(Please read the Scripture passage before reading the homily.
This something I find fascinating. God is often described in the Hebrew Scriptures as the Bridegroom of his people. In other words, God is married to his people. God and his people make a married couple and this gives life to God’s family.
When Jesus speaks of the bridegroom’s presence at the wedding as the cause for all the joy and mirth, his hearers were invited to think in terms of God’s relationship to them as described in the Bible. If Jesus is the bridegroom, then Jesus is also describing himself the way God described himself in the Hebrew Bible.
Something new is happening. One cannot patch an old garment with new cloth because they do not match. New wine and old wine do not mix; the old wine is better. Something new is happening but it is not destroying the old any more than the weddings of the children destroy the marriage of the parents.
The bridegroom has come. He takes from his closet things both old and new.
Is the bridegroom among us now, in our day? I wonder how we experience the presence of the Bridegroom in our lives. I wonder if we have joy or suspicion about his presence. Jesus will never divorce us from himself. He has taken our nature, that is, our human condition, upon himself. He can no more divorce himself from our human nature than he can from his divine nature. Jesus will forever be God and Man, always the Bridegroom, creating the universe and being the Church in all its fullness.
The bridegroom is here. Let us enjoy his marriage to us.