New Eve. Similarly, the rite involving the Paschal Candle and the Baptismal font is a liturgical symbol of that union; a short, temporal symbol of the constant, eternal union between the New Adam and Eve.
(For related articles, I recommend the Bridegroom Page from The Catholic Page for Lovers.)
WORKS CITED
A.M.D.G
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