The Church, prefigured in Israel’s spousal relationship with the Lord and proclaimed by the prophets, is revealed in the mystery of the incarnation 

At the General Audience on Wednesday, 4 December, the Holy Father continued his catechesis on the Church. In the 17th talk of the series, he discusses the spousal relationship of God and his people as a prefiguring of the relationship between Christ and the Church. Here is the Pope's talk, which he gave in Italian.

1. The Old Testament already spoke of a type of spousal relationship between God and his people, i.e., Israel. We read in the third part of Isaiah's prophecy: "For he who has become your husband is your Maker; his name is the Lord of hosts; your redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, called God of all the earth" (Is 54:5). Our catechesis on the Church as "sacrament of communion with God" (mysterium Ecclesiae: Lumen gentium, n. 1), takes us back to the ancient reality of God's covenant with Israel, the chosen people, which was the preparation for the basic mystery of the Church, a prolongation of the very mystery of the incarnation. We saw that in the preceding catecheses. In today's we wish to highlight the fact that God's covenant with Israel was presented by the prophets as a marital bond. This particular aspect of God's relationship with his people also has value as a symbol and a preparation for the nuptial bond between Christ and the Church, the new people of God, the new Israel established by Christ through the sacrifice of the cross.

2. In the Old Testament, in addition to the text of Isaiah quoted above, we find other texts, especially in the books of Hosea, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, in which God's covenant with Israel is interpreted by analogy with the matrimonial pact between spouses. On the strength of this comparison, these prophets accuse the chosen people of being like an unfaithful and adulterous wife. Hosea says: "Protest against your mother, protest! for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband" (Hos 2:4). Jeremiah says the same: "But like a woman faithless to her lover, even so have you been faithless to me, O house of Israel" (Jer 3:20). And again, looking at Israel's infidelity to the law of the covenant, especially her repeated sins of idolatry, Jeremiah adds the rebuke: "But you have sinned with many lovers, and yet you would return to me! says the Lord" (Jer 3: 1). And Ezekiel says: "But you were captivated by your own beauty, you used your renown to make yourself a harlot, and you lavished your harlotry on every passer-by" (Ez 16:15; cf. 16:29, 32).

It must be said, however, that the words of the prophets do not contain an absolute and definitive rejection of the adulterous wife, but rather an invitation to conversion and a promise to take back the repentant spouse. Hosea says: "I will espouse you to me forever: I will espouse you in right and in justice, in love and in mercy; I will espouse you in fidelity, and you shall know the Lord" (Hos 2:21-22). In analogous terms Isaiah says: "For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great tenderness I will take you back. In an outburst of wrath, for a moment I hid my face from you; but with enduring love I take pity on you, says the Lord, your redeemer" (Is 54:7-8).

3. These prophetic proclamations go beyond the historical boundaries of Israel and beyond the ethnic and religious dimension of a people who did not maintain the covenant. They should be seen in the perspective of a new covenant, pointed out as something which will come in the future. This can be seen particularly in Jeremiah: "This is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days.... I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people" (Jer 31:33). Ezekiel announces something similar, after promising the exiles that they would return to their homeland: "I will give them a new heart and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the stony heart from their bodies, and replace it with a natural heart, so that they will live according to my statutes, and observe and carry out my ordinances; thus they shall be my people and I will be their God" (Ez 11:19-20).

4. The realization of this promise of a new covenant began with Mary. The annunciation is the first revelation of this beginning. Indeed, at that moment we hear the Virgin of Nazareth respond with the obedience of faith to God's eternal plan for human salvation through the incarnation of the Word: the incarnation of God's Son means the fulfilment of the messianic prophecies, as well as the dawning of the Church as the people of the new covenant. Mary is aware of the messianic dimension of the message she receives and of the yes she gives in response. The evangelist Luke appears to highlight this dimension with a detailed description of the dialogue between the Angel and the Virgin, and then with the formulation of the Magnificat.

5. Mary's humility appears in the dialogue and in the canticle, but so does the intensity with which she spiritually lived in expectation of the fulfillment of the messianic promise made to Israel. The prophets' words about God's spousal covenant with the chosen people, which she kept and meditated on in her heart, resound in that same heart during the decisive moments reported by Luke. She herself wanted to be the personal image of that absolutely faithful bride, totally devoted to the divine Bridegroom, and therefore she became the beginning of the new Israel (that new people willed by the God of the covenant) in her spousal heart. Mary, both in the dialogue and the canticle, does not use terminology characterized by analogy with a marital relationship, but goes much further: she confirms and strengthens a consecration already in effect, which becomes the abiding condition of her life. She in fact replies to the Angel of the annunciation: "I have no relations with a man" (Lk 1:34); as if to say: I am a virgin devoted to God, and I do not intend to leave my Spouse, because I do not think that God wills it—he who is so jealous of Israel, so severe with anyone who betrays him, so persistent in his merciful call to reconciliation!

6. Mary is well aware of her people's infidelity, and she wants personally to be a bride who is faithful to her most beloved divine Spouse. And the Angel announces to her the fulfilment in her of God's new covenant with humanity in an unexpected dimension, as a virginal motherhood through the work of the Holy Spirit. "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you" (Lk 1:35). By the work of the Holy Spirit the Virgin of Nazareth becomes the mother of God's Son in a virginal way. The mystery of the incarnation encompasses this motherhood of Mary, divinely accomplished by the power of the Holy Spirit. This, then, is the beginning of the new covenant, in which Christ, as divine Bridegroom, joins humanity to himself and calls it to be his Church, as the universal people of the new covenant.

7. At the moment of the incarnation, Mary as Virgin-Mother becomes a figure of the Church in both her virginal and maternal character. Vatican II explains: "For in the mystery of the Church, which is herself rightly called mother and virgin, the Blessed Virgin stands out in eminent and singular fashion as exemplar both of virgin and mother" (Lumen gentium, n. 63). With good reason the messenger sent by God greets Mary from the start with the word Khaire ("Rejoice"). In this greeting there is an echo of so many prophetic words of the Old Testament: "Rejoice heartily, O daughter Zion, shout for joy, O daughter Jerusalem! See, your king shall come to you; a just saviour is he" (Zec 9:9). "Be glad and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! ... The Lord is in your midst.... Fear not, O Zion, ... a mighty saviour ... will renew you in his love, he will sing joyfully because of you" (Zep 3:14-17). "Fear not, O land! exult and rejoice! for the Lord has done great things.... O children of Zion, exult and rejoice in the Lord your God!" (Jl 2:21, 23).

Mary and the Church are thus the fulfilment of these prophecies, on the threshold of the New Testament. One can even say that on this threshold the Church is found in Mary, and Mary is in the Church and like the Church. It is one of those wondrous works of God which are the object of our faith.