One on One Ministry

Sometime as a man you may feel defeated but continue to pray to The Most High God seek his understanding his knowledge his wisdom. No matter what's coming against you continue to pray continue to seek his face because what I'm learning is it's only going to get harder and you only can stand with The Most High God.

Strawberry Shortcake Icebox Cake
🥰👉Ingredients :
3 cups heavy cream, very cold
1½ cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract👇😍

[The following is an excerpt from the transcript of Scott Hahn's audio and video tape presentation, "Christ and the Church: A Model for Marriage" as it appears in the "Catholic Adult Education on Video Program" with Scott and Kimberly Hahn. In this program Scott shows how the relationship between Christ and His Church is the perfect model for all marriages and expands upon St. Paul's teaching on this most Holy Union.]
Christ and the Church: A Model for Marriage
Scott Hahn
Franciscan University of Steubenville

Biblical Perspective on Marriage and the Family

I want to spend some time with you this morning considering a Biblical perspective on marriage and the family and, in particular, I'd like to look at how the Christ-Church relationship provides us with a model for our own marriage. The key texts for this consideration are from Ephesians 5 and also Matthew 19. Those are the texts that you should know as Catholics if people ask you, they approach you and say, "Why do you all regard matrimony as a sacrament? Why do you think that Jesus Christ made marriage absolutely and strictly monogamous with no possibility for divorce and remarriage?" You need to know where to turn. Ephesians 5 beginning with verse 21 and going all the way down into chapter 6, 3 and 4. And then also Matthew 19, 1-12, and we are also going to look at the parallel text to that, the same account as described in Mark 10, 1-12.


Ephesians 5:21-6:4

So write that down. Keep that in mind. Know those texts. In Ephesians 5, verse 21, we read, "Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives be subject to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church, His body, and is himself its savior. As the Church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands." That is an unpopular statement by the Apostle Paul. Unpopular in the Church and even more unpopular outside the Church in the world. But it's an inspired statement that we need to understand and come to grips with in our own minds and in our own lives as well.

It's frightening for me to think about the responsibility of women and wives in particular, in light of that verse. "For the husband is the head of the wife and Christ is the head of the Church, His body, and is himself its savior. As the Church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands." And husbands, I'll bet, would like to stop there; and just say, "Let's contemplate this for a while." But women are troubled thinking, "I haven't come to this conference to hear some impossible commandment." Well, if you think that's impossible, listen to the next verse: "Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her."

If you think it's almost impossible for a mortal woman to submit to a mortal and fallible man in marriage, I would suggest it's actually more impossible, in human terms, for the husband to fulfill the second injunction, "...to love your wife as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her." That is absolute and total self-sacrifice! Christ was not saying, "Grovel, submit, bow down." He was saying, "I love you. I want to show it. I'll die for you." It goes on to say, "...gave himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word." In other words, Christ sanctifies the Church as spiritual leader. He provides husbands with the model of how they are to live out their own love for their wives as husbands imitating Christ.

One of the problems we're going to address in this weekend conference is the crisis of masculinity and spirituality, because in America today, to be religious and male is to be effeminate. That's a fact. You look at most churches, you look at most religious organizations and meetings and the majority of people are women. And the majority of people in leadership positions are usually women. Ann Marshall wrote a book recently, about fifteen years ago, entitled, The Feminization of American Culture, and she focuses particularly upon American church life to show how religion is commonly perceived as being the woman's province.

Not so for St. Paul! He tells us that the husband, in imitation of Christ, is to sanctify the wife. That doesn't mean bossing around, telling her what to do. It means leadership by servanthood and by example and it means that he is responsible in his own household to provide spiritual leadership.

We could just stop with that and ponder it for a few minutes and have more than enough to take home and be challenged to live out. It goes on, "... 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. For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh."

Verse 32 is the all-important verse: "This mystery is a profound one." That word in Greek, mysterion, is where we get the word mystery. But the Latin rendering of that is the word, "sacramentum." It's a magnum sacramentum, a great sacramental mystery. "This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the Church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband." The Christ-Church relationship is the model for every one of our marriages, and I think it's especially challenging for men to ponder Christ's role in that marital covenant.