What is our role in getting ready for the heavenly wedding?
Q494 · The Church as a Heavenly Wedding Feast
The believer gets ready for the eternal wedding all his days of sojourn on earth, so that he grows in his understanding of the faith, his personal and communal worship, his spiritual struggle, his fellowship with the heavenlies and his relationship with his brethren. “For if (Christ’s resurrection) opened the gates of hell, and threw wide the archways of Heaven, and made a new entrance into Paradise, and cut away the nerves of the devil; what marvel, if it prevailed over poisonous drugs, and venomous beasts, and all other such things.”986
981 St. John Chrysostom, Homily on Ephesians 5 (NPNF I/13:74).
982 St. John Chrysostom, Homily to Those Who Had Not Attended the Assembly (NPNF I/9:227) 983
St. John Chrysostom, “Homily on Christmas Morning,” in The Sunday Sermons of the Great Church Fathers. Volume One: From the First Sunday of Advent to Quinqugesima , ed. M. F. Toal (Chicago: Henry Regery Co., 1957): p. 113.
984 St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Colossians 7 (NPNF I/13:289, 290).
985 St. John Chrysostom, PG 52:402.
986 St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew 54.7 (NPNF I/10:322).