Sacredness of Human Body
and Marriage
General Audience, September 1, 1982
1. The author of the Letter to the
Ephesians, proclaiming the analogy between the spousal bond which
unites Christ and the Church, and that which unites the husband and
wife in marriage, writes as follows: "Husbands, love your wives, as
Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her, that he might
sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the
word, that he might present the Church to himself in splendor,
without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy
and without blemish" (Eph 5:25-27).
2. It is significant that the image of the Church in splendor is
presented in the text quoted as a bride all beautiful in her body.
Certainly this is a metaphor. But it is very eloquent, and it shows
how deeply important the body is in the analogy of spousal love. The
Church in splendor is "without spot or wrinkle." "Spot" can be
understood as a sign of ugliness, and "wrinkle" as a sign of old age
or senility. In the metaphorical sense, both terms indicate moral
defects, sin. It may be added that in St. Paul the "old man"
signifies sinful man (cf. Rom 6:6). Therefore Christ with his
redemptive and spousal love ensures that the Church not only becomes
sinless, but remains "eternally young."
3. The scope of the metaphor is, as may be seen, quite vast. The
expressions which refer directly and immediately to the human body,
characterizing it in the reciprocal relationships between husband
and wife, indicate at the same time attributes and qualities of the
moral, spiritual and supernatural order. This is essential for such
an analogy. Therefore the author of the letter can define the state
of the Church in splendor in relation to the state of the body of
the bride, free from signs of ugliness or old age ("or any such
thing"), simply as holiness and absence of sin. Such is the Church
"holy and without blemish." It is obvious then what kind of beauty
of the bride is in question, in what sense the Church is the Body of
Christ, and in what sense that Body-Bride welcomes the gift of the
Bridegroom who "has loved the Church and has given himself for her."
Nevertheless it is significant that St. Paul explains all this
reality, which is essentially spiritual and supernatural, by means
of the resemblance of the body and of the love whereby husband and
wife become "one flesh."
4. In the entire passage of the text cited, the principle of
bi-subjectivity is clearly preserved: Christ-Church,
Bridegroom-Bride (husband-wife). The author presents the love of
Christ for the Church—that love which makes the Church the Body of
Christ of which he is the head—as the model of the love of the
spouses and as the model of the marriage of the bridegroom and the
bride. Love obliges the bridegroom-husband to be solicitous for the
welfare of the bride-wife. It commits him to desire her beauty and
at the same time to appreciate this beauty and to care for it. Here
it is a case of visible beauty, of physical beauty. The bridegroom
examines his bride with attention as though in a creative, loving
anxiety to find everything that is good and beautiful in her and
which he desires for her. That good which he who loves creates,
through his love, in the one that is loved, is like a test of that
same love and its measure. Giving himself in the most disinterested
way, he who loves does so only within the limits of this measure and
of this control.
5. When the author of the Letter to the Ephesians—in the succeeding
verses of the text (5:28-29)—turns his mind exclusively to the
spouses themselves, the analogy of the relationship of Christ to the
Church is still more profound and impels him to express himself
thus: "Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies" (Eph
5:28). Here the motive of "one flesh" returns again. In the
above-mentioned phrase and in the subsequent phrases it is not only
taken up again, but also clarified. If husbands should love their
wives as their own bodies, this means that uni-subjectivity is based
on bi-subjectivity and does not have a real character but only an
intentional one. The wife's body is not the husband's own body, but
it must be loved like his own body. It is therefore a question of
unity, not in the ontological sense, but in the moral sense: unity
through love.
6. "He who loves his wife loves himself" (Eph 5:28). This phrase
confirms that character of unity still more. In a certain sense,
love makes the "I" of the other person his own "I": the "I" of the
wife, I would say, becomes through love the "I" of the husband. The
body is the expression of that "I" and the foundation of its
identity. The union of husband and wife in love is expressed also by
means of the body.
It is expressed in the reciprocal relationship, even though the
author of the letter indicates it especially from the part of the
husband. This results from the structure of the total image. The
spouses should be "subject to one another out of reverence for
Christ" (this was already made evident in the first verses of the
text quoted: Eph 5:21-23). However, later on, the husband is above
all, he who loves and the wife, on the other hand, is she who is
loved. One could even hazard the idea that the wife's submission to
her husband, understood in the context of the entire passage of the
Letter to the Ephesians (5:21-33), signifies above all the
"experiencing of love." This is all the more so since this
submission is related to the image of the submission of the Church
to Christ, which certainly consists in experiencing his love. The
Church, as bride, being the object of the redemptive love of
Christ-Bridegroom, becomes his Body. Being the object of the spousal
love of the husband, the wife becomes "one flesh" with him, in a
certain sense, his own flesh. The author will repeat this idea once
again in the last phrase of the passage analyzed here: "However, let
each one of you love his wife as himself" (Eph 5:33).
7. This is a moral unity, conditioned and constituted by love. Love
not only unites the two subjects, but allows them to be mutually
interpenetrated, spiritually belonging to one another to such a
degree that the author of the letter can affirm: "He who loves his
wife loves himself" (Eph 5:28). The "I" becomes in a certain sense
the "you" and the "you" the "I" (in a moral sense, that is).
Therefore the continuation of the text analyzed by us reads as
follows: "For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and
cherishes it, as Christ does the Church, because we are members of
his body" (Eph 5:29-30). The phrase, which initially still referred
to the relationships of the married couple, returns successively in
an explicit manner to the relationship Christ-Church. So, in the
light of that relationship, it leads us to define the sense of the
entire phrase. After explaining the character of the relationship of
the husband to his own wife by forming "one flesh," the author
wishes to reinforce still more his previous statement ("He who loves
his wife loves himself"). In a certain sense, he wishes to maintain
it by the negation and exclusion of the opposite possibility ("No
man ever hates his own flesh"—Eph 5:29). In the union through love
the body of the other becomes one's own in the sense that one cares
for the welfare of the other's body as he does for his own. It may
be said that the above-mentioned words, characterizing the "carnal"
love which should unite the spouses, express the most general and at
the same time, the most essential content. They seem to speak of
this love above all in the language of agape.
8. The expression according to which man "nourishes and cherishes
his own flesh"—that is, that the husband "nourishes and cherishes"
the flesh of his wife as his own—seems rather to indicate the
solicitude of the parents, the protective relationship, instead of
the conjugal tenderness. The motivation of this character should be
sought in the fact that the author here passes distinctly from the
relationship which unites the spouses to the relationship between
Christ and the Church. The expressions which refer to the care of
the body, and in the first place to its nourishment, to its
sustenance, suggest to many Scripture scholars a reference to the
Eucharist with which Christ in his spousal love nourishes the
Church. These expressions, even though in a minor key, indicate the
specific character of conjugal love, especially of that love whereby
the spouses become "one flesh." At the same time they help us to
understand, at least in a general way, the dignity of the body and
the moral imperative to care for its good, for that good which
corresponds to its dignity. The comparison with the Church as the
Body of Christ, the Body of his redemptive and at the same time
spousal love, should leave in the minds of those to whom the Letter
to the Ephesians was destined a profound sense of the "sacredness"
of the human body in general, and especially in marriage, as the
"situation" in which this sense of the sacred determines in an
especially profound way, the reciprocal relationships of the persons
and, above all, those of the man with the woman, inasmuch as she is
wife and mother of their children.
Taken from: L'Osservatore Romano Weekly Edition in English 6
September 1982, page 3
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