34
teaches, “in the deepest bio-physiological determinants” 138 –God has created a paradise, a garden
of earthly pleasures as well as of fertile abundance. Although it is enclosed and protected for
most of a woman’s procreative life, at God’s command this paradise opens. Through the fertile
window, God reveals the mystery of creation as it was designed from the beginning, a revelation
of the very mystery of the Trinity itself. From this interior garden flows a virtual cascade or
fountain of living waters, initiating God’s invitation to the couple to participate in the divine life.
The couple’s response is expressed through the mystery of spousal union, in an all-encompassing
physical and spiritual “yes” as the man and the woman are joined in the nuptial embrace, as a
personal unity of body and soul as well as a “unity of the two.” 139
The spousal mystery of sacramental marriage finds its source in the unity between Christ
and his Bride, the Church. In his catechesis on the Theology of the Body, St. John Paul II
expounds on the profound mystery of the Church as expressed in the Letter to the Ephesians. At
the heart of the spousal mystery between Christ and the Church is the Paschal Mystery and the
Eucharist, described by St. John Paul II as “the Sacrament of our redemption…the Sacrament of
the Bridegroom and the Bride.” 140 The Holy Father highlights the analogous relationship
between the Church’s mystery and the mystery of human love when he teaches that St. Paul
does not hesitate to extend the analogy of Christ’s union with the Church in spousal love
… to the sacramental sign of the matrimonial pact between man and woman … to extend
that mystical analogy to the “language of the body,” reread in the truth of the spousal
love and the conjugal union of the two. 141
In the nuptial embrace, man and woman come face to face with the mystery of the Church,
reflected in the other and manifested through the mystical encounter with Christ through the
liturgy and the sacraments. When St. John Paul II refers to the sacramentality of the human body,
138
John Paul II, “The Mystery of Woman,” para. 6.
MD, sec. 7.
140
Ibid., sec. 26.
141
John Paul II, “The Language of the Body: Actions and Duties,” sec. 1.
139