The Strange Religious Meaning of Bridges

I hate when I’m driving in unfamiliar places and suddenly coming upon a bridge that I have to cross. I try not to look down, especially when I am crossing over water. Of course I do look down and all I can see in an instant is the swirling, muddy waters ready to devour me should I plummet into its frothing mouth. My palms get sweaty. My heart beats faster as I grip the steering wheel at the ‘ten and two’ spots and mutter a prayer, “Please God help me to focus and stay in my lane”. 

What makes it worse is that most bridges are designed to move with the wind. Feeling the surface shaking below my feet, I am reminded that a flexible bridge is safer than a rigid and inflexible bridge, but that does nothing to alleviate my fear. It actually increases my anxiety. Why Lord, why must those terrible traverses be so high and so seemingly perilous for those of us who suffer a fear of heights?  Why bridges? Why can’t everything be flat and easy to move from one area to another?  
This got me thinking about the religious meaning of bridges.

I found that much of the religious meaning of bridges can be drawn from several key ‘bridge encounters’ recorded in the bible, literature and of the annals of Catholic Church history. 

Jesus is the Greatest Bridge: 

 As the one true Mediator, Jesus is given the title,  ‘Pontifex Maximus’. The term pontifex means "bridge builder" or one who acts as a "bridge" between God and men. After the fall of Adam and Eve, a great chasm separated humanity from God. No human being was able to bridge the gap between the fallen world and the world of God’s holy presence, a world of grace and divine life.  Jesus is both divine and human, high priest and infinite sacrifice. He paid the price for human sins and became a perfect Mediator. He said he was the way, the truth and the life and that no one comes to the Father except through him.

After Pentecost in the early church period, when Saul encountered the powerful, blinding light of Jesus  He heard a voice which proclaimed a mysterious and real communion between his own body and ours.  “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me…I am Jesus whom you persecute.” What Jesus was saying here is that he and the Church are one, that the chasm of separation between God and humanity has been bridged by himself.  

The Great Temple Bridge:

Perhaps more than any other earthly, historical bridge, the Great Bridge in ancient Jerusalem most represented Jesus. This is because it bridged the gap (valley below) that separated the upper city of Jerusalem to the Temple Mount which contained the earthly dwelling place of the Almighty God in the Temple, what Jesus himself called, his Father's House. 

In order to enter the sacred Temple precincts, the dwelling place of God, one would first have to pass over this bridge. It was a journey from the profane, fallenness of the world marked by mundane activity, commercial enterprise and the hustle and bustle of daily life to a series of courts. Each court closer to god and holier than the outer one.

That Great Bridge first connected a person to the court of gentiles, then to the court of women, to the court of men, to the court of priests, and finally to the holy room which led to the Holy of Holies which contained the Ark of the Covenant which was God’s holy, angelic throne and focal point of his shekinah glory. In effect this man-made bridge resembled Jesus. It was a connector between the ordinary and the extraordinary, the human and the divine, the earth and heaven on earth. 

Miraculous Biblical Bridge:

Before pilgrims from the East could cross the Great Bridge into the Temple Mount they would first have to cross over the Jordan River. During the flood season the waters of this river were abnormally high. After the death of Moses, Joshua led the Hebrews into the promised land by crossing the Jordan River. Joshua was instructed by God to select one man from each of the twelve tribes of Israel. They were to go ahead of the people and stand in the river. Then the priests, bearing the Ark of the Covenant, would cross before them.  When their feet touched the waters the waters receded. “As soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water’s edge the water from upstream stopped flowing.” (Joshua 3:15-16).  Just like when Moses led the Hebrew people through the Red Sea,  a miraculous dry strip of land appeared as a footbridge. The priests remained in the middle of the river until every person had safely crossed over it.

Bridges of the Damned:

For those who fear heights, bridges are scary. But in the great literature of the West we have examples of bridges that are straight up ‘hell’a spooky. There’s a bridge that connects hell with earth and a perilous bridge that spans the depths of hell below. 

While Virgil and Dante are talking, they reach the bridge over the tenth and final chasm of the eighth circle of hell. They look down to see the suffering and hear the wails and weeping of the Falsifiers. The noise is so loud that Dante covers his ears, and the stench is so powerful that it reminds him of rotting human flesh, lying exposed to the world. 

In John Milton's "Paradise Lost," the "bridge" refers to the "Bridge over Chaos," a metaphorical structure described in Book 10 of the poem, which allows Satan to cross the abyss between Hell and the newly created Earth; it's often depicted in illustrations as a precarious, rocky ridge spanning a chaotic void. 

The Biggest Battle at a Bridge:

The future of the Catholic Church was shaped more than anything else by the outcome of this battle at the Milvian Bridge. Military historians will tell you that the most strategic structures when planning a battle are bridges. All good generals want either to destroy them or protect them. This strategy crosses over into spiritual warfare too. Jesus was intent on building a bridge for humanity to get back to God and the Devil was set on destroying and obstructing any human connection to God. 

‘During the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 AD, the control of this bridge was critical in the struggle between Constantine I and Maxentius. As Constantine’s forces approached from the north following his invasion of Italy, the bridge formed a chokepoint that could have been used defensively by Maxentius. However, Constantine’s tactical maneuvering led to the construction of a temporary pontoon bridge parallel to the Pons Milvius, which played a decisive role in outflanking Maxentius’s troops and ensuring a victory that would ultimately lead to Constantine’s consolidation of power as the sole ruler of the Roman Empire.’

Before the battle, Constantine and his soldiers saw a vision of a cross of light in the sky. The vision was accompanied by the words ‘In hoc signo vinces’, which translates to "In this sign you will conquer". The night before the battle, Constantine ordered his outnumbered soldiers to paint the Chi Rho, the first two letters of Christ's name in Greek, on their shields. In an unexpected and surprising twist of fate, Constantine and his men were victorious in the battle and this led to his momentous conversion to the Catholic Faith. In 313 AD, Constantine, the first Catholic emperor,  issued the Edict of Milan which led to the legalization and rapid spread of the Catholic Faith throughout the Roman Empire. 

Murder and Martyrdom on a Bridge:

The sacrament of Reconciliation is for Catholics a type of bridge between the penitent and the mercy of God. There was one penitent who was very famous. In fact, she was a queen. After confessing to St. John of Nepomuk, priest and confessor, her husband became enraged when she and the priest kept her confession secret. King Wenceslaus was afraid that his wife had a lover. When the king demanded answers from Saint John of Nepomuk instead of talking he became the first priest to be martyred for refusing to break the seal of Confession. Consequently, he was taken to the Charles Bridge, bound in chains and with a piece of wood in his mouth, and thrown into the Vltava River located in Prague. A cross marks the spot on the bridge where John was sent to his death. He died on March 20, 1393.

Love at First Sight on a Bridge:

Saint Therese of Lisieux, Carmelite Doctor of the Church would never have been born were it not for the fateful meeting of two strangers walking in the opposite direction. He was entering her world and she was entering his. Little did they know they would be married three months later on July 13, 1858.  As they glanced at each other and nodded, Zelie and Louis looked into each other's eyes for the first time. That’s when Zelie heard an interior voice say “this is the one I have prepared for you.” 

This sacred encounter between two Saints happened on the St. Leonard’s Bridge, a 15th century stone arch bridge that looks like something out of a fairytale. The ‘Bridge of Encounter’ as they call it spans the Sarthe River which is located to the southwest of Paris. Zelie and louis Martin were canonized as a married couple in 2015. They are the parents of nine children over the course of thirteen years, though only five daughters would survive childhood. All of them entered the Carmelite order including the youngest, Therese and the rest is history. 

The 'Pachamama' Bridge: 

It was October 2019 and Pope Francis shocked many in the Church by allowing carved images of a naked pregnant Amazonian woman to be displayed in the Carmelite Church of Santa Maria in Traspontina, close to the Vatican. This was after he appeared on a video to be seated next to a group of people who engaged in an Amozonian ritual where it appeared that the idols were being venerated. Many in the Church were scandalized by what became known as the Pachamama idols. One zealous young man took it upon himself to cleanse the church from the sacrilegious statues.  

"I came to a conclusion together with a friend of mine… we should go to Rome. We should get the statues out of the church. They do not belong in a Catholic church," said Alexander Tschugguel. 

He ran out of the church onto a marble pedestrian bridge which has five arches. There from the  Ponte Sant’Angelo Bridge, he cast down the Pachamama's, one by one, into the Tiber River below.  

Later, Pope Francis issued an apology Oct. 25 asking forgiveness from those who were offended by the "Pachamama" statues being thrown into the Tiber River, and said that they had been displayed in the church "without idolatrous intentions."

Next time you come upon a bridge calm down and remember those holy men and women who encountered God's grace on a bridge and that every man-made bridge speaks of the union between man and God in Jesus the Greatest Bridge. Perhaps it is a holy bridge, already blessed with the prayers below...

BLESSING OF A BRIDGE

V. Our help is in the name of the Lord.
R. Who has made heaven and earth.

V. The Lord be with you.
R. And with your spirit.

Let us pray.

Hear our prayers, Lord,
and be so kind as to bless this bridge,
and all who pass over it,
that in the successes as well as the failures of this world
they may always be protected by Your assistance,
through Christ our Lord.

R. Amen.

Let us pray.

Hear us, holy Lord, Father almighty, eternal God,
and be so kind as to send your holy angel
from heaven to guard, visit, and defend this bridge,
and all who pass over it, through Christ our Lord.

R. Amen.