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When one has traced the bridegroom and the bride motif in the pages of the Old Testament and seen with what divine persistence God wooed his chosen people lest the alliance be forgotten: ‘I will espouse thee to me forever’ (Osee 3, 19), one is the more forcibly struck by the few references in the Gospels of the New Testament to Christ as the Bridegroom of the Covenant. In the writings of the Four Evangelists the nuptial theme practically disappears, at least as far as direct allusion to Christ's fulfilment of the promised espousals goes. It is as if the actual presence of the ‘young man’ whom Isaias prophesied would come and ‘dwell with the virgin’ (Isaias 62, 5) made all further allusion unnecessary. Even in the Gospel of St John, where we find more evidence of the fulfilment-sense than in the other Gospels, there is only one mention made of the Bridegroom
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- Copyright © 1952 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Pouget, W. and Guitton, J., The Canticle of Canticles (translation by Joseph L. Lilly, CM.). D. X. McMullen Co., 1946, p. 143.
2 It is interesting to note in passing, however, that the English poet, Pat more, committed a work on the Sponsa Dei to the fire because a friend and fellow-poet, G. M. Hopkins, said after reading it: ‘That's telling secrets'..
3 from Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Wreck of the Deutschland (Edition R. Bridges).
4 Gide had remarked in one of his many letters to Claudel that he found ‘nothing more contagious than sadness; nothing more convincing than joy'.
5 Gerttud Von Le Fort. Hymns to the Church.