August 21, 2024

Fr. John Riccardo

Brothers and sisters: Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body. As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So also husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.

For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church.

Ephesians 5:21-32

Really?

Two quick things arise for me as I pray with this passage. The first is a general question about Scriptural texts we find challenging – and there are many! What do I do when I come across such texts? Do I come at the text presuming the Word of God is wrong, or do I approach it humbly, willing to do the work necessary so as to understand what’s being revealed to us by the Holy Spirit? A second, and more specific, thing that comes to mind is that this text, while appearing so archaic, backwards and misogynist to many, is not only unlike anything ever written in the ancient world about the relationship between a husband and wife (since it is entirely motivated by the event of God becoming man and laying down His life for us on the cross), but is in fact the most beautiful thing ever written about marriage.

Space does not allow for a thorough treatment of this passage. (2) What, though, might some key takeaways be? I would suggest three. Before taking a quick glance at these, however, let me offer a few quick observations to help contextualize the passage.

1) This is written to disciples of Jesus, not to the world at large.

2) There is a remarkable lack of “practical advice” offered. The focus is on “being” more than “doing”, that is, on taking on a new attitude.

3) Each of the parties involved (i.e., wives and husbands) is addressed directly and as equals. This is very unusual in the ancient world.

4) The passage begins with an exhortation to the entire community to subordinate themselves to each other.

5) Almost seventy percent of the text is addressed to the husband. These things said, let’s look at three key takeaways.

First, the wife is to subordinate herself to her husband.She’s not told to “be subordinate” to her husband. She is to subordinate herself. This might sound like mere semantics but it’s not. It is an action that she chooses to perform herself, rather than one that’s somehow imposed on her. She’s not told to obey, let alone to be some sort of slave to her husband, harkening to his every whim and fancy. Rather, Paul is saying to Christian wives something like this: as a person absolutely equal in dignity to your husband, freely choose to place yourself under his loving care.

That, of course, leads to a second key takeaway. The Christian wife’s response presupposes a prior initiative, one that the husband is commanded to take. What initiative? To love his wife. Now, in Greek there are four words for love. One word refers to the love found among family members; a second refers to the love found in friendship; a third refers to erotic love and the fourth refers to the total gift of self that Jesus embodies in His passion for His bride, the Church. That word is agape. When Paul says that a husband is to love his wife, the word he uses is agape.

The third takeaway directly flows from this, since Paul goes on to make this love even more specific. He writes, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her.” Those words – “handed himself over” – are in Greek just one word, and that one word is something like a technical term in the early Church to describe the passion of Jesus. In using this word, Paul is making explicit how the husband is to love his wife – by genuinely adopting an attitude of sacrificial love, even to the point of being willing to die for her. Simply put, a Christian man unwilling to do this had better not marry.

Despite the common objection that this passage is how Paul’s contemporaries in the pagan world thought of marriage, there is absolutely nothing like this in pagan literature. It is instead what St. John Paul II called “an innovation,” flowing directly from the Incarnation and Passion of Jesus. That same St. John Paul II routinely reminded us that the human person can only fulfill himself – that is only find real, true happiness – by making a sincere gift of self to the other. This sincere gift of self lies at the very heart of the marriage covenant. This is why the late Holy Father wrote about what he called “a mutual subordination” between husband and wife. By this expression the Pope was saying that there is an ontological need for such a relationship; for without it, neither person could ever reach perfection. This sincere gift can be nothing less than a total gift, one that holds nothing back and that seeks the good of the other person. In the words of Ephesians 5:21-33, the husband does this by “handing himself over” for his wife, and the wife does this by freely placing herself under her husband’s loving care.

And here’s the good news about marriage: to do all of this, God gives grace on the day of a couple’s wedding. That is to say, He gives supernatural strength to be able to love this way. A couple is not left with some vague moral exhortation to try harder, but rather is invited to surrender each and every day to the power of God in order to do what on their own they could never do. As a priest friend of mine used to say about the priestly vocation, “Lord, I can’t. You can. Please do!”

1 I’m indebted to Stephen Miletic for this description of Ephesians 5.
2 For anyone who wants to go deeper, please feel free to reach out to us and we will share with you an article that we wrote that goes into much greater detail. mission@actsxxix.org

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