The Holy Scriptures can be read as a book about marriage. The human race begins when God took Eve from Adam's side, resulting in Adam's exclamation, "This one, at last, is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh!" At the end of the last book of the Bible, Christ takes his Bride, the Church, to heaven with him. Divine laws governing the holiness and integrity of marriage are found throughout the Scriptures. St. Paul provided profound insights regarding marriage in his letters to the churches. Here is the commentary of St. Ambrose on the passage from Ephesians 5, 22-32:
" 'Be subject to one another in the fear of Christ, ever giving thanks for everything to God our Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.' We are commanded to give thanks to God for all his gifts -- he who has deigned to adopt us through Christ, his own Son. We have known him through Christ, and learned to adore God in the Spirit -- for God is a spirit -- subjecting ourselves to one another for the sake of the fear of Christ, who has commanded us to subject ourselves in humility (cf. John 4, 24).
" 'Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to The Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the Head of the Church: he is the Savior of his Body. Therefore, as the Church is subject to Christ, let wives be subject to their husbands in everything.' Wives are commanded to be subject to their husbands according to natural law, for a man was the progenitor of the woman [i.e. Adam and Eve]. Therefore, Paul says, as women are subject to The Lord, so should they be to their husbands. For this reason Sarah called Abraham her 'lord' (Genesis 18, 12). And just as Christ is the Head of the Church, so the husband is the head of the wife. The Church is subject to Christ because she received her origin from him. Such is the relationship of the wife to the husband, so that she might be subject to him. But there is this difference: the wife and the husband share the same nature; but the Church can only share in Christ in name, but not in nature.
" 'Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and handed himself over for her in order to sanctify her, cleansing her with a laver of water, so that he might present to himself a glorious Church, having no stain or wrinkle or anything of this kind: but that she might be holy and immaculate. In this way should husbands love their wives.' Women are commanded to be subject to and to have respect for their husbands, but husbands are admonished to love their wives in such a way that they set the souls of their wives before their own, by reason of love having zeal for their condition and discipline, that they might be religious and holy. 'He who loves his wife, loves his own body.' Natural reason tells us that the wife is a sharer in the body of her husband, and so the husband, in loving his wife, loves his own body. Because of this -- because they are two in one flesh -- he sins against her if he commits fornication. Their substance is not divided so that they each have a separate nature. Rather, they are united in their nature.
" 'For no one ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the Church.' Men are exhorted to love their wives according to the example of The Savior: for just as Christ nourishes and cherishes his Body [the Church], so should a man his wife, because she is his flesh.
" 'For we are members of his Body, and of his flesh and of his bones.' This should be understood spiritually. Paul said that we are his members because The Lord himself is the Head of the whole Church. He is called our Head because we began to be through him, just as every body has life because of its head. Every spiritual creature who bends his knee in his Name may be a member of his Body.
" 'Because of this, a man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh.' He gave an example of unity in order to commend unity: that just as a man and a woman are one in their nature, so Christ and the Church are understood to be one in faith. 'This is a great mystery that I tell you, speaking of Christ and his Church.' The mystery of the unity of man and woman signifies this great mystery."
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