It denotes the relationship which she is called to have with Christ, without presuming on
any special mystical state, which is a separate matter.
Christian moral thinking has accepted this and has given marriage a
special blessing, surrounding it with the aura of divine approval even if it has not always realistically grasped the fact that marriage is not inevitably an ideal
state and that to insist on its continuance when love is absent is to condone what in effect is legalized rape and hence hardly an appropriate symbol for the Christian idea of marriage as representing «the
mystical union of Christ and his Church.»