How I Live Now Part III

So, in the last post, the swimming scene in the movie How I Live Now was explored. ***Spoilers Alert!*** In this post, the wedding scene between Daisy and Eddie will be looked at.

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mirror_of_erised/9627836862/meta/

If you saw the movie, you may be wondering when the wedding scene was. Well, it was the scene where the marital relations take place between Daisy and Eddie.

Before any religion or society, marriage was naturally taking place all the time. No vows were taken, just two people who consummated a marriage and usually raised their children (or adopted children) for life were living it out. In this movie with "no rules" (as the kids at the house said), the natural law rule of marriage still took place. From that intimate scene on, Daisy and Eddie were married, in what is called a de facto marriage, or natural marriage.

As was said in the first post on this movie, I saw this movie as an allegory of the Christian mysteries. This particular scene between Eddie and Daisy can be seen as the marriage between Jesus and the Church. After recognizing the beauty in Christ, whom Eddie represents, and then the life changing act of letting go in the swimming scene (baptism), Daisy who represents a Christian or the whole Church is nourished in the relationship with Eddie. She desires this nourishment wholeheartedly.

For Christians, when Jesus gave his entire self, his entire life up for the Church (those who where baptized in the "bath of water"), he was mysteriously marrying the same Church. When we receive him in the sacrament of the Eucharist at mass, we remember and participate in this saving act. We desire to be intimately joined to Christ.

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So [also] husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “For this reason a man shall leave [his] father and [his] mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church. In any case, each one of you should love his wife as himself, and the wife should respect her husband. Ephesians 5:25-33