"You're mine."

These were the words from my husband at a particularly poignant moment this past weekend. For some reason, my thoughts lately have turned to my past transgressions. I brought many things to our marriage (Corelle dishes for 12, same for Oneida flatware, a set of Revere Ware, a sense of humor) but my purity wasn't one of them.
I've been reluctant to share these thoughts with him because I know it hurts him to think about. He's the only one I can share these thoughts with, really, who will understand. He knows me so well he can tell my mood by how I'm turning pages in a magazine.
So, he figured out what I need to hear and, at a moment while he had my complete attention, said, "You're mine. Regardless of what you may have done in the past, you're mine now and for the rest of your life." I burst into tears.

But isn't that how it's supposed to be? Isn't that what Christ says to us at Baptism, which so many celebrated on Saturday night? In the second half of that Ephesians reading that gets all the feminists in a snit, doesn't it say something like, "Husbands, love your wife as Christ loved the Church." (He died for Her, you know.) As God the Father loves the people of Israel. No matter what she's done or how far astray she has wandered, if she is sincerely repentant, forgive her. Love her.
That's how Jesus feels about us, too. (In our case, the sins were committed before they were relevant to him, but the aftereffects have lingered.)

Since that moment, when those thoughts try to intrude, my husband's words come back to me. They drown out all of the "What ifs" and my regrets.
And that, my friend, was a wonderful thing to carry around in my head and heart at the Mass of the Lord's Resurrection, contemplating the Risen Christ.

"You're mine."