2022/11/14

65. The "Bride" and the Cognitive Distortion

The image of matrimony placed at the foundation for understanding the Church in the Vatican II documents is taken from the Book of Revelation too. As we have discussed, Revelation directs its trainees to the Mass through its training and the formation of the Holy Spirit. The Mass, which brings Jesus' last supper to the "present" and makes real the "Do this in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19) once again, is the place where the sign of the "new covenant" (Luke 22:20) made between the Father, who is God, and the Son, who became man, is continued. Here the Church, as "my church" (Matthew 16:18) of Jesus, bears witness to this "new covenant," along with the Apostles who were present at the table of his last supper. That is why the "bride" in Revelation, with one exception, appears after chapter 19, where the Mass opens. Therefore, the "bride" in Revelation refers to this "new covenant" and its sign. That is also true of the "bride" used by John the Baptist as follows: "He who has the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice; therefore this joy of mine is now full. He must increase, but I must decrease" (John 3:29-30). John the Baptist, who compared himself to the "friend of the bridegroom," at this time thought of the "steward of the feast" of the scene of the wedding at Cana, found in the same Gospel of John, chapter 2. That is because John the Baptist must have heard the news of Jesus' first sign performed there. The following words, which the steward of the feast said to the bridegroom as he called him, were precisely what John the Baptist intended to say: "Every man serves the good wine first; and when men have drunk freely, then the poor wine; but you have kept the good wine until now" (John 2:10). John the Baptist understood the "good wine" as the "new covenant." So, he continued, "He must increase, but I must decrease." He placed himself on the side of the old covenant. In contrast, the Church, while calling God Father through Jesus Christ, took over the expression of the people who, unable to establish a parent-child bond with God through Solomon, compared the relationship between God and the people to that of a bridegroom and bride, or husband and wife, and imagined the bond of husband and wife to that with God (cf. blog № 59). In the Book of Wisdom, supposedly authored by Solomon, he wrote: "I loved her and sought her from my youth, and I desired to take her for my bride, and I became enamored of her beauty" (Book of Wisdom 8:2). To him, bride meant wisdom. He then "determined to take her to live with me" (Book of Wisdom 8:9). Solomon, when the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Ask what I shall give you" (I Kings 3:5), did not realize the very words of the Lord were the true wisdom. And he loved many foreign women and clung to them, disobeying the word of the Lord and following their gods (cf. I Kings 11:1-10). Solomon, like Adam the first human, was attracted to the mystery of motherhood that women possess (cf. Genesis 3:20) and sought the motherly wisdom that he, as a man, could not have (cf. Song of Songs 3:4,11; 6:9; 8:1,2,5; Book of Wisdom 7:12). Thus, a cognitive distortion occurred in Solomon, who mixed up the wisdom of God with that of men. Song of Songs describes the trading using silver in its final chapter (cf. Song of Songs 8:11-12). It has received the mark of the name of the beast (cf. blog№46).

Maria K. M.