I gaze upon the crucifix at Holy Mass, contemplating the image of Christ’s broken body, poured out for the Church, as he is truly present — his body, blood, soul and divinity — on the altar. A sense of myself as bride comes upon me, as I await the moment when I will go forward and receive my Bridegroom.

All at once I am lifted out of my personal experience of my soul individually as bride to an understanding that I as a woman represent the entire Church as Christ’s bride. I notice all the women in the church, kneeling and preparing their hearts to receive Our Lord. And then I look at the men, who are also part of Christ’s bride the Church, but uniquely symbolize Christ the Bridegroom.

Father descends the steps with the Holy Eucharist enshrined in a gold ciborium and offers Our Lord to his bride. I eagerly await the moment when I will kneel before the Lord and receive him in Holy Communion. I adjust my chapel veil as I move up the line — it too has a deep symbolism.

Alice von Hildebrand wrote in The Privilege of Being a Woman, “A veil symbolizes both mystery and sacredness,” giving examples of Moses veiling his face after speaking to God and the veil of the tabernacle in our churches. A woman veiling in the presence of the Eucharist also symbolizes a mystery and sacredness. It shows the mystery of transubstantiation and the mystery that every woman carries about in her person — always symbolizing the Church as bride, all creation.

The symbolism of a woman veiling before the Eucharist also has a sacred character. Woman, as Alice von Hildebrand points out, had the privilege of being formed from the body of a human person, differing from the man, who was formed from the ground. In Genesis 1:27, we see that God first created “man in his own image, in the image of God he created him” — “man” here meaning “humans.” Only secondly do we read that humans were created as men and women: “male and female he created them.” While there is a practical reason for this — that of the procreation of new humans — there is also a theological meaning to God creating humans as male and female.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church helps us understand this meaning when it explains that “man is created in the image and likeness of God who is himself love” (1604). One way in which we image the love of God is through the bridegroom-and-bride relationship. Again and again, the image of God as the bridegroom and the Church and the individual soul as a bride is used in Scripture. We see it in the analogy of Israel as a faithless bride in the Song of Songs, in Jesus’ parables, and in the language that St. Paul uses to talk about Christ and the Church. The Catechism tells us that “[s]ince God created him man and woman, their mutual love becomes an image of the absolute and unfailing love with which God loves man” (1604). That is, the love of a man and a woman in marriage is an image of a theological reality that each human is created for union with God.

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) explains it in this way in The Science of the Cross: “[T]he bridal union with God is seen to be the original and true bridal state, while the corresponding human relationship appears as imperfect images of this original.” The union with God for which our souls are destined is the highest bridal state, and the sacrament of marriage should only be understood to be an image of this; thus, anything we think or say about men and women should be placed below the theology of God’s union with the soul, for the human bridal relation’s “highest meaning is its capacity to express a divine mystery.”

Theologically in a bridal union, the man represents Christ and the bride represents the Church. We see this in Ephesians 5:23: “For the husband is head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church, his body, and is himself its Savior.” Yet the husband is also part of the Church, the bride of Christ, and he must take his model of how to be a bridegroom from Christ, who “gave himself up for” his bride (Ephesians 5:25). At the same time the woman shows the man how to be bridal in response to Christ — she is receptive in her body and must learn with all creatures how to be receptive with her soul. The primary example we have of this is in the Blessed Mother, who models the feminine surrender to God’s love for all humans, both male and female.

In 1 Corinthians 11, which is the biblical basis for the tradition of women wearing head coverings in church (“a woman ought to have a veil on her head,” verse 10), St. Paul writes: “Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man from woman; for as a woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God” (1 Corinthians 11:11-12). We all have received our existence from God, and we all also received our lives from our mother and father and were born of a woman. Jesus, too, was born of a woman, descending to become one with us to raise us up with him. And as St. John of the Cross wrote, as quoted by St. Edith Stein in The Science of the Cross, Christ our Bridegroom wants “to exalt the dignity of our soul.” He says that “it is proper to love to make the lover equal to the object of his love.” Thus we see that the human bridegroom and his bride image this equality when they live in a holy, sacramental union.

A woman who veils in the Real Presence of the Christ in Eucharist at Holy Mass becomes a symbol of the mystery and sacredness of her bridal character as a woman and at the same time allows for the men who attend the same Mass to image Christ the Bridegroom. Further, when we as male or female receive the Eucharist, we are incorporated into Christ’s body and the entire Church is raised up as bride by her heavenly Bridegroom.