Collection: Christ the Bridegroom

In the Orthodox services for the first three days of Holy Week, special attention is given to Jesus as Bridegroom of the Church.  There are also icons of Jesus as Bridegroom.  Rather than drawing from opulent images in the Song of Songs, however, the Church depicts Jesus in these icons wearing a crown of thorns and a scarlet cloak in the Roman praetorium.  The divine wedding feast is in fact his passion, death, and resurrection, and Jesus, mocked by the soldiers, is on his way to that feast.

"Behold the Bridegroom comes in the middle of the night.  Blessed is that servant whom he shall find watching, but unworthy is he whom he shall find in slothfulness. Beware, then, O my soul, and be not overcome by sleep, lest thou be given over to death and shut out from the Kingdom. But return to soberness and cry aloud, 'Holy, holy, holy art Thou, O God!  Through the Theotokos have mercy on us.'"