30th Week in Ord. Time, Tuesday – 29th October 2024 — Eph 5,21-33; Lk 13,18-21
Mystery of Mutual Love
The first reading begins about family relationships, especially about the relationship between husband and wife. Paul seems to use the relationship of Jesus with the Church as an example of the relationship of the husband to the wife. In fact, it is the love of Christ for his Body, the Church, which is the very model of Christian marriage. He emphasizes not on obedience and subjection, but rather on a mutual, self-giving love. By drawing a parallel between a human marriage and the marriage of Christ to his Church, these two concepts are made to illuminate each other. Christ is the spouse of the Church because he is her head and because he loves the Church just as a man loves his own body when he loves his wife. Paul, in using the analogy of marriage, describes this mutual love as a ‘mysterion or sacramentum’. He highlights that a husband’s complete love for his wife and a wife’s for her husband should be a representation or sign, in other words mysterion or sacramentum, like the love of Jesus for the Church. The more they love each other, the more they give witness to the love of Jesus for His Body, the Church, and the Church for Jesus.