In My Father's House

To understand today's gospel fully you have to understand Jewish wedding customs in the first century. When a girl and boy decided to get married (or their parents decided they would get married) the boy's father paid a visit to the girl's father to decide a dowry price. Then the boy would pay a formal visit to the girls' home to propose. At that point he would give the girl a gift representing the dowry price. Maybe a bag of gold coins or a ring.

Then the boy would go home to his father's house and the girl remained in her parent's home for about a year. There would be a formal betrothal time, but once the betrothal price was paid the deal was done. The two were as good as married, and a breakup of the betrothal was the equivalent to a divorce.

During the betrothal year the boy would build a place for him and his bride to live--this was usually a room which was an addition to his father's house. Then after about a year he would come with his groomsmen at night in a torchlight process to the bride's house. She would be waiting there with her bridesmaids, not knowing when exactly he was to come. Then the cry would go up, "The bridegroom is coming!" and the bride and her maids would go out to meet him and process back to his house with her family and the whole village in order for the wedding to take place. After the wedding the marriage was consummated in the new home he had built for his bride and the wedding supper lasted for a whole week.

This puts into context the whole nuptial imagery in the Sacred Scriptures. From Adam and Eve on through the divinely appointed marriages of the patriarchs to God saying that he would come and be the faithful husband of his people Israel--there is a motif running through the sacred stories in which God is the bridegroom and we are the bride.

This continues in the New Testament where Jesus refers to himself as the bridegroom time and again. He does so explicitly--"Why should they fast when the bridegroom is with them?" and he does so through his actions and other oblique references: For example at the wedding feast at Cana in Galilee he provides wine. That was the job of the bridegroom, so when he does this he steps into that eschatological role. Also, when he says, "In my father's house are many rooms, I am going to prepare a place for you so that when I come again I will take you to be with me." This is a reference back to his role as the bridegroom.

His first coming to earth is therefore like the betrothal visit. He comes and pays the bride price for his bride--the church--who will be presented to him as a glorious bride without spot or wrinkle. The bride price is his own life. He then goes away--back to his father's house to prepare a place for us. We are therefore in the waiting year--the time when the deal has been done. We have been bought with a price. We are redeemed. The eternal covenant has been fixed. We only await the coming of the bridegroom and the consummation.

This consummation in heaven awaits us, but in the meantime, the Holy Mass is a glimpse of that final wedding meal. This is why it is good that the priest, in the new translation, says, "Behold the Lamb of God...Blessed are those who are called to the supper of the Lamb." More specifically--the 'marriage supper of the Lamb'--which is pictured in the Book of Revelation as the consummation of love and the final union between Christ the Bridegroom and the Church his bride.