Sacrament of Marriage (Ephesians 5:21-33)
The first reading from our daily Mass lectionary has been bringing us through St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. Today’s reading is the New Testament’s most detailed passage on Christian marriage. It is framed within the broader perspective of how believers walk in the Spirit. A special calling, a vocation, for most Christians is to walk with the Lord in the vocation of marriage.
For secular society, there is no template for marriage. That is worth repeating. For secular society, there is no template for marriage. Therefore, couples are free to design a ceremony and a partnership based solely on their personal values. With no template, there is much room for flexibility. Marriage can be between a man and a woman, two men, or two women. It remains to be seen whether the magic number of two will remain over time. Advocates for consensual non-monogamous relationships (people of either gender having multiple partners) argue they should receive legal recognition, civil rights protections, and cultural acceptance in the United States.
Christians, however, view marriage from a very different framework. The relationship between Jesus Christ and His bride, the Church, is the ultimate template for how husbands and wives relate to each other. Before addressing specific roles in marriage, St. Paul begins with a marital culture of humility, service, and mutual reverence for Christ. St. Paul says, “Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Both husbands and wives, then, are to have Christ-like hearts toward each other.
St. Paul then goes into the specific roles for each spouse. He says that “Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord.” From a fallen perspective, this causes our blood pressure to rise. In a Biblical context, however, this is not a mandate for inferiority or tolerating abuse but rather for wives and their openness to allow their husbands to love them as Christ loves the Church. By following the lead of their husbands, wives model their behavior the way that the Church follows Christ.
Husbands, for their part, receive the longer and heavier instruction. Their blood pressure should rise when hearing St. Paul’s words of instruction. They are to love their wives “as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her.” Naturally, Christ’s love is a total self-sacrificial love, a love poured out to death. Christ serves, protects, cares for, and nurtures his Church. Husbands are to love their wives in a way that reflects the way that Christ loves his Church.
Finally, St. Paul quotes Genesis 2:24 regarding a man and woman becoming “one flesh.” St. Paul says this is a great “mystery.” In the Greek, mystery is mysterion, which is translated as sacramentum or “sacrament” in the Vulgate. In other words, Christian marriage is a sacrament or a living, earthly mirror of the spiritual union between Christ (the Bridegroom) and the Church (His Bride).
In our Catholic tradition, Catholic marriage not only symbolizes the spiritual union of Christ and his Church (it is an outward sign) but also confers divine grace – helps spouses love each other with the same self-sacrificial love that Christ has for his Church. We could say it this way: The love between husband and wife in sacramental marriage not only reflects the love between Christ and his Church but is also animated by that love.
When Christian husbands and wives live their vows well (by God’s grace), they reflect the spousal love of Christ and his Church and are sanctified (made holy!) by that love. In short, husbands and wives living their vows together well make Christ’s kingdom present to each other and to those around them (especially their children).
May you do all that you can, by God’s grace, to teach and bear witness to the beauty and truth of God’s plan for marriage!
~St. Thérèse, pray for us!