The
Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)
Dear
brothers and sisters,
We
have heard for the past several weeks of Jesus’ desire to give himself
completely, for us to the point of offering himself on the Cross for our
salvation and of giving himself to us as our true food and drink (cf. John 6:1-69). Today, he asks us, “Does this shock you” (John 6:61)?
No
doubt there are many today who are indeed shocked at so great a love. In an age
of ever-increasing self-absorption and of strident, independent individualism,
so self-less a love seems unfathomable. Yet this love is true. Jesus did and
does love us with a depth greater than we can comprehend. Some doubt such a love
and others do not desire to be loved so intimately. At what point in this
spectrum are you? Today, many people’s ability to accept the love of Jesus is
related to their upbringing.
Saint
Paul realized the profound relationship between marriage and God’s own love and
for this reason said, “This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ
and the Church” (Ephesians 5:32). The portion of his letter to the Ephesians
which we have just heard finds little support in society today, and for this
reason many marriages have failed because they have not rooted their love in
the love of Jesus Christ; they have not measured their love according to God’s
way of loving.
Because
of our fallen and sinful condition, we strive for independence and long for
what we call freedom, but which is really mere license. When we attain what we
seek we find ourselves not free, but slaves to our own desires and passions.
Saint Paul shows us the way out of this vicious cycle of self-enslavement and
opens for us the path to authentic freedom.
“Follow
the way of love,” he says earlier in the same letter, “even as Christ loved
you. He gave himself for us” (Ephesians 5:2). Who would say that Jesus was not
free, freer than any one of us has ever been? It is true that he was obedient
to the Father even to the point of death, but it is equally true that he freely
chose the way of obedience. His was the obedience not of enslavement, but of
love; it is this obedience of love that Saint Paul urges wives to live when he
says, “Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:22).
Before
we grow angry with Saint Paul and think him a bigot, we must remember what he
writes just before this so-called controversial statement: “Be subordinate to
one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21). As Christ loved us,
so we are to love one another. Because wives are to love their husbands as they
would love Christ, they should be subordinate to them “because the husband is
head of his wife just as Christ is head of his body the church” (Ephesians5:22).
Before
saying anything further, we must consider what it means to be “subordinate” to
someone.
The Greek verb is hypotasso, which means literally ‘to
place or arrange under.’ Here it occurs in the middle voice (hypotassomai) with the meaning ‘to place
oneself under,’ or more simply, ‘submit oneself to’ or ‘defer to.’ It is clear
from the context that voluntary
subordination is intended, like the other voluntary expression of Spirit-filled
life mentioned [by Paul].[1]
This
voluntary act of deferring to one another is placed by Saint Paul in the
context of “reverence for Christ.”
The truly unusual
nature of this instruction is that Paul tells his readers to submit themselves
to one another, still addressing all the members of the community. At first
this seems contradictory. How can two individuals place themselves ‘under’ each
other? … The meaning of this unusual instruction becomes clearer in the light
of similar texts that teach about relationships in the church… Reciprocal
humility and love determine even the relationship that entail authority…
Undoubtedly, behind this teaching stands Jesus’ own teaching about leadership
as service (Luke 22:25-27), which was demonstrated and explained when he washed
the feet of his disciples (John 13:13-15), foreshadowing his humbling himself
for our sake on the cross.[2]
Here
we see clearly that God’s way of loving becomes the measure of human love.
The
head of the body always looks to the good of the body, to its health, safety,
and satisfaction. This is how Christ cares for his Bride, the Church, and this
is how husbands are to care for their wives. What is more, Saint Paul says,
“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the Church and handed himself over
for her to sanctify her” (Ephesians 5:25). Every husband, then, must be filled
with so selfless a love for his wife that he is ready and willing to lay down
even his very life for her.
While on rare
occasions dying for one’s wife may be literally necessary, [Paul] means it in
the everyday sense of husbands dying to self by prioritizing their wives’ needs
and wants before their own. Essentially, Paul is saying, ‘Husbands, seek the
good of your wives regardless of the cost to you.’[3]
If
a husband loves his wife in this way, there is no difficulty in deferring to
him. Again, we see clearly that God’s way of loving becomes the measure of
human love.
Certainly,
to live in this way is no simple feat and for this reason, in his goodness,
Christ the Lord has raised marriage to the dignity of a Sacrament and has
bestowed his grace upon it to enable husbands and wives to live in such away
that the love of Christ for the Church is reflected in their marriage.
Christ’s grace is
not an external addition to human nature, it does not do violence to men and women
but sets them free and restores them, precisely by raising them above their own
limitations. And just as the Incarnation of the Son of God reveals its true
meaning in the Cross, so genuine human love is self-giving and cannot exist if
it seeks to detach itself from the Cross.[4]
We
can say, then, that the love of husband and wife is in some way a Eucharistic
love, a love that must imitate the selfless and self-giving love of Jesus
Christ. Husbands and wives must give themselves to each other completely, just
as Jesus gives himself completely for us. When a husband cares more about
himself than his wife, a marriage begins to fail. When a wife cares more about
herself than her husband, a marriage begins to fail. This, too, is a hard
saying.
It
is only by following the way of love and by deferring to one another out of
reverence for Christ that we find true freedom; it is only by imitating the
self-giving love of Jesus that we find everything we seek in life. May the
Lord, then, lead us deeper and deeper into the mystery of his love until our
love perfectly reflects his own, until the measure of our love is the measure
of his love. Amen.
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