“Behold the Divine Bridegroom!” – 2nd Sunday OT (A) – 1.15.23
“Behold the Divine Bridegroom!”
By: Fr. David Schmidt
Crusaders of Mary Chapel- Washington, D.C.
**Note- This homily was a given to a group of young women doing a weekend Ignatian retreat (no audio)
Mass Readings- https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/011523.cfm
In today’s Gospel John the Baptist sees Jesus walking by and proclaims- “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.” John the Baptist immediately knew it was Jesus. He immediately knew the glory and infinite majesty of our Lord and told those around them to behold, to look upon and gaze at this Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
We are meant to do the same when we have an encounter with Christ in the depths of our hearts.
When we encounter Him and come into His presence it is this same moment where we behold Him. Where we hear John the Baptist speaking into our hearts saying, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Behold His majesty, His greatness, His glory. Behold the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
It leads us to awe and wonder and we can’t help but bow down and prostrate ourselves before Him. This great King and Lord has come to visit me in the depths of my heart. He has come to me. I am honored and humbled by His presence. I feel so unworthy that such a great King and Lord would come so close to me and approach me in this way and I can’t help but behold him and do Him homage.
Then a surprising thing happens. As we are prostrate on the ground in homage before Him, this great King stoops down to us and puts His hand under our chin as a gesture to get up. As we humble ourselves before Him, He then raises us up.
Why does He do this? He does it because in this encounter with Him we have recognized Him properly. We saw Him, and like John our hearts said, “Behold the Lamb of God.”
Now, after recognizing His infinite majesty and glory, He raises us up, and says to us, “Now that you know who I am, let me show you who you are.”
He shows us that because He is a great King, that we are sons and daughters of the King. We are of royal descent. We have great dignity and great worth.
God desires to show us who we are in Him. We can’t see ourselves unless we first see Him for who He is in His grandeur and majesty. He is the great King. He is the Lord of all.
He comes to us in a similar way as He came to Mary. We think about the angel’s greeting to Mary when Gabriel said, “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you.” The angel greeted Mary with reverence and honor. The Lord came down to her through the angel and showed her who she truly was. The great daughter of the King. The one full of grace and without sin. The one who was to be the great Mother of God. The one who will eventually be the Queen of Heaven and earth.
If this wasn’t enough, our Lord takes it one step further. In the first reading, the Lord is speaking to His servant where He says, “it is too little for you to be my servant...I will make you a light to nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” So this notion of the Lord looking at us in our state, even as exalted as we have learned it too be, and He says to us, “it is too little to just simply be my servant, my friend, or my son and daughter. I will make you my bride. I will unite you to myself. Our hearts shall be one. I in you and you in me.”
Our Lord and King, our Divine Bridegroom wants an intimate relationship with you. He wants to be united with you. He is calling us to mystical spousal union with Himself. No matter what vocation we are called too, He wants our hearts. He wants all of us. He wants us to experience this spiritual marital union with Him.
He wants us by His side in His Kingdom. The King comes to you today desiring this intimacy and love and asks you to be His Queen. To stand next to Him in His Kingdom. To allow Him to make you the desire of His heart. The one He cherishes and loves above everyone in the Kingdom.
There is nothing greater that one can be called to than to be a bride of Christ. The bride of the King. To be cherished and loved by the King over everything in His Kingdom. To be at the center of the King’s heart.
The former Poor Clare abbess Mother Mary Francis once said, “Then, who is the bride? One who is surrendered in love; one who knows herself loved; one who knows she is spoken for; one who can say, more than Ruth to Naomi: ‘Wherever you go I will go, your people shall be my people, and your God my God’ (Ruth 1:16).”[1] The bride is surrendered to her Bridegroom in love. She will follow the Bridegroom anywhere because she is loved completely by Him.
God has something so much more in store for you than you could ever imagine. Who you are right now and what He has called you to be is something far greater than what you can conceive.
So today let us Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world! Let us Behold the great King! Let us behold the Divine Bridegroom! Let us Behold Him, and let us hear Him so lovingly speak to us in the depths of our heart who we truly are in His eyes, and what He is calling us to be. And then let us forever surrender to His love.
[1] Mother Mary Francis, My Beloved is Mine and I Am His: Meditations on the Brideship of a Woman Religious, 17.
