Two words: Groom and Bride. (Or: husband/wife; or father/mother). To be precise: We the Church are the Bride of Christ the Bridegroom who expresses his love through the ordained priest, his male image.
In Genesis we learn that God created the human person...male and female...in the image of God. Man and Woman are different, but equal in dignity; and created to love each other in marriage. This special love is the high point of the natural world; God's greatest idea and the best image of the life of the Trinity.
Every human person is male or female; not a combination; not on a scale; not a third or forth sex. Biologically, from the very beginning every conceived embryo has a structure that is female (2 X chromosomes) or male (one X and one Y). And so each person is male or female in body and soul.
A man cannot be a mother, a daughter, a bride or a wife; although he can engineer his male body with chemicals an surgery and pretend to be a woman. He cannot conceive a child, carry it, nurse and mother it. A woman cannot be father, son, groom or husband. She cannot give the seed of life; cannot father a child. Although she can violate her feminine body by chemicals and surgery and pretend to be a man.
Married love of a man and woman is the highest natural image of the life of the Holy Trinity: Three-in-One. The three persons...Father, Son and Holy Spirit...are all equal, but different from each other, but love each other totally, so that they become perfectly One, but still Three. They are three distinct persons; they are not three parts or aspects of a singularity, a monolith. They are not three different gods. They are three persons in one God. Different but equal. The Father totally loves the Son and the Son totally loves the Father and the love between them is so powerful that it is a third person, the Holy Spirit.
Polytheists believe in many gods; Jews and Muslims believe in one God, but no three persons within God. Pantheists do not believe in gods or a Creator personal triune God; they believe the divine is part of life, part of nature and part of the individual self. Christians believe in One God, three equal but different persons: a Great Mystery!
The greatest image of this Trinity life is in the created order is the love of a man and woman in marriage, which brings forth a family with children (normally). The man and woman are equal, but different. They love each other and so become "one body." So, in the act of physical love, they become "one;" the man gives the "seed of life" which the woman receives; and sometimes the male seed and the female egg unite and God breathes into this new creature a human, immortal soul.
This love of man and woman...called marital, spousal, conjugal...is very different from other loves: that of friends, brothers/sisters, children/parents. It is:
- Exclusive: between one man and one woman. Only one; only a man and a woman.
- Faithful: it abides until the death of one or the other. It is final; cannot be broken.
- Free: given mutually in liberty, without coercion or force of any kind.
- Fruitful: open to new life, children or other works of life-giving love together.
- Intimate sexually and romantically as they mutually belong to each other and no one else.
- Sacrificial as they give to each other generously, making sacrifices for each other.
This spousal/conjugal love of man and woman is also an image of the love of Jesus Christ for his Church. St. Paul tells us that Christ loves his Church as a husband loves his wife. Jesus loves us in many ways: Creator, Savior, Lord, Brother, Friend. He gave his human life for us on the cross to give us his divine eternal life, forever in heaven. He loves each of us personally, and all of us as the Church, the way a husband loves his wife.
As in the act of love the husband gives the seed of life that is received by the wife, so we the Church, the Bride of Christ, receive from our Bridegroom: the Word of God, pardon for our sins, his Body and Blood, the Holy Spirit, eternal life, and many blessings from heaven.
Especially in the Eucharist, the Groom lovingly speaks his Word, gives us his body and blood, pours out his Holy Spirit, and gives us the seed of eternal life. Likewise in confession, it is Christ himself who gives us forgiveness for our sins and the grace to renounce evil and grow in holiness; the priest is his representative and image appropriately a masculine one.
The priest is the representative of Christ the Groom who loves his bride. Therefore it is fitting and right that a male person act in this masculine task: a man representing the Great Groom.
The priest is also a father to us. We Catholics call priests "Father." God the Father is our father of course; and so is Jesus; and the priest represents thefFather as well as the husband. The Church is our Mother. In a special way also Mary, who is the heart of the Church, is our mother. In human life we have the male/female binaries of father/mother, husband/wife; so in the Church we have the Motherhood of Mary and the Church, the Bridal Church, the Fatherhood of God, and the Bridegroom Jesus. And the male priest represents the masculine Bridegroom.
The Church, like Mary who is her heart, is bride, mother and virgin (although all of us individually are sinners, except Mary herself.) And so, the identity of the essentially feminine or Marian Church is best imaged or represented by the female virgin, who in chastity surrenders herself as bride of Christ, joyfully surrendering the ordinary delights of romance, children and family.
And so, the spousal/conjugal love of husband and wife, father and mother, the pinnacle of Creation, is itself an image of an even greater supernatural love, that of the Great Bridegroom for his bridal Church. And that love is imaged in the Church in the masculine priesthood and the feminine virginity.
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