Our picture is a triptych. In the left-hand panel you can see a couple, a man and a woman who have come from two different churches, both in the sense of denominations and of local congregations. They represent two distinct church traditions but share one baptism – they have both been baptised into Christ by water and the Spirit, represented here by the flowing waters and the heavenly dove.

But our couple, both baptised Christians, are also committing themselves to share the marriage covenant together – represented here by the water jars of Cana, where Jesus’ first miracle took place at a wedding celebration when water became wine (John 2). The Holy Spirit who was poured out upon each of them in their baptism, is again poured out upon them but this time as a couple, in their marriage, and so now the two partners together “share the sacraments of baptism and marriage” (Ecumenical Directory, 160).  

They are still distinct individuals but, as married partners, they are no longer separate individuals but are bonded together as a couple in communion. In their “intimate community of married life and love” (Gaudium et Spes, 48) they have become one in Christ, by entering into that “one-flesh” relationship which St Paul likens to the Christ-church relationship (Eph.5).

The middle panel shows an interchurch family – it is based on the AIF logo which was drawn by the same Sr Regina and has been used since the Association began in 1968. Here you see the family as a “domestic church” (Lumen Gentium, 11), and behind them two church buildings that symbolise the two church traditions which nourish the one Christian family.

The married couple have become parents, “receiving from God the gift of a new responsibility” (Familiaris Consortio, 14) which brings with it the mission of nurturing and educating their child in the faith of Christ. As the first teachers of their children, theirs is “a true ministry, through which the Gospel is transmitted and radiated so that family life is transformed into a journey of faith and the school of Christian life” (General Directory for Catechesis, 227).

The golden circle represents a wedding ring, the sign of the marriage covenant from which this responsibility springs. The white circle within the ring represents the eucharistic bread which the family needs to sustain, nourish and build up their “domestic church” as described by the second Vatican Council: 

“The Christian family is called to experience a new and original communion which confirms and perfects natural and human communion. … The Christian family constitutes a specific revelation and realisation of ecclesial communion, and for this reason can and should be called ‘the domestic church” (Familiaris Consortio, 21).

The third panel represents the marriage supper of the Lamb which every eucharist foreshadows (Happy are those who are called to his supper, we say before communion in the rite of the mass) and to which the whole church is called and looks forward. It shows the marriage supper of the Lamb, but not as a Lamb standing on an altar, surrounded by crowds of worshippers, as in the famous painting by Van Eyck in Ghent Cathedral.  

Here it is pictured as the Russian painter Roublev does in his even more famous icon – in the form of the three travellers welcomed and fed by Abraham and Sarah under the oak tree at Mamre. This has been taken in Christian tradition as an image of the life of the Trinity into which we are all called. This last panel therefore shows the nature of the communion that the partners share through baptism and marriage – through both they are being drawn into the life of God, into the love-relationship of the Father and the Son, through the Spirit, into the living communion of the Trinity.

There is a eucharistic reference in every panel.

The first has the water of baptism and the wine of the eucharist – the Blood of Christ representing the life of Christ which flows into our lives. The theme recalls the sermon preached at the wedding of an interchurch couple in which the (Anglican) priest told them to pour all the treasures of their baptismal experience into their water jars together, because only when they had done this would they be able to draw out at Jesus’ command, and taste the water turned into wine. “Then will our shared baptismal experience be turned into a shared eucharistic experience, and we will realise that we have left the best wine to last.”

In the second panel we saw that the white circle within the wedding ring represents the host – the Bread of Life which binds the Body of Christ together (we are the Body because we eat the Body). The family needs the eucharist to build up their domestic church – represented in outline around the ring – because the eucharist “is the very source of Christian marriage … in it Christian spouses encounter the source from which their own marriage covenant flows” (Familiaris Consortio, 57).

The icon of the third panel clearly has a eucharistic reference. Roublev actually painted a Lamb in the chalice, although it cannot be seen in small reproductions. Here is the theme of self-sacrificing love at the centre of the life of the Trinity – the Lamb of the Apocalypse “slain before the foundation of the world”. But there is more in the third panel.