Husbands Love your Wives

Kathy the Carmelite of Gospel M*I*N*E*F*I*E*L*D* has a post on a Protestant pastor using Eph 5:24 "As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands" on her.

Coincidentally I was just thinking of this and other associated scriptures today. I remember hearing this verse even when I was an atheist and thinking just how unenlightened this was. Not surprisingly, I never heard the following set of verses:

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. Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 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: 5:25-30.

I remember the first time I read these powerful verses. Love your wife as Christ loves the church is such a seemingly overwhelming and difficult task. Presenting without "spot and wrinkle", I know with my selfishness I need plenty of spot remover and wrinkle cream to be able to remove my treatment and to present her. The requirements of this sacrificial self giving seems impossible considering Christ's sacrifice for the Church. The Office of Readings today from the Liturgy of the Hours were from St. Augustine's Confessions where he talked about the "spot and wrinkle" verse in relationship to himself and Christ. It finally dawned on me that our souls in relationship to Christ are the bride and that his grace will help to bring us to heaven without spot or wrinkle. I had been looking at this giving of self without looking at Christ in the context of providing those needed graces through the sacrament of marriage.

Paragraph 2201 in the Catechism says "Marriage and the family are ordered to the good of the spouses and to the procreation and education of children." I would think this good as being ordered towards spouses and children going to heaven. I have heard it explained that the verse about "wives being submissive to their husbands" that the word submission is from being subservient to the the same mission - going to heaven. I don't know how valid this exegesis is but I personally like this interpretation.