Tuesday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

Saint Joseph of Cupertino
in MSF chapel

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.

I don’t have the patience to watch television but occasionally I read about television shows. Recently a historian wrote about the program Mad Men, now entering its fourth season. He praised the show for its accurate depiction of the way men and women related to one another in the 1950’s and early sixties.

Those “good old days” were apparently very difficult for women. Despite the men who rose from their seats when a woman entered the room, and held the door as she entered a building, women could expect sexual harassment in the work place, along with unequal pay and limited opportunities. They were virtually defenseless against rape in all but the rarest circumstances. A wife who complained of violence in marriage would be laughed out of court. Inevitably, a feminist/womanist revolution arose out of that bizarre post-war era.

When some people – both liberals and conservatives – hear Saint Paul’s description of how husbands and wives should relate, they think of the fifties and sixties. They suppose American culture nearly attained his ideal in those halcyon days.

More accurately, we can say that Saint Paul’s teaching reflected marital expectations of his own time. Mediterranean culture was (and remains) a paternalistic society where men expected to control the home, market, church and government. Their theories of biology imagined men as planting seeds in the fertile fields of women, a model which seemed to prove the superiority of men. Twenty centuries would pass before we learned male and female each contribute the same number of genes to a human conception, a model which suggests their equality.

Even more time must pass before we recognize the equality of male and female. In the meanwhile we must contemplate the meaning of words like equality, male and female.

But we should recognize what is truly Christian in Saint Paul’s teaching without the imposition of post-war American standards. The Hebrew prophetic tradition promoted marriage as that accessible model which everyone might recognize and accept. If everyone knows what marriage should be, perhaps we can agree on how society should behave. If a married person can leave a wallet on the dresser overnight and expect to find it intact the next morning, why can’t that same wallet be forgotten in a public place and be found a week later unmolested? Is that idealistic? The prophet didn’t think so. There cannot be two moral codes, one for the family and another for the city.

If a man or woman feels safe, respected and loved in the marriage bed shouldn’t that person feel honored in public?  The Hebrew prophets were appalled that poor widows were neglected and orphans were homeless among God’s holy people. That injustice cannot happen in marriage; it cannot happen among God’s elect. For the prophets this was not a matter of should not or ought not. This was It cannot happen!

Saint Paul remembered that traditional image and its strict ethical code in his letter to the Ephesians:

For the husband is head of his wife
just as Christ is head of the Church,
he himself the savior of the Body.

Like the prophets of old, Paul wanted married couples to show the church what fidelity, courage, generosity, compassion, mercy and justice look like! Marriage as the model of the ideal includes the willingness to sacrifice for one another:

…even as Christ loved the Church
and handed himself over for her to sanctify her,

As Jesus gave his life for the Church, so should every Christian be willing to “lay down his life for a friend.” A retreat director asked me once, “Would you be willing to die for a fellow friar? A spouse does this everyday for the partner!”

“Yikes!”

This is why Saint Paul’s challenge remains. Everybody knows what marriage should be. Despite spousal abuse, serial divorce, cohabitation and homosexual unions, marriage is still honored as a most desirable, most beautiful relationship. That's why Americans spend, on average, more than $20,000 for each wedding! 

The ideal -- and, very often, the reality -- still demonstrate the perfect love of Jesus for his Church.