by marriedpriests.com
(c) 2019-2023
If the married Catholic priest is "in persona Christi," then the wife of the priest is "in persona Ecclesiae".
That is why a married priest should be married only once.
All that applies to the Bride of Christ applies to all the members of the Church of which the priest's wife is a preeminent icon. Consecrated virginity (consecrated Religious) also shares in this great mystery, since they are rightly called the Bride of Christ the Lamb and follow Him wherever He goes. Vows of the wife of a married priest and vows of consecrated Religious are two forms of one great mystery. Vows of wife of married priest, however, takes on the form of a sacrament.
She, the Church, is to receive and accept all the teachings of Christ. And it is from this faithful union (an active "giving in a receiving sort of way" as the great moral theologian Dr. William E. May wrote about marriage and family) that spiritual children are procreated and born in the waters of the baptismal font, the womb of the Church.
The two (priest and priest's wife) are one flesh, so too Christ and His Church are one flesh. The priest and the priest's wife are one flesh, so that when the married priest re-presents the Sacrifice of Calvary at Holy Mass to the Eternal Father in the Spirit, the Body and Blood of Christ -- Christ' Mystical Body, the Church -- is thereby offered in an unbloody manner in a great doxology (glorification) of the Holy Trinity.
The priest's wife fittingly personifies the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, through both Holy Matrimony and Holy Orders. This union of the two Sacraments of Service is one great mystery that unfolds through time. Perhaps this mystery, please God, will moreso surface in these latter times when the final battle between Our Lord and Satan will be over family and marriage, as Sr. Lucia wrote to Cardinal Caffarra. This mystery will unfold but the wife of the priest and her dignity will emerge in splendor. If dispensation from the celibacy norm in the Latin Church is granted in certain circumstances, it is not for secondary practical reasons as Fr. Dwight Longenecker wrote, but it will need to be for theological reasons. Perhaps then in God's plan for a married priesthood, such as the strengthening of married and family life in the West with the married priesthood where the Domestic Church is "more elevated to the love of Jesus Christ". As Fr. Joseph Ratzinger held in 1969, the Church will ordain approved Christians to the priesthood who work alongside full-time priests.
But the feminine element of the Church, holiness and agape, surpasses the Petrine priesthood element. The dignity of women (mulieris dignitatem) in Mary (redeemed femininity) and thereby all women is elevated higher than the priest Peter (redeemed maleness) in the spiritual order. Priesthood united with diaconate through laying on of hands that pushes downward is service and sacrificial abnegation to the earth until death, but the dignity of hidden priest's wife (and even the deacon's wife) is elevated upward and placed on the heavenly pedestal for He has lifted up the lowly.
Christ died for her, but she in turn will die for Him. She, the Church, gives herself entirely to His mission. She is sub-missio, under the same mission as Him, to die with Him on the Cross for the life of the world. Christ redeems, but she co-redeems with Him. She is not the redeemer, but she is co-redeemer, since there is only one Redeemer.
The mission of the priest's wife is co-equal with her husband's mission. She is co-equal with him as spiritual mother. Her heart consumes his heart, and his heart consumes her in the fire of love.
She sings the song of her Beloved and Divine Lover through her life and teachings. She is (immaculate) virgin-mother and teacher (prophet) of the nations. She is distinct in her person, yet one with His office of priest, prophet and king. She is bride and wife. She is queen who sits at the King's right hand arrayed in gold. Her teachings are His own.
Addendum (3/30/2023):
Just as a celibate priest points to us being unmarried in Heaven "where they will neither marry nor give into marriage," the married priest points to the Church being married to Christ forever in Heaven where the Spirit and the Bride (the Church coming down like a Bride out of Heaven) say, "Come, Lord Jesus!"
This theological reflection is an attempt to build, in part, upon Cardinal Henri de Lubac's communio ecclesiology which is a ressourcement of ecclesiology, as well as in part upon St. John Paul II's Mulieris Dignitatem where he wrote the feminine element of the Church (holiness as seen in Mary) surpasses the Petrine element (priesthood as seen in Peter). A married priesthood would recover the "great mystery" between Christ and His Church. A shift in the Church's view of Christian sexuality, as developed by the great John Paul II and the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council in the 20th Century, was necessary before the return of married priests in the Latin Rite. Therefore, a fuller expression of a theology of the priesthood -- indeed, to be so -- must advance such that both the celibate priesthood & the married priesthood are reflected in persona Christi; perhaps herein one finds the ontological link of celibacy with the priesthood as well as the ontological link of marriage with the priesthood of Jesus Christ. One does not exclude the other; as the old saying goes, "It is both-and and not either-or." The Church is both virgin and mother & not either virgin and mother. Mary, whose image the Church is, is an "icon" of this great mystery. The priesthood is both celibate and married & not either celibate or married.
Just as the Church is both Virgin & Mother, so too Christ is both Celibate & Married.
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See in this hymn, written by S.J. Stone, an an image of the priest's wife :
The Church’s one foundation
Is Jesus Christ her Lord;
She is his new creation
By water and the word:
From heav’n he came and sought her
To be his holy bride;
With his own blood he bought her,
And for her life he died.
Yet one o’er all the earth,
Her charter of salvation,
One Lord, one faith, one birth;
One holy Name she blesses,
Partakes one holy food,
And to one hope she presses,
With ev’ry grace endued.
Though with a scornful wonder
Men see her sore opprest,
By schisms rent asunder,
By heresies distrest;
Yet saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up, “How long?”
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song. Amen.
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