Ephesians 5: Bridegroom and Bride

Ephesians 5: Bridegroom and Bride | Deacon Rex H. Pilger | Homiletic & Pastoral Review | July 2009

By submitting herself to her husband, the wife is allowing her man to sacrifice himself for her.

It is Mass on the Twenty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time, in late summer only a few years ago. Fortunately the air conditioning seems to be holding up, for this year at least. The celebrant offers the Opening Prayer, asking the Father for help, to seek the values that will bring lasting joy in a changing world. Seated beside the celebrant, the deacon at this Mass, I join the assembly in preparing to listen to the Word of God. The Scripture readings are from Year B, and we hear the stirring invitation of Joshua: “Decide today whom you will serve…As for me any my household, we will see the Lord” (Josh. 24:15).  The cantor leads us to respond: “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.”

But next comes the one passage that no one really seems to listen to; out of all of Scripture proclaimed over the complete three-year cycle, this is one passage that is consistently ignored, rejected or misinterpreted—I call it the “nudging” Scripture. After twenty years of ordained ministry, sitting in the sanctuary behind the ambo, every third year I can watch for the elbows. The reader begins: “A reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians. Brothers and sisters, be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

Show humility and defer to others, as we often hear in other readings, but are we ready for the next sentence? “Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord.”

Suddenly, the many male faces are alert; the wives of the quickest feel an elbow against their arms. And the faces of some women fall, eyes cast down; it is as if their minds can read: “Oh, no. Not again. Not this Sunday.”

“For the husband is head of his wife…” More nudges and smirks creep across male faces. However, in the self-satisfaction of men and the embarrassment of the women, the remaining phrases of the current sentence are missed: “…just as Christ is head of the Church, he himself the savior of the body.”

A seemingly three-fold admonition is fulfilled with the next sentence: “As the Church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything.”

The “triumph” of the husband on this hot summer day contrasts with the flushed cheeks, perhaps even anger, of too many wives. And, the remainder of the passage remains unheard and unheralded:

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Comments

[laura]

Wow. As the writer says, I wish that this passage would be addressed boldly in homilies -- let the husbands understand their role and duty, let the wives see their dignity as wives, let us all understand our dignity as the Bride of Christ. This has always been one of my favorite passages, and my understanding of it has grown deeper since I converted to Catholicism. Let us pray for our priests, especially during this Year of the Priest, to be bold in asserting the truth of this passage when it comes up in the cycle of readings!

[bill bannon]

Starts at the top of the Church ( see sermon Date: 2006-08-25 Father Cantalamessa on Marital Submission/Pontifical household Preacher...which no where really talks about obeying as in real life as to whether to spend money on a granite sink or on more charity).
But priests writing in Homiletic Review can't say this unless they desire a stalled career. Husband headship is absent in both Vatican II and in the Catechism of the Catholic Church..the latter because Vatican officials were never really sure what John Paul II was saying both in section 24 of MULIERIS DIGNITATEM and in Theology of the body Wednesday AUGUST 1982 number 89 Sections 3-4-5-6. Read it and try to say whether he was opting for simultaneous headship at all times or he was not. You will not know.

[Exile]

I belong to a conservative and generally traditionalist Protestant denomination, and it was great to read this article to see a Catholic interpretation of these verses that aligns with the usual way they are explained in sermons and Bible studies in the church I attend. Also, I've been told the Greek nuances of the words translated as "submission" also contain shades of meaning we don't get in the English, although I'm no Greek scholar. Hence, it's so important to have pastors who understand the original languages.