April 15, 2011 – Song of Songs 1 -2

The reading from chapter 2 is often heard at weddings, about the young gazelle and peering through the lattices.  The entire book is suppose to be a love letter to the significant other.  It may seem strange to think of our relationship with God, the Church’s relationship with God, Mary’s relationship with God, in this sensual sense.  It seems awkward.  But we must realize that God’s love in infinite and beyond our descriptions.  God allows these words to be inspired to help us understand in a small way how much He loves us.  The closeness of spouses is used over and over again as an example of how much God loves us.  The fact that the sexual act between spouses is the fullest sense of complete giving of one to the other, God uses this to help us understand His complete giving of Himself for us, also the complete acceptance by one is suppose to be our complete acceptance of God.  The fact that God uses marriage as this visual for us tells us that marriage is that important and sacred to God. 

All of this points to the reason the Catholic Church’s teaching are so inflexible when it comes to marriage.  Sex outside of marriage, contraception, homosexual marriage, divorce, and other accepted modern actions that the Catholic Church is under constant criticism for all stem from this belief in the importance of marriage.  It is one of the closest analogies and symbols of God’s love here on Earth.  Every attack on the sacredness of marriage is an attack on God’s love for us and how it is not really important.  You cannot understand the Love God has for us and accept the things that are destroying the fabric of marriage and not be in complete contradiction.