Here Comes the Groom
The Priest as the Bridegroom of the Church

Fr. Andrew R. Baker
From the May/Jun 2003 Issue of Lay Witness Magazine

“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25). It is quite common to associate these words of St. Paul with the Sacrament of Marriage. They are words which reveal the “great mystery” of the nuptial union as a sacrament of Christ’s own spousal relationship with the Church. But could they not also unlock the nuptial aspect of the ministerial priesthood—the priest as bridegroom?

The image of bridegroom is found throughout the Gospels.[1] Jesus uses it to speak of His own coming as man, His death on the Cross, and His coming in glory. On the Cross He has handed Himself over for His bride—the Church—in order to consummate the new covenant ratified in His own blood.

When the Church teaches that the priest acts in persona Christi (in the person of Christ), one of the things she is saying is that the priest is truly an icon of Christ in relation to the Church. Through the Sacrament of Holy Orders, there is a special bond which unites the priest to Christ and which makes the priest a sharer in the mystery of Christ as “servant and spouse of the Church” (Pope John Paul II’s apostolic exhortation, Pastores Dabo Vobis, no. 3). Indeed, in the priest the faithful see “the ‘Body’ of him who has loved and loves to the point of giving himself for her.”[2]

It is, therefore, the duty of the priest to “be faithful to the Bride and almost like living icons of Christ the Spouse render fruitful the multiform donation of Christ to his Church.”[3] The person and ministry of a priest thus becomes a living icon for the faithful and a concrete sign of the presence of the Bridegroom.

One quality of the spousal relationship between Christ and the Church which is manifested in the life of a priest is that of union. Christ unites both human and divine natures in His person and also effects the union of God and man in the nuptial communion of the saints in the Kingdom of God. Likewise, the priest is the principal agent of union in his ministry to bring about reconciliation between God and man through the sacraments and to nurture union within the Church.

The Christ-Church spousal union is rooted in disinterested love. Christ has come not “to be served but to serve” and to give His life “as a ransom for many” (Mt. 20:28). Spousal love does not seek to possess the other but to cherish and serve the other. The priest sees the Church as his “other half” toward which he directs a love which is completely interested in her sanctification. The priesthood ought to be lived without seeking earthly consolations such as “houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands” (Mt. 19:29), but rather for the good of his bride—the Church.

Spousal love is sacrificial love. By his actions on Calvary, Christ reveals the greatest love: laying down His life for His spouse. In his relationship with the Church, the priest, in turn, offers the sacrifice of the Mass as a “re-presentation” of the one and only sacrifice of Christ. By doing so, he continues to convey the grace of redemption to the Bride. As Pastores Dabo Vobis says, “Indeed, the Eucharist re-presents, makes once again present, the sacrifice of the Cross” and it gives witness to the fact that Christ is the Church’s servant and her spouse. In the celebration of the Eucharist, the priest “receives the grace and obligation to give his whole life a ‘sacrificial’ dimension” (no. 23).

The priest also sacrifices his natural inclination to a wife and family for the sake of the Church. Thus, “priestly celibacy should not be considered just as a legal norm or as a totally external condition for admission to ordination, but rather as a value that is profoundly connected with ordination, whereby a man takes on the likeness of Jesus Christ, the good shepherd and spouse of the Church” (ibid., no. 50).

Spousal love is also fruitful. It tends toward bringing children into the world. The title “Father” for a priest is no mistake. St. Paul calls the Corinthians his “beloved children” and also says that he became their “father in Christ Jesus through the Gospel” (1 Cor. 4:14-15). The fruit of priestly ministry gives supernatural life to those who come in contact with it. The priest truly becomes the spiritual father of the many people who come to him for spiritual direction, the salvific teachings of Christ and, above all, spiritual birth in the Sacrament of Baptism and a kind of rebirth in the Sacrament of Penance. It is a fatherhood which flows from his spousal relationship with the Church.

At the heart of any spousal relationship is orientation and attraction. In the Book of Genesis it is Adam who sees Eve and exclaims that this is “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 2:23). The joy of finding another who is like him (a human person) but different (the opposite sex) is the very impulse to leave father and mother and “cling” to the other (cf. Gen. 2:24). In creating man as male and female, God orients one to the other. The attraction toward the other directs them to form a complementary relationship. Without heterosexual orientation and attraction, there is no movement toward a spousal relationship.

The orientation and attraction to another of the opposite sex is part of what Pope John Paul II calls the “nuptial meaning” of the body. By this he means that the human body, as male and female, is a kind of “language” which all can read. In the fact that God has created two sexes, everyone can perceive a built-in tendency to give oneself to another. This “nuptial” tendency ultimately reveals that man was made to give of himself in love to others. He can do so through a commitment to celibacy or marriage.

When the faithful perceive the masculine character of their priest along with the presence of a natural heterosexual attraction, they then encounter in the life and ministry of their priest a true “bridegroom” and “father.” They will be able to see their priest as one who is an agent of communion who loves them disinterestedly with the sacrifice of his life and with the goal of bringing forth spiritual children. In his masculinity—and the natural attraction to the opposite sex that flows from it—the faithful can “contemplate” the presence of Christ as the bridegroom.

Even though homosexuality neither invalidates Holy Orders nor poses in itself an impediment to the reception of the sacrament (Code of Canon Law, canons 1041-42), it has still been the consistent mind of the Church to exclude men who clearly manifest “an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex” (Catechism, no. 2357), calling their ordination “inadvisable.”[4]

There are many practical reasons for this, but one possible reason, although certainly not the only nor the strongest, would be that there exists the danger that the “contemplation” of the face of the bridegroom in the spousal icon of the priest could be obscured or develop into a kind of “counter-sign” by the lack of the natural masculine attraction to the opposite sex. It is possible that a homosexual priest could blur the vision of the faithful in their perception of the bridegroom and make it difficult for the priest to be a genuine sign of Christ’s spousal love for the Church.

The contemplation of the priesthood of Jesus Christ fills the faithful with awe and gratitude. The Savior has configured men to Himself in a unique, irrevocable, and sacramental way so as to continue His priestly ministry and to remain faithful to His Spouse—the Church. Hence, each “priest’s life ought to radiate this spousal character, which demands that he be a witness to Christ’s spousal love and thus be capable of loving people with a heart which is new, generous, and pure—with genuine self-detachment, with full, constant, and faithful dedication” (Pastores Dabo Vobis, no. 22).

Today, more than ever, the faithful need their priests to love the Church as “Christ loved the Church and handed himself over for her” (Eph. 5:25).

Fr. Andrew R. Baker, S.T.D. is from the Diocese of Allentown, PA.

[1] St. John the Baptist calls himself the best man who “rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice” (Jn. 4:29). Jesus asks, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?” (Mt. 9:15, see also Mk. 2:19, and Lk. 5:34). Christ compares the Kingdom of God to a wedding banquet which the king gives for his son (Mt. 22:1-14) or one which 10 maidens attend, awaiting the bridegroom (Mt. 25:1-13).
[2] Congregation for the Clergy, Directory on the Ministry and Life of Priests, no. 13.
[3] Ibid., no. 13.
[4] The following quotes are from documents of various Vatican offices over the last 40 years which have provided guidelines for the admission of candidates to religious life and/or seminaries:

In 1961: “Advancement to religious vows and ordination should be barred to those who are afflicted with evil tendencies to homosexuality or pederasty, since for them the common life and the priestly ministry would constitute serious dangers” (Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life).

In 1974: A candidate must overcome two distinct immature tendencies, namely “narcissism and homosexuality” and the person “must have arrived at heterosexuality” in order to speak of a person as mature (Congregation for Catholic Education).

In 1990: “Those who do not seem to be able to overcome their homosexual tendencies or who maintain that it is possible to adopt a third way, ‘living in an ambiguous state between celibacy and marriage,’ must be dismissed from the religious life” (Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life).

In 2002: “Ordination to the diaconate and the priesthood of homosexual men or men with homosexual tendencies is absolutely inadvisable and imprudent and, from the pastoral point of view, very risky. A homosexual person, or one with a homosexual tendency is not, therefore, fit to receive the sacrament of Holy Orders” (Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments).

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