14th Week OT(M): Hos 2.16-18, 21-22; Matthew 9.18-26Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory
Among Catholic mystics for quite a few centuries, it was almost a requirement for admission into the guild that they produce at least one meditation on the erotic theology of the Song of Songs. For those of us who tend to lean a little more to the creative side of the faith and revel in expressing that faith in gloriously poetic terms, the only text that rivals the Book of Revelation for weirdly vivid imagery and the opportunity for preaching right at the border of the naughty and the nice is the Song of Songs. But for all of its bridal imagery, espousal theology, and near-naked romping on the Judean hillsides, the Song of Songs is not the only book in our paternal scriptures that lays the foundation under the Bride-Bridegroom metaphor for Christ and his Church. We have, for example, the prophet Hosea reporting that after the Lord passes a severe judgment on His people for idolatry, He makes this promise to
Lest we worry too much that speaking of God in erotic terms borders on the blasphemous, let’s be clear about what an “erotic theology” really is. The Fathers of the Church make extensive use of seduction metaphors to describe how God lures us to Him; how God “wines and dines” us so that we are more willing and able to come to Him in love. If we hold that we come from God as creatures (created beings) and that our ultimate salvation is our return to Him as our source, then to say that God seduces us back to Him is no scandal at all. If this is the pleasant side of our seduction, then we can easily see how our persistent refusal to be espoused to God causes us tremendous stress and dis-ease. In the ancient world, sin and sickness are twined sisters of the devil. To be sick was to be sinful. To be forgiven one’s sins was to be healed of all sickness. Though we may not make this direct physical connection today, we understand all too well that sin sickens the soul. So, when we play “hard-to-get” with God, we are refusing to marry our only source of health. We say “No” to God’s proposal that we live with Him as a bride lives with her bridegroom.
What do the official and the woman suffering from chronic hemorrhages know about Jesus? They know that he can heal. Believing that Christ can bring about the marriage of the Father and His people both submit themselves in faith to the power of Christ to mend death and disease alike. The official kneels and pleads for his dead daughter’s return to the living. The woman touches the tassel of Christ’s cloak without speaking to him. The daughter arises from death. And the woman is saved, her bleeding cured. In their love and humility both are seduced by God, betrothed to His promise, married in His covenant, and the covenant is consummated in their return to health. Perhaps they remembered that the Lord said to Hosea, “I will espouse you to me forever…I will espouse you in fidelity, and you shall know the Lord.”
Well understood in the early days of the Church was the notion that “knowing” a thing is to have an intimate relationship with that thing. To know a truth about a thing was to know its essence, its most basic nature. The known bonded with the knower, so that nothing was left unknown. What can be more intimate than the knowledge that comes from consummating a marriage bond? And to be bonded to the source of our being—the source of all rightness and goodness—is to be made righteous and good in the bonding. Our Blessed Mother says yes to God’s seduction and gives birth to the Word. Jesus himself says yes to God’s seduction and gives birth to our eternal lives. We can do no less if we are to live forever in the divine health that the Lord proposes for us.
“I will espouse you to me forever," says the Lord, “I will espouse you in right and justice, in love and mercy…and you shall know the Lord.”
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