Brothers and sisters:
Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord.
For the husband is head of his wife
just as Christ is head of the church,
he himself the savior of the body.
As the church is subordinate to Christ,
so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything [see my note below].
Husbands, love your wives,
even as Christ loved the church
and handed himself over for her to sanctify her,
cleansing her by the bath of water with the word,
that he might present to himself the church in splendor,
without spot or wrinkle or any such thing,
that she might be holy and without blemish.
So also husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.
He who loves his wife loves himself.
For no one hates his own flesh
but rather nourishes and cherishes it,
even 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.
This is a great mystery,
but I speak in reference to Christ and the church.
I asked what people's priests (deacons) said about this reading if anything at all. My priest avoided the reading explicitly.
This year, however, he said some good things about it. The wife being subordinate does not mean doing the laundry, he said, or doing more chores. For the husband, it doesn't mean that we are to be waited on, necessarily, but that we are to also wash the feet of our wives and our neighbor. (These are my priest's ideas.)
I think people now a days would perhaps cringe less at the idea of drinking Jesus' body and blood than at this Ephesians reading. People think that the (RC) Church believes that women are less than men in some way(s). No, we are to "[b]e subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ."
So, what did your priest or deacon say about this reading this year, if anything?
