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GENERAL AUDIENCE OF 28 JULY [1982]
At the general audience in St Peter's Square on Wednesday, 28
July, the Holy Father began a new phase of his catechesis on the
theology of the body, drawing from St. Paul's Letter to the Ephesians to
begin a series of talks on matrimony.
1. Today we begin a new chapter on the subject of marriage, reading
the words of St. Paul to the Ephesians:
"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.
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. 'For this reason a
man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the
two shall become one.' This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference
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" (Eph
5:21-33).
Simple and fundamental
2. We should now subject to deep analysis the quoted text contained
in this fifth chapter of the Letter to the Ephesians, just as we have
previously analyzed the individual words of Christ that seem to have a
key significance for the theology of the body. The analysis dealt with
the words with which Christ recalled the beginning (cf. Mt 19:4; Mk
10:6), the human heart, in the Sermon on the Mount (cf. Mt 5:28), and
the future resurrection (cf. Mt 22:30; Mk 12:25; Lk 20:35). What is
contained in the passage of the Letter to the Ephesians constitutes
almost a crowning of those other concise key words. The theology of the
body has emerged from them along its evangelical lines, simple and at
the same time fundamental. In a certain sense it is necessary to
presuppose that theology in interpreting the above-mentioned passage of
the Letter to the Ephesians. Therefore if we want to interpret that
passage, we must do so in the light of what Christ told us about the
human body. He spoke not only to remind historical man, and therefore
man himself, who is always contemporary, about concupiscence (in his
heart). But he also spoke to reveal, on the one hand, the prospectives
of the beginning or original innocence or justice, and on the other
hand, the eschatological prospectives of the resurrection of the body,
when "They will neither marry nor be given in marriage" (cf. Lk 20:35).
All of this is part of the theological viewpoint of the "redemption of
our body" (Rom 8:23).
Meanings converge
3. Even the words of the author of the Letter to the Ephesians(1) are
centered on the body, both its metaphorical meaning, namely the Body of
Christ which is the Church, and its concrete meaning, namely the human
body in its perennial masculinity and femininity, in its perennial
destiny for union in marriage, as Genesis says: "The man will leave his
father and his mother and will cling to his wife and the two will be one
flesh" (Gn 2:24).
In what way do these two meanings of the body appear together and
converge in the passage of the Letter to the Ephesians? Why do they
appear together and converge there? We must ask these questions,
expecting not so much immediate and direct answers, but possibly studied
and long-term answers for which our previous analyses have prepared. In
fact, that passage from the Letter to the Ephesians cannot be correctly
understood except in the full biblical context, considering it as the
crowning of the themes and truths which, through the Word of God
revealed in Sacred Scripture, ebb and flow like long waves. They are
central themes and essential truths. Therefore the quoted text from the
Letter to the Ephesians is also a key and classic text.
4. This text is well known in the liturgy, in which it always appears in
relation to the sacrament of marriage. The Church's lex orandi
sees in it an explicit reference to this sacrament, and the lex
orandi presupposes and at the same time always expresses the lex
credendi. Admitting this premise, we must immediately ask ourselves:
in this classic text of the Letter to the Ephesians, how does the truth
about the sacramentality of marriage emerge? In what way is it expressed
and confirmed there? It will become clear that the answers to these
questions cannot be immediate and direct, but gradual and long-term.
This is proved even at a first glance at this text, which brings us back
to Genesis and therefore to "the beginning." In the description of the
relationship between Christ and the Church, this text takes from the
writings of the Old Testament prophets the well-known analogy of the
spousal love between God and his chosen people. Without examining these
relationships it would be difficult to answer the question about how the
sacramentality of marriage is dealt with in the Letter to the Ephesians.
We will also see how the answer we are seeking must pass through the
whole sphere of the questions previously analyzed, that is, through the
theology of the body.
Body enters into definition of sacrament
5. The sacrament or the sacramentalityin
the more general sense of this termmeets
with the body and presupposes the theology of the body. According to the
generally known meaning, the sacrament is a visible sign. The body also
signifies that which is visible. It signifies the visibility of the
world and of man. Therefore, in some way, even if in the most general
way, the body enters the definition of sacrament, being "a visible sign
of an invisible reality," that is, of the spiritual, transcendent,
divine reality. In this signand
through this signGod
gives himself to man in his transcendent truth and in his love. The
sacrament is a sign of grace, and it is an efficacious sign. Not only
does the sacrament indicate grace and express it in a visible way, but
it also produces it. The sacrament effectively contributes to having
grace become part of man, and to realizing and fulfilling in him the
work of salvation, the work begun by God from all eternity and fully
revealed in Jesus Christ.
6. I would say that already this first glance at the classic text of the
Letter to the Ephesians points out the direction in which our further
analyses must be developed. It is necessary that these analyses begin
with the preliminary understanding of the text itself. However, they
must subsequently lead us, so to say, beyond their limits, in order to
understand possibly to the very depths how much richness of the truth
revealed by God is contained in the scope of that wonderful page. Using
the well-known expression from Gaudium et Spes, we can say that
the passage we have selected from the Letter to the Ephesians, "revealsin
a particular wayman
to man, and makes him aware of his lofty vocation" (GS 22), inasmuch as
he shares in the experience of the incarnate person. In fact, creating
man in his image, from the very beginning God created him "male and
female" (Gn 1:27).
During the subsequent analyses we will tryabove
all in the light of the quoted text from the Letter to the Ephesiansto
more deeply understand the sacrament (especially marriage as a
sacrament), first in the dimension of the covenant and grace, and
afterward in the dimension of the sacramental sign.
NOTE
1) The question of Pauline authorship of the Letter to the Ephesians,
acknowledged by some exegetes and denied by others, can be resolved by
means of a median supposition which we accept here as a working
hypothesis: namely, that St. Paul entrusted some concepts to his
secretary, who then developed and refined them.
We have in mind this provisional solution of the question when we speak
of "the author of the Letter to the Ephesians," the "Apostle," and "St.
Paul."
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