Having passed into the season of Ascensiontide, and on this Sunday after the Ascension fittingly called “Upper Room Sunday,” for we are with the 120 apostles in the Upper Room, and having therefore reached the end of the Eastertide mystagogical preaching I have done—on what it means for Jesus Christ to be the Bridegroom who at the coming in the middle of the night admits those rich with the oil of mercy in their hearts to the marriage banquet which is the Church Triumphant in heaven, and refuses those empty of the oil of mercy—I think the question I repeatedly asked throughout Eastertide is the most important one: How can we not love the Bridegroom? For all Christ has done for us, how can we not love the Bridegroom? This is the question, because if we are to be the Bride of Christ, that is, the Church, there must be mutual love between Christ and us (for that is what constitutes marriage: mutual love).
We know He loves us, because He gave Himself for us, laid down His life, and in so doing, gave the Word of God which is Himself to us that we can abide in Him through His words (His teaching, His actions, His love) and by abiding in Him, the Father and the Son abide in us, the Church. How can we not love the Bridegroom is the ever-present question as a Christian, because His love for us is boundless, and so there is always more about Christ’s love for us to experience, to learn, to know about, and to celebrate and adore.
At the end of his Gospel account, Saint Luke says of the 120 apostles that they “returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God.” With great joy they were in the Upper Room awaiting the Promise of the Father, which is the Holy Spirit and His power among them. And they were continually blessing God in their hearts: why? because their bodies were the temple of the Holy Spirit, Whose presence was already among them so that they could perceive the truth of Jesus: that He is the Christ, the One spoken of by the Prophets and Who spoke to the patriarchs, the prophets and the holy men and women of Scripture in times of old: that He is the Savior and that He has ascended to return to that which He always has inhabited: to Heaven, at the Right Hand of the Father Almighty.
He had completely inhabited as well the hearts of the 120 apostles, that is, the heaven that is in each one of them, in which Christ dwells on High. There hearts were completely given over to Christ, Who for their sakes died, was buried, rose again and showed Himself in His resurrected and glorious Body, all for their sakes so as to consecrate the apostles in His truth, that is, to consecrate the apostles in Him. He had sanctified them in truth; He had given them the Word of the Father which is Himself, all that they may know that they have eternal life. They believed in Him, believed Him to be the Son of God, and so became themselves testimony to the fact that God has given eternal life in His Son.
And so the question, “How can we not love the Bridegroom?” became a statement of joy and adoration of God. The 120 apostles knew and proclaimed to all, and proclaim to the Church for all her days, that He out of His love creates us, keeps us, and guards us. He laid down His life for us. he took away all power death has over us, and all need of fear of death He took away. He died that He might continually give Himself as our daily Bread as He is known in the opening of Scripture and breaking of Bread. The 120 apostles, in other words, understood themselves as One Body, partaking in One Bread. They understood themselves as The Church, which means joyously worshiping Christ as His Bride. Each apostle looked at the apostles around them, and in them saw the face of Christ, for was present among them, and thus He showed Himself through them: through their remembrances of Christ, through their stories.
And most of all through their prayer, for they were with one accord devoted to prayer: in the Liturgy of their worship, and in the community life of their worship. They joyously prayed together in Liturgy through Breaking of Bread, through Psalms and hymns and Scripture; they joyous prayed together in sharing apostolic fellowship: Mary, who Jesus named as Mother of the Church, shared stories of her Son, and each listened and shared their own stories of their experience of Christ. They all sang praises unto our King, for Christ is King of all the earth: how can we not sing praises with the understanding we have of Jesus Christ the Bridegroom? How can we not be joyful in our adoration of the Bridegroom? Let us always know that their life in community is the same as we have: ours is in theirs, theirs in ours. For we joyously adore one Christ: even Jesus Who reigns over the nations, Who sits upon His holy seat; Who has given us the Word of the Father, which is Him, that we might be sanctified in Truth, consecrated in Truth, and enter in the mansion that the Bridegroom has prepared for us, His Bride, that there we might also be: with Him Who is our Light and our Salvation, even Jesus Christ, Who with the Father and the Holy Ghost, lives and reigns, ever one God, unto the ages of ages. Amen.