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Mass Communication 33
invited to the marriage, revealed himself by the power of his works as God
hidden in man, and from the unstable history of the heathen united to
himself a permanent wife. But among the music provided by the prophets
to celebrate the wedding, the wine of grace was lacking. This the mother
raised reproachfully with her son. (Document 1. 3. 1)
Marriage symbolism reappears a little later as the theme of the six
ages of the world is introduced—an interesting combination of two
motifs with no necessary connection:
Those six water jars, however, signify the six ages, and these ages continue
to stay like empty vessels, unless filled by Christ. In each and every one of
them there were not lacking prophecies of the bride and bridegroom, and
these, made clear in Christ, aimed at the salvation of all the nations.
In the first water jar, who is symbolized by Adam and Eve, if not Christ
and the Church? And who is shown in the second, in which Noah commanded
the mystical ark, if not the same Christ on the wood of the cross,
joining to himself as bride the Church from all the nations? (Document
1. 3. 3–4)
After a rapid survey of the ages of the world, there is another
passage of marriage symbolism, this time launched by the remark
in the Gospel reading that the water jars held ‘two or three measures
apiece’:
To Christ, indeed, and his intervention on behalf of the nations, pertained
the prophecies of the six water jars, each of which held twofold or threefold
measures, and are signified in the foreskin and circumcision, or in the three
divisions of the world, since Christ the bridegroom came to choose for
himself a single bride out of every people and every kind of men, and for
her he mixed the wine of grace, a wine which is pronounced good by the
wine steward, that is, the chorus of holy doctors, and preferred to all the
pleasures of the previous age . . . (Document 1. 3. 5)
These are nice passages, but they are not enough to change the general
impression of a meagre crop, especially compared to the last
three medieval centuries, where there are extremely large numbers
of sermons on the marriage feast of Cana pericope, a high proportion
of them with much to say both about human marriage proper
and about what it symbolizes.
England: a special case
The biggest exception to our generalization about the early Middle
Ages is England, where homilies were produced in the vernacular.