Today we complete the five weeks when our Sunday Gospel is from the “bread of life” discourse in John’s Gospel. The passage ends with Peter’s profession of faith as he says to Jesus: You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.” So we might reflect on our own faith commitment, and our own personal words of faith in the Lord. Our second reading from Ephesians (5:21-32) needs a comment, however. Some people think it is pretty sexist! It’s about another commitment, that between husbands and wives. The author of the passage (probably not Paul but one of his disciples) speaks out of his Greco-Roman culture wherein the woman was regarded as property, handed over with a dowry to a husband in marriage. So we’ll hear these words: Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church…” Most unfortunately, our lectionary makes the rest of the passage optional for the homilist. It really ought to be read because it adds challenging words to the husbands: “Husbands, love your wives even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her … husbands should love their wives as their own bodies…” And it adds challenging words to the couple: “… and the two shall become one flesh.” Those who make a commitment to “become one flesh” swim against our individualistic culture. They have to give up some freedom, give up living just for the self and its preferences. They have to endure the inevitable misunderstandings, miscommunications and hurts of intimate relationships without walking away. We as U.S. people and Catholics struggle to form our children for this challenge, to give them all the skills they will need, like compromising and forgiving and sacrificing. This week, let us pray to do better at that. And also let us give thanks for those we know who are happily in long relationships, and whose witness assures others that indeed it is possible to “become one flesh.”
— Blog entry by Sister Mary Garascia
