Feast of the Holy Family (Wives and Husbands)

Our second reading today gives us a longer or shorter option. The shorter option leaves out the difficult language about wives being subordinate to their husbands, language that sounds so archaic that it may cause us to tune-out to what the reading is really trying to say. So let me address those words. Contrary to what we might think, it’s not a command that women should be suppressed, denied of human freedom or held under the control of husbands. And in whatever way any man has ever self-righteously used these words as a platform to exercise any kind of abuse against women, it’s not only morally wrong, but also not at all what Paul had in mind.

We should understand that in the Roman-Greco-Jewish culture, women had few rights. A woman was her husband’s possession, and it was common for a pious Jewish man to thank God in his daily prayers for not making him “a Gentile, a slave, or a woman”. The Greek-influenced culture was even worse for women.

My point is not to condemn the Jewish or Greek culture of any time, but instead to show that Paul’s teaching was counter-cultural, even if it initially sounds harsh to our modern ears. Further, let us bear in mind that we live in a culture—immediately so—that harms women through human trafficking, selling them into forced prostitution, and through an adult entertainment industry that exploits them, and all else that undermines their dignity as daughters of God.

To be clear, regardless of whatever ways our society or any other, might exercise any inequality of gender, our Christian faith does not. In God’s eyes, man and woman bear a shared dignity, even if they’re different. As we say in the nuptial blessing, just after a man and woman have been united—in God—by the sacramental grace of marriage, we say, “May the grace of love and peace abide in your daughter _____….May her husband entrust his heart to her, so that, acknowledging her as his equal, and his joint heir to the life of grace, he may show her due honor and cherish her always with the love that Christ has for his Church”.

To this point, I remember meeting with a couple beginning the process of preparing for marriage. They were excited and clearly loved each other, but they acknowledged some concerns as well. I should explain, she took her faith very seriously. He on the other hand, much less so. Meeting with them, she explained that when he would watch movies that included a lot of vulgar language, gratuitous sex, immoral behavior, and so on, it bothered her. She wondered why he was willing to expose her to what she regarded as pollution, but further, that was what he chose to feed his consciousness within this same pollution. He didn’t see the problem: ”It’s just a movie”. But it was more than just the movies or their content. On one hand, she deeply wanted to be married, but his choices and behaviors troubled her.

During their engagement, she attended a conference in which the presenter, a female, spoke to the young women about their choices and their desires, as Christian women. She spoke about choosing a man: ”Do you really want a man who isn’t going to move you to holiness or desire it for himself? Do you really want a man who doesn’t desire to move you toward Jesus?”  The bride-to-be realized that the man she was engaged to, was never going to do that or perhaps even desire it. She called-off the marriage.

In his letter to the Ephesians, similarly, Paul calls for wives to be submissive to their husbands. But he also includes the instruction for husbands to be a spiritual leader in the home, following the model of Jesus’ sacrificial love? In whatever way that idea might initially seem to advocate for male-dominance, again, that’s not what he means. I wonder: Do women want a husband who strives to move her and their children toward Jesus? That by virtue of the way he lives, he speaks and acts, they could experience God’s love more powerfully. Whether already married or hope someday to be, is that what women want?

And I have no doubt that many Christian husbands make sacrifices, but with what purpose in mind? Is it to make your wife and children holy? And if not, then for what? And even if anyone of us is uncomfortable thinking of men as being a spiritual head of the household, at the very least we should acknowledge that he has a part in that leadership. So, men, what do you do to foster your own holiness, so that you and your wife can lead your household? What’s your own spiritual life like? What steps do you need to start taking?

I speak to too many people and couples about their marriages to dismiss all the pressures, the challenges, the dynamics in spousal relationships, and everything else that comes with marriage—it’s not easy nor always pleasant. But God had something specific in mind when he gave us the institution of marriage. Among the ways we would describe the purpose of Christian marriage, it was to be a means by which husbands and wives move each other, and their children, toward heaven. Jesus the bridegroom showed us that, first-hand, in his living, but also in his dying on the cross, for his bride. Let us trust that this sacrificial love will eventually give way to life, and will give meaning to our lives.