Random Thoughts on "Spousal Relation to Christ" - For All

My thought process in this: Once you enter  material creation, the relationality that is the ontological architecture of the divine Persons  - ["the First Person does not beget the Son in the sense of the act of begetting coming on top of the finished Person; it is the act of begetting, of giving oneself, of streaming forth. It is identical with the act of giving. Only as this act is it person, and therefore it is not the giver but the act of giving... Therein lies concealed a revolution in man’s view of the world: the undivided sway of thinking in terms of substance is ended; relation is discovered as an  equally valid primordial mode of reality. It becomes possible to surmount what we call today 'objectifying thought;' a new plane of being  comes into view;" J. Ratzinger "Intro..." Ignatius (1990) 132] – becomes “spousal.” And that "new plane of being" must be experienced on a distinct epistemological level achieved by the use of a phenomenology of the experience of going out of self, becomes spousal as male and female.

   

 Whatever is Christ and pertains to Christ becomes "prototypical" of whatever is human. Thus the relation of husband to wife must be understood in the light of the prototypical relation of Christ to the Church: Ephesians 5, 25 ["Husbands love your wives as Christ loves the Church"]. So... If the relation of Christ to the Church is to be understood in "spousal" terms, so the relation of the Church to Christ must be understood in spousal terms. That is, we are to be "unum" in Christ:Gal. 2, 20; 3, 16 and 3, 28 which reveals itself as one flesh in the Eucharist, that is the denouement of Baptism. This is immensely rich since it takes the "religious" (and "the consecrated life") out of the equation for the main-stream achievement of holiness and plants it in the baptized one flesh union of the spousal-conjugal. As Francis is pounding away on, Baptism is sufficient for the highest holiness since it is what makes us inchoately “ipse Christus."

   The dismissal of the "spousal" suggests a misunderstanding of the spirit of the Work, a disregard for the ongoing Magisterium (which is Trinitarilly grounded [including the TOB) and a superficiality of reacting to "spousal" as canonically "religious." Bob

P.s. Because "spousal" does not prototypically mean male/female but Christ/Church [again, because Christ is the "meaning" of man (GS #22), and therefore the "meaning" of "spousal," the use of the word is not analogical but real.