Marriage as Metaphor

22 July 2026  Song of Songs 3:1-4

Feast of St. Mary Magdalene

“…Him whom my heart loves…. (Song of Songs 3:1)  

According to an authoritative ancient text, there is ample reason to believe that that the Lord Jesus had an especially intimate relationship with Mary Magdalene, who was pregnant by Jesus when He died on Calvary. Mary subsequently escaped the Jewish authorities who were hunting down the followers of Jesus, and she fled to Gaul (present day France) where she had a daughter, from whom the later Merovingian kings were descended. Historians believe that there are perhaps thousands of descendants of the Merovingian line alive today, meaning that the actual bloodline of Jesus of Nazareth still exists.

Many people swear that this is completely true.

But that is only because Tom Hanks is a terrific actor, and Dan Brown, author of The DaVinci Code, is a better storyteller than most biblical scholars. 

According to St. Paul, marriage is a microcosm of the relationship Christ has with the Church. St. Augustine (Confessions 7.10.16) says that the Eucharist binds us to Christ in such a way that, unlike regular food which we eat and it becomes what we are, the Eucharist makes us what it is, i.e. the very life of Jesus.

This tall tale has been around for decades. It actually is mentioned (not the bit about the Merovingian kings, but the bit about Mary Magdalene) in an ancient document, the Gospel of Philip, a Gnostic (i.e. heretical) text from the 3rd century that was discovered in the Nag Hamadi Library in 1945.

It does not pass any of the tests for inclusion in the canon of the New Testament, but it gets traction all the same because of its family resemblance to the Bible’s favorite metaphor for life in Christ. It is not friendship, even though Jesus sometimes calls His disciples friends (cf. John 15:15). It is not a sibling relationship, though Jesus sometimes calls his disciples His brothers (cf. Matthew 12:49-50). The Bible’s favorite metaphor for life in Christ is marriage (cf. Matthew 9:15, Mark 2:19-20, Luke 5:34-35). Jesus refers to Himself as the Bridegroom, which makes the Church, and all those individually members of it, the Bride.

In the Old Testament, the Gospels, and the letters of Paul we are taught that “a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (cf. Genesis 2:24, Matthew 19:5, Ephesians 5:31). The relationship between husband and wife is to be one of unique closeness, where the boundaries separating the one from the other blur, making it hard to tell where husband ends and wife begins. According to St. Paul, marriage is a microcosm of the relationship Christ has with the Church. St. Augustine (Confessions 7.10.16) says that the Eucharist binds us to Christ in such a way that, unlike regular food which we eat and it becomes what we are, the Eucharist makes us what it is, i.e. the very life of Jesus. Brothers do not become “one flesh” with brothers, nor do friends with friends; but husbands and wives do, so marriage is the Bible’s favorite model for describing the deep closeness with Jesus that is the objective of the life of faith.

The New Testament says absolutely nothing about Jesus being actually married to Mary Magdalene, or anybody else. The Gospel of Philip is a heretical text for a variety of reasons, and one of them is certainly what it says about Jesus and Mary Magdalene as husband and wife. But Jesus the Bridegroom and the Church the Bride is a rich and deeply meaningful New Testament image, and marriage is designed to be a sign of the real presence of Jesus in the home and in the Church. 

“The two shall become one flesh.” Even Dan Brown can’t say it better than that.