Nuptials

"What is the idea that runs all through scripture?  It is nuptials. The covenant is based on nuptials.  As we used to say in the old marriage ceremony, 'Not even the flood took it away, not even sin.'  There was the nuptials of man and woman in the garden of Eden, the nuptials of Israel and God in the Old Testament.  In the prophet Hosea: 'I your Creator am our husband.'  God is the husband of Israel.  In that beautiful passage of the Book of Hosea, God tells Hosea to marry a prostitute, an worthless woman.  She leaves him, betrays him, commits adultery, has children by other men, and when the heart of Hosea is broken, God says, 'Hosea, take her back, take her back.  She's the symbol of Israel.  Israel has been my unworthy spouse, but I love Israel, and I will never let her go.' Hosea taking back the prostitute is the symbol of God's love for his qahol, his church of the Old Testament.  Now we come to new nuptials, the nuptials of divinity and humanity in our Blessed Mother."