A Deeper Understanding of
the Church and Marriage
General Audience, August 18, 1982
1. Analyzing the respective
components of Ephesians, we established that the reciprocal
relationship between husband and wife is to be understood by
Christians as an image of the relationship between Christ and the
Church.
This relationship is a revelation and a realization in time of the
mystery of salvation, of the election of love, hidden from eternity
in God. In this revelation and realization the mystery of salvation
includes the particular aspect of conjugal love in the relationship
of Christ to the Church. Thus one can express it most adequately by
applying the analogy of the relationship which exists—which should
exist—between husband and wife in marriage. Such an analogy
clarifies the mystery, at least to a certain degree. Indeed,
according to the author of Ephesians, it seems that this analogy
serves as a complement to that of the Mystical Body (cf. Eph
1:22-23) when we attempt to express the mystery of the relationship
of Christ to the Church—and going back even further, the mystery of
the eternal love of God for man and for humanity, that mystery which
is expressed and is realized in time through the relationship of
Christ to the Church.
Understanding reciprocal love
2. If—as has been said—this analogy illuminates the mystery, it in
its turn is illuminated by that mystery. The conjugal relationship
which unites husband and wife should help us—according to the author
of the Letter to the Ephesians—to understand the love which unites
Christ to the Church, that reciprocal love between Christ and the
Church in which the divine eternal plan for the salvation of man is
realized. Yet the content of meaning of the analogy does not end
here. The analogy used in Ephesians, illuminating the mystery of the
relationship between Christ and the Church, contemporaneously
unveils the essential truth about marriage. Marriage corresponds to
the vocation of Christians only when it reflects the love which
Christ the Bridegroom gives to the Church his Bride, and which the
Church (resembling the "subject" wife, that is, completely given)
attempts to return to Christ. This is redeeming love, love as
salvation, the love with which man from eternity has been loved by
God in Christ: "...even as he chose us in him before the foundation
of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him..."
(Eph 1:4).
Analogy follows two directions
3. Marriage corresponds to the vocation of Christians as spouses
only if that love is reflected and effected therein. This will
become clear if we attempt to reread the Pauline analogy inversely,
that is, beginning with the relationship of Christ to the Church and
turning next to the relationship of husband and wife in marriage. In
the text, an exhortative tone is used: "As the Church is subject to
Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their
husbands." On the other hand: "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ
loved the Church...." These expressions make it clear that a moral
obligation is involved. Yet, in order to recommend such an
obligation one must admit that in the essence of marriage a particle
of the same mystery is captured. Otherwise, the entire analogy would
hang suspended in a void. The call which the author of Ephesians
directed to the spouses, that they model their reciprocal
relationship on the relationship of Christ to the Church ("as—so"),
would be without a real basis, as if it had no ground beneath its
feet. Such is the logic of the analogy used in the cited text of
Ephesians.
4. As we can see, the analogy operates in two directions. On the one
hand, it helps us to understand better the essence of the
relationship between Christ and the Church. On the other, at the
same time, it helps us to see more deeply into the essence of
marriage to which Christians are called. In a certain sense, the
analogy shows the way in which this marriage, in its deepest
essence, emerges from the mystery of God's eternal love for man and
for humanity. It emerges from that salvific mystery which is
fulfilled in time through the spousal love of Christ for the Church.
Beginning with the words of Ephesians (5:21-33), we can move on to
develop the thought contained in the great Pauline analogy in two
directions: either in the direction of a deeper understanding of the
Church, or in the direction of a deeper understanding of marriage.
In our considerations, we will pursue the latter first of all,
mindful that the spousal relationship of Christ to the Church is at
the basis of an understanding of marriage in its essence. That
relationship will be analyzed even more precisely in order to
establish—presupposing the analogy with marriage—in what way the
latter becomes a visible sign of the divine eternal mystery, as an
image of the Church united with Christ. In this way Ephesians leads
us to the foundations of the sacramentality of marriage.
Mentality of the time
5. Let us undertake, then, a detailed analysis of the text. We read
in Ephesians that "the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is
the head of the Church, his body, and is himself its Savior" (Eph
5:23). The author has already explained that the submission of the
wife to the husband as head is intended as reciprocal submission
"out of reverence for Christ." We can presume that the author goes
back to the concept rooted in the mentality of the time, to express
first of all the truth concerning the relationship of Christ to the
Church, that is, that Christ is the head of the Church. He is head
as "Savior of his Body." The Church is exactly that Body which—being
submissive in everything to Christ as its head—receives from him all
that through which it becomes and is his Body. It receives the
fullness of salvation as the gift of Christ, who "gave himself up
for her" to the last. Christ's "giving himself up" to the Father by
obedience unto death on the cross acquired here a strictly
ecclesiological sense: "Christ loved the Church and gave himself up
for her" (Eph 5:25). Through a total giving up of himself because of
his love, he formed the Church as his Body and continually builds
her up, becoming her head. As head he is the Savior of his Body,
and, at the same time, as Savior he is head. As head and Savior of
the Church, he is also Bridegroom of his Bride.
Fruit of Christ's love
6. Inasmuch as the Church is herself, so, as Body, she receives from
Christ her head the entire gift of salvation as the fruit of
Christ's love and of his giving himself up for the Church, the fruit
of his giving himself up to the last. That gift of himself to the
Father by obedience unto death (cf. Phil 2:8) is contemporaneously,
according to Ephesians, a "giving himself up for the Church." In
this expression, redeeming love is transformed, I would say, into
spousal love. Giving himself up for the Church, through the same
redeeming act Christ is united once and for all with her, as
bridegroom with the bride, as husband with his wife. Christ gives
himself through all that which is once and for all contained in his
"giving himself up" for the Church. In this way, the mystery of the
redemption of the body conceals within itself, in a certain sense,
the mystery "of the marriage of the Lamb" (cf. Rv 19:7). Because
Christ is the head of the Body, the entire salvific gift of the
redemption penetrates the Church as the Body of that head, and
continually forms the most profound, essential substance of her
life. It is the spousal form, given that in the cited text the
analogy of body-head becomes an analogy of groom-bride, or rather of
husband-wife. This is demonstrated by the subsequent passages of the
text, which will be considered next.
Taken from: L'Osservatore Romano Weekly Edition in English 30 August
1982, page 3
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