Woman’s Call to Vocation: Wife
We are told that Mary is the perfect model for all women to follow because she is the only person in history to have both of the usually mutually exclusive vocations of a woman: motherhood and virginity. She experienced everything that both calls encapsulate, therefore all women should be able to find something of their lives in the Blessed Mother, the Blessed Virgin. In our world, a woman can either be married or single, not both. They are extremely different calls. St. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 7:34, “An unmarried woman or a virgin is anxious about the things of the Lord, so that she may be holy in both body and spirit. A married woman, on the other hand, is anxious about the things of the world, how she may please her husband.” This study is for those of us who are married to a man, and therefore have many things of the world with which to occupy our time.
Themes:
- God Himself is the author of marriage
- Marriage comes with
- Purposes
- Benefits
- Duties
- Women and men are different – how that impacts our relationship
- The Power of Wifely Words
What is Marriage?
Some words we’re going to apply to marriage here include: covenant, gift, surrender, Sacrament, and indissoluble bond. Pretty heavy stuff.
When you chose to enter into marriage with your husband, you entered a covenant. A covenant is often seen as synonymous to a contract in our society, but they really couldn’t be more different. In a contract, if I break my part of the promise, you are free of the agreement. The deal is off. We see the word “covenant” quite often in the Old Testament. God made many covenants with man, trying to get him (us!) to comply with “his end of the deal”. Man continued to fail. Because of the nature of covenant, however, God continued to save us from ourselves. A covenant is not a contract. In a covenant, you do what you say you will do. God always kept His promises and followed the covenants. He finally had to send His Son to make sure the human end of the covenant (the New Covenant of the Eucharist) would not be broken.
Marriage too is described as a covenant, not just between the spouses, but even as an expression of love between God and man. We have a lot to live up to in our marriages! The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, (CSDC) no. 219, says:
By Christ’s institution, the baptized live the inherent human reality of marriage in the supernatural form of a sacrament, a sign and instrument of grace. The theme of the marriage covenant, as the meaningful expression of the communion of love between God and men and as the symbolic key to understanding the different stages of the great covenant between God and his people, is found throughout salvation history…It is in the spousal love of Christ for the Church, which shows its fullness in the offering made on the cross that the sacramentality of marriage originates. The grace of this sacrament conforms the love of the spouses to the love of Christ for the Church. Marriage, as a sacrament, is a covenant in love between a man and a woman.
1. How can I love my spouse as Christ loves the Church? What is one way I can die to self to build up my marriage?
“Jesus…conferred the highest dignity on the institution of marriage, making it a sacrament of the new covenant” (CSDC 210, emphasis mine). “And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” 7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?” 8 He said to them, “For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another, commits adultery” (Matthew 19:3-9).
CSDC no. 220:
Conjugal charity, which flows from the very charity of Christ, offered through the sacrament, makes Christian spouses witnesses to a new social consciousness inspired by the Gospel and the Paschal Mystery. The natural dimension of their love is constantly purified, strengthened and elevated by sacramental grace. In this manner, besides offering each other mutual help on the path to holiness, Christian spouses become a sign and an instrument of Christ’s love in the world. By their very lives they are called to bear witness to and proclaim the religious meaning of marriage, which modern society has ever greater difficulty recognizing, especially as it accepts relativistic perspectives of the natural foundation itself of the institution of marriage.
2. How is it possible for my marriage to “bear witness to and proclaim the religious meaning of marriage” to our society?
What are we called to do within our marriage to make it work? “Mutual surrender” (Gaudium et Spes 48) and “a total and exclusive gift of person to person” (CSDC 215) are a good place to start. Sirach 25:1 encourages us to give our God delight: “With three things I am delighted, for they are pleasing to the LORD and to men: Harmony among brethren, friendship among neighbors, and the mutual love of husband and wife.”
3. How are we to have the wisdom, the strength, to achieve such lofty goals?
Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) no. 1641:
By reason of their state in life and of their order, [Christian spouses] have their own special gifts in the People of God. This grace proper to the sacrament of Matrimony is intended to perfect the couple’s love and to strengthen their indissoluble unity. By this grace they “help one another to attain holiness in their married life and in welcoming and educating their children.”
Gaudium et Spes 48:
For the good of the spouses and their offspring as well as of society, this sacred bond no longer depends on human decision along. For God himself is the author of marriage and has endowed it with various benefits and purposes” (emphasis mine).
Marriage has benefits, purposes, and duties that come along with the Sacrament. We can learn a lot by defining each term.
What are the Purposes of Marriage?
4. What do you think? Before reading the texts, what are the purposes of marriage in your experience?
Now read the following excerpts from Scripture and Church teaching, keeping purposes of marriage in mind:
From Casti Connubii, an Encyclical Letter of Pius XI, Christian Marriage:
This outward expression of love in the home demands not only mutual help but must go further; must have as its primary purpose that man and wife help each other day by day in forming and perfecting themselves in the interior life, so that through their partnership in life they may advance ever more and more in virtue, and above all that they may grow in true love towards God and their neighbor, on which indeed “dependeth the whole Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:40). …This mutual inward molding of husband and wife, this determined effort to perfect each other, can in a very real sense…be said to be the chief reason and purpose of matrimony, provided matrimony be looked at not in the restricted sense as instituted for the proper conception and education of the child, but more widely as the blending of life as a whole and the mutual interchange and sharing thereof.
CCC 1604-5:
God who created man out of love also calls him to love – the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being. For man is created in the image and likeness of God who is himself love. Since God created him man and woman, their mutual love becomes an image of the absolute and unfailing love with which God loves man. It is good, very good, in the Creator’s eyes. And this love which God blesses is intended to be fruitful and to be realized in the common work of watching over creation: “And God blessed them, and God said to them: ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.'”
Holy Scripture affirms that man and woman were created for one another: “It is not good that the man should be alone.” The woman, “flesh of his flesh,” i.e., his counterpart, his equal, his nearest in all things, is given to him by God as a “helpmate”; she thus represents God from whom comes our help. “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.” The Lord himself shows that this signifies an unbreakable union of their two lives by recalling what the plan of the Creator had been “in the beginning”: “So they are no longer two, but one flesh.”
Proverbs 20:7
“A righteous man who walks in his integrity—blessed are his sons after him!”
5. What are the purposes of marriage in the Christian covenant?
What are the Benefits of Marriage?
6. What do you think? Before reading the texts, what are the benefits of marriage in your experience?
Now read the following excerpts from Scripture and Church teaching, keeping benefits of marriage in mind:
From Casti Connubii, an Encyclical Letter of Pius XI, Christian Marriage:
“These,” says St. Augustine, “are all the blessings of matrimony on account of which matrimony itself is a blessing; offspring, conjugal faith and the sacrament.”
CCC 1652:
“By its very nature the institution of marriage and married love is ordered to the procreation and education of the offspring and it is in them that it finds its crowning glory.” Children are the supreme gift of marriage and contribute greatly to the good of the parents themselves. God himself said: “It is not good that man should be alone,” and “from the beginning [he] made them male and female”; wishing to associate them in a special way in his own creative work, God blessed man and woman with the words: “Be fruitful and multiply.” Hence, true married love and the whole structure of family life which results from it, without diminishment of the other ends of marriage, are directed to disposing the spouses to cooperate valiantly with the love of the Creator and Savior, who through them will increase and enrich his family from day to day. 163
Casti Connubii:
First of all, both husband and wife possess a positive guarantee of the endurance of this stability which that generous yielding of their persons and the intimate fellowship of their hearts by their nature strongly require, since true love never falls away…Moreover, the dignity of both man and wife is maintained and mutual aid is most satisfactorily assured, while through the indissobluble bond, always enduring, the spouses are warned continuously that not for the sake of perishable things nor that they may serve their passions, but that they may procure one for the other high and lasting good have they entered into the nuptial partnership, to be dissolved only by death. In the training and education of children, which must extend over a period of many years, it plays a great part, since the grave and long enduring burdens of this office are best borne by the united efforts of the parents. (p. 20)
This accumulation of benefits is completed and, as it were, crowned by that blessing of Christian marriage which in the words of St. Augustine we have called the sacrament, by which is denoted both the indissolubility of the bond and the raising and hallowing of the contract by Christ Himself, whereby He made it an efficacious sign of grace. (p. 17)
Hence this sacrament not only increases sanctifying grace, the permanent principle of the supernatural life, in those who, as the expression is, place no obstacle in its way, but also adds particular gifts, dispositions, seeds of grace, by elevating and perfecting the natural powers. (p. 22)
Sirach 26: 1
Happy the husband of a good wife, twice-lengthened are his days; A worthy wife brings joy to her husband, peaceful and full is his life. A good wife is a generous gift bestowed upon him who fears the LORD; Be he rich or poor, his heart is content, and a smile is ever on his face. A gracious wife delights her husband, her thoughtfulness puts flesh on his bones; A gift from the LORD is her governed speech, and her firm virtue is of surpassing worth. Choicest of blessings is a modest wife, priceless her chaste person. Like the sun rising in the LORD’S heavens, the beauty of a virtuous wife is the radiance of her home. Like the light which shines above the holy lampstand, are her beauty of face and graceful figure. Golden columns on silver bases are her shapely limbs and steady feet.
From John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, 13:
The characteristic traits of marriage are: totality, by which the spouses give themselves to each other mutually in every aspect of their person, physical and spiritual; unity which makes them “one flesh” (Gen 2:24); indissolubility and fidelity which the definitive mutual giving of self requires; the fruitfulness to which that naturally opens itself.”
7. What are the benefits of marriage in God’s plan?
8. Personal response: Is there anything you need to change to make sure your marriage has all these benefits?
What are the Duties of Marriage?
9. What do you think? Before reading the texts, what are the duties of marriage in your experience?
Now read the following excerpts from Scripture and Church teaching, keeping duties of marriage in mind:
Ephesians 5:21-33
Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands. 25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 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. 28 Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church; 33 however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
CCC 1643:
Conjugal love involves a totality, in which all the elements of the person enter – appeal of the body and instinct, power of feeling and affectivity, aspiration of the spirit and of will. It aims at a deeply personal unity, a unity that, beyond union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul; it demands indissolubility and faithfulness in definitive mutual giving; and it is open to fertility. In a word it is a question of the normal characteristics of all natural conjugal love, but with a new significance which not only purifies and strengthens them, but raises them to the extent of making them the expression of specifically Christian values.
Castii Connubii:
The subjection of the wife and her willing obedience…does not deny or take away the liberty which fully belongs to the woman both in view of her dignity as a human person, and in view of her most noble office as wife and mother and companion; nor does it bid her obey her husband’s every request if not in harmony with right reason or with the dignity due to wife…but it forbids that exaggerated liberty which cares not for the good of the family; it forbids that in this body which is the family, the heart be separated from the head to the great detriment of the whole body and the proximate danger of ruin. For if the man is the head, the woman is the heart, and as he occupies the chief place in ruling, so she may and ought to claim for herself the chief place in love.
10. What duties does a wife have to her husband?
11. What duties do husbands and wives mutually share in marriage?
The Differences Between Women and Men
CCC 2333-2335:
Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity. Physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarity are oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life. The harmony of the couple and of society depends in part on the way in which the complementarity, needs, and mutual support between the sexes are lived out.
“In creating men ‘male and female,’ God gives man and woman an equal personal dignity.” 119 “Man is a person, man and woman equally so, since both were created in the image and likeness of the personal God.” 120
Each of the two sexes is an image of the power and tenderness of God, with equal dignity though in a different way. The union of man and woman in marriage is a way of imitating in the flesh the Creator’s generosity and fecundity: “Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.” 121 All human generations proceed from this union. 122
Let’s brainstorm!
Note: apologies about the teeny tiny table below. I don’t have time to figure out how to get it from Word to the web looking correctly!
|
Differences |
Complementarities | ||
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Men |
Women | ||
| Physical | |||
| Moral | |||
| Spiritual |
Mother Teresa on smiling:
In order to spread joy, joy needs to reign in the family. Peace and war start within one’s own home. If we really want peace for the world, let us start by loving one another within our families. We will thus have Christ’s joy, which is our strength.
Sometimes it is hard for us to smile at one another. It is often difficult for the husband to smile at his wife or for the wife to smile at her husband. It is sometimes difficult for me to smile at Christ.
From Real Women edited by Sr. Concetta Belleggia
Casti Connubii:
By matrimony, therefore, the souls of the contracting parties are joined and knit together more directly and more intimately than are their bodies, and that not by any passing affection of sense or spirit, but by a deliberate and firm act of the will; and from this union of souls by God’s decree, a sacred and inviolable bond arises. (p. 6)
God created us to be different. God also created marriage to be that “sacred and inviolable bond” of two people “knit together more…intimately than are their bodies.” Clearly the design was for man and woman to complete each other, and in so doing, make a more perfect foundation for the family. Dr. Laura Schlessinger is fond of saying that men are simple, and women simply need to acknowledge that (and other masculine traits), respect their men, and show them love and devotion; then they will receive love and devotion in return.
12. What is your response to all this? Considering your own marriage, are there any “complementary characteristics” that you need to acknowledge as a gift from God instead of “annoying”?
The Power of Wifely Words
What does Scripture have to say about wives and our duty to our husbands? It sounds to me like we have great power, and with it, great responsibility. No, we’re not Spiderman, but God’s call to wives leaves us a lot to do, much of it with our mouths.
“A gracious wife is more precious than corals.” Sirach 7:19
“A good wife is the crown of her husband, but she who brings shame is like rottenness in his bones.” Proverbs 12:4
“It is better to live in a desert land than with a contentious and fretful woman.” Proverbs 21:19
“Like a sandy hill to aged feet is a railing wife to a quiet man. Stumble not through woman’s beauty, nor be greedy for her wealth; The man is a slave, in disgrace and shame, when a wife supports her husband. Depressed mind, saddened face, broken heart–this from an evil wife. Feeble hands and quaking knees– from a wife who brings no happiness to her husband. In woman was sin’s beginning, and because of her we all die.” Sirach 25:19
“The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence. 12 Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses. 13 On the lips of him who has understanding wisdom is found, but a rod is for the back of him who lacks sense. 14 Wise men lay up knowledge, but the babbling of a fool brings ruin near… 19 When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but he who restrains his lips is prudent.” Proverbs 10:11-14, 19
“Pleasant words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body.” Proverbs 16:24
“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.” Proverbs 25:11
“A good wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. 11 The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain… She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.” Proverbs 31:10, 11, 26
13. List all the adjectives you can find that describe wives in the Scripture passages above.
14. What strikes you the most about the Bible’s call to women?
15. What is your biggest challenge, and how will you tackle that to be the worthy wife for your husband?
Prayer for a Holy Marriage
From “A Mother’s Book of Prayer”
Leaflet Missal Company, St. Paul, MN
Faithful Lord, Who sealed the new and eternal covenant with the blood of Your Divine Son, seal our covenant with one another in perfect charity and mercy. Transform us into Your divine likeness, that we may share Your Trinitarian communion, Your mutual and endless self-donation. Eradicate the remnant of sin that divides us, and bless us with the union You intend us to share. For our oneness is a gift from Your throne in heaven – and we praise Your Holy Name for entrusting it to our care. Amen.
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