Today the Church celebrates the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist – His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. Did you know that marriage is an image of the Holy Eucharist?
Since its earliest days, the Church has held up marriage as a profound image of God’s love for His people, brought to fruition in Christ’s love for His bride, the Church.
Pope Benedict XVI, in his book The Spirit of the Liturgy, describes how God’s covenant with His people Israel images the union of man and woman in marriage:
The election of Israel…appears as the love story of God and his people. The covenant is expounded through the analogy of betrothal and marriage, as the binding of God’s love to man and of man to God. Thus human love was able to serve as a profoundly real analogy of God’s action in Israel.[1]
He further describes how the Eucharist parallels the union of man and woman in marriage: