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90. A Deeper Understanding of the Church
and Marriage
By Pope John Paul II
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. 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). 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. 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. 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. Source: L'Osservatore Romano
91. St Paul's Analogy of the Union of Head and Body - 8.25.1982
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