Epiblog, The Bride's Year

The Bride of Christ, also known as the Church, like Her Bridegroom is simultaneously human and divine. She is comprised of millions of souls from each of about 100 generations. She lives in time, but as we have experienced through this story, basically She celebrates life as only one mystical synchronic year.

She confounds time and She confounds matter when She turns bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, and as Christ confounded matter when He multiplied the loaves and fishes and walked on water.

Many accuse Her of dying, or being dead. They are wrong. She is immortal. Her institutional persona is a front, merely the thin shell of a rich, complex and deeply spiritual core. It is only the surface that interfaces with the world in chronological time; never to be taken too seriously when it disappoints. Judgment of the institutional skin is God's business. The Church is not an institution or an organization as much as She is a Mother and a Bride-to be. She gives birth, She nurtures and teaches, and She shepherds Her flock through this earthly life in preparation for eternity. She exists, not in any one generation or figurehead (except Jesus), not in any one priest, pastor or pope, but in the totality of Her Self, the universal Church.

Those who think they can reach God without the Church gamble with their souls. They underestimate the value of Her Sacraments, Her mass communal worship, and Her guidance which are all essential in steering us onto tried and true tracks. If at the end, it is determined that She misled in any way, the people will still be rewarded for their love, and obedience, and then re-instructed. Remember the trees whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.

Now that the Bride's Year has come to an end we can look back on it as a whole. We began with Creation and travelled through the year to preparation for the end of time, the Last Judgment, and the beginning of life in the Kingdom of God.

We saw the mystical year as divided into thirds. The first third of the year that runs from September until Christmas, is the era before Christ. It the era of God's choosing a people for Himself, guiding us to the Promise Land and watching over us there. Meanwhile, the Virgin is pregnant with Christ, as in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. From creation Christ existed waiting for the right moment to be born into the world.

The second third of the year, from Christmas Day to Ascension Thursday, is the brief thirty three years of the earthly life of Jesus Christ. It is astounding how a mere 33 years, albeit only three of them really, represent a full third of the Trinity of Time. Selah.

The final third of the year I call the era of the Bride Unwedded. This is the final era where we struggle in the world to individually and corporately fulfill God's hope that we willingly seek and regain His image and likeness, through our love for Him and for each other, with the aid of His Bride, the Church. God became man so that we might become gods. In this era humanity has been given the power to become children of God who are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

The era of the Bride Unwedded is the time of re-creation, re-birth and preparation for the Great Judgment and immortality. In this final era, time and matter are merely tools that we use to help God design and construct The Kingdom of God where we live forever and ever with God visibly in our midst.

We the people of the Bride experience in our souls through this mystical year all three thirds of time. Our heritage as Children of the Most High God includes all of human history. Just as our individual uniqueness is comprised of genetic information from our forefathers and mothers, our uniqueness as Children of God is comprised of our Jewishness, our brotherhood with the humanity of Christ, and finally our participation in the Bride whether we be patriarch, saint, parishioner or anonymous hermit. Only the treasures we store in heaven, neither our status nor rank will convey into the new world where first will be last and last first.

We who live in time and matter are given opportunities day after day and year after year to become increasingly conscious of the ultimate purpose of life, which is to learn how to love well. Supernatural acts may accompany the ones who think and behave like God, but these acts, as miraculous as they may appear are only the off-gas of divine love, they are not love itself.

The most astonishing miracle is that as the sun rises every day, God consistently and reliably draws us unto Himself, no matter how often we disappoint Him, ourselves, and each other.

As we breath-in air, may we also inhale the awareness of His patience and the value of His Bride Unwedded, our Mother, the Church.