This conviction that the Church is permeated by Christ, and of necessity organically united with Him, is a fundamental point of Christian teaching. From Origen to Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius and thence to Thomas Aquinas, and thence on to our own unforgettable Mohler[1] this conviction stands in the center of the Church’s doctrine. Her teachers delight to repeat in ever new forms those expressions of Augustine wherein he celebrates the mystical oneness of Christ and the Church: the two are one, one body, one flesh, one and the same person, one Christ, the whole Christ.[2] Nor could this intimate connection of Christ and the Church, this their intimate oneness, receive profounder or plainer expression than in the figure of a marriage of Christ and the Church which St. Paul, inspired by the language of several of the prophets (Osee i- iii; Jer. ii, 2; Is. liv, 5) is the first to employ (2 Cor. xi, 2). According to St. Paul the Church is the Bride of Christ, for whom He gave Himself. And with a like train of thought the Seer of the Apocalypse celebrates the “marriage of the Lamb,” and sings of His “bride” that hath prepared herself (xix, 7-8). Later mystical theology wove out of these scriptural thoughts its wondrously sweet bridal mysticism, in which Christ is the lord, the Church His bride, and the two in closest union gene}ate the children of life.

This supernatural being of the Church expresses itself chiefly in her most primary creations, in dogma, morals and worship.