Today we hear Paul’s councils to married couples in Ephesus. It is one of the recommended readings for marriage ceremonies. Yet now a days it is not chosen very often. A first glance to anyone from our modern culture, the vision seems overly harsh towards women. A second, more careful reading gives us a different view.
Paul starts and ends this recommendation by calling the couple to be subordinate to one another. Paul’s comments to wives are only about two sentences long. Yet his comments to husbands are much longer and more specific – around six sentences. Maybe he sees that men need more guidance and correction. We see that Paul is calling the spouses to love one another to the extent of sanctifying, cleansing, and purifying each other of faults, wrinkles, blemishes, or any such things. He is talking about beauty, spiritual splendor – deep beauty. Generally speaking, the concept of marriage in today’s culture is that of being loved and supported and feeling that one is the center of the relationship. Our cultural ideal or objective in marriage is for that warm, fuzzy feeling that Elvis Presley sang about: I’m in love. I’m all shook up. As a culture, we are in love with that first romantic stage of being in love. When we no longer feel “all shook up”, we just walk away from the relationship.
Paul is talking about a relationship of service to the other, loving the other. His vision is of one spouse purifying the other with self-sacrificing love. He repeatedly uses the image of Christ’s self-sacrificing relationship with the Church. He is not talking about a self-centered or selfish relationship.
Within marriage, this is the mustard seed that Jesus mentions today in the Gospel. It is the faith, service, and self-sacrificing love that begins as a tiny seed or spark and grows into a huge bush. Looking at a tiny mustard seed or a recently married couple, it is practically impossible to imagine the outcome 30 years later. The outcome is an overwhelming image of exploding life. In Paul’s vison they should have grown into each other and Christ in such a way so that both are cleansed and purified. A couple of 30-40 years of marriage should be more beautiful, more resplendent than the day of their marriage surrounded by children, grand-children and friends who also have been transformed by that couple’s relationship with Christ and each other.
This is a great mystery,
but I speak in reference to Christ and the Church.
In any case, each one of you should love his wife as himself,
and the wife should respect her husband.
Image: CANVA CJ Dunn 07 October 2026 AI Generated.