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Behold, the Bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet him.
These words were written by St Matthew the Evangelist, and
Christ spoke them to His disciples and to all other men in the
parable of the virgins. This Bridegroom is Christ, and human
nature is the bride; the which God has made in His own image and
after His likeness. And in the beginning He had set her in the
highest and most beautiful, the richest and most fertile place in
all the earth: that is, in Paradise. And He had given her dominion
over all creatures; and He had adorned her with graces; and had
given her a commandment, so that by obedience she might have
merited to be confirmed and established with her Bridegroom in an
eternal troth, and never to fall into any grief, or any sin.
Then came a beguiler, the hellish fiend, full of envy, in the
shape of a subtle serpent, and he beguiled the woman; and they
both beguiled the man, in whom above all the whole of our nature
consists. And the fiend seduced that nature, the bride of God,
with false counsel; and she was driven into a strange country,
poor and miserable and captive and oppressed, and beset by her
enemies; so that it seemed as though she might never attain
reconciliation and return again to her native land.
But when God thought the time had come, and had mercy on the
suffering of His beloved, He sent His Only Begotten Son to earth,
in a fair chamber, in a glorious temple; that is, in the body of
the Virgin Mary. There He was married to this bride, our nature,
and He united her with His own person through the most pure blood
of this noble Virgin. The priest who married the bride was the
Holy Ghost; the angel Gabriel brought the offer; the glorious
Virgin gave her consent. Thus Christ, our faithful Bridegroom,
united our nature with His person; and He has sought us in strange
countries, and taught us heavenly customs and perfect
faithfulness, and has laboured for us and fought as our champion
against the adversary. And He has broken open our prison, and won
the victory, and by His death slain our death; and He has redeemed
us by His blood, and made us free through His living waters of
baptism, and enriched us with His sacraments and with His gifts:
that we might go out (as He says) with all the virtues, to meet
Him in the house of glory and to enjoy Him without end in
eternity.
Now Christ, the Master of Truth, says: Behold the Bridegroom
cometh, go ye out to meet Him. In these words, Christ our Lover
teaches us four things. First, He gives us a command, in that He
says: Behold. Those who neglect this command and remain blind are
all damned. Secondly, He shows us what we shall see, that is, the
coming of the Bridegroom; for He says, The Bridegroom cometh. In
the third place, He teaches and commands us what we shall do, for
He says: Go ye out. And in the fourth place, by saying: To meet
Him, He shows us the use and the purpose of our labour and of all
our life; that is to say, the loving meeting with our Bridegroom.
These words we shall now declare and set forth in three ways.
First, according to the common way relating to the life of
beginners, which is called the Active Life, and which is necessary
for all men who wish to be saved. Secondly, we will explain these
same words in their relation to the interior, exalted, and
God-desiring life, at which many men may arrive by their virtues
and by the grace of God. Thirdly, we will expound them in respect
of a superessential, God-seeing life, which few men can attain or
taste, by reason of the sublimity and high nobility of that life.
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