ON MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE!!!

ON MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE

💭 The distortion of authority and the temptation of supremacy within the family

In a culture marked by a desire to assert individual power, the family often risks transforming the relationship between husband and wife into a struggle for authority (Pharos, Kofinas).

The Church, however, reaffirms that the family is not a space of competition, but an icon of perfect unity or communion, founded on the ontological equality of persons created in the image of God.

This equality does not imply a homogenising similarity that abolishes natural distinctions, but rather recognition of the special mission of each person; otherwise, the rejection of complementarity under the pretext of juridical or social equality leads to transforming the other into a superfluous entity and blocking communion.

Healing this temptation toward domination is achieved by moving from narcissistic individual power to altruistic service in Christ.

If the man is called “the head of the woman” (Ephesians 5:23), this position does not grant him privileges of domination over the woman, but imposes upon him the duty of sacrificial love according to the prototype of Christ, the Bridegroom of the Church, Who gave Himself as a sacrifice for the Church.

Just as Christ sacrificed Himself for the Church, so must the man show generous and humble love toward his wife. Saint John Chrysostom emphasises that no relationship can endure if it is based on fear, because the wife must be valued as a free person, not as a slave to another’s will (St John Chrysostom, Homily on Ephesians).

Thus, true authority is exercised not through coercion, but through humble and generous love, transforming family hierarchy into a hierarchy of humility, in which the husband’s duty to love his wife is greater than the wife’s duty to submit to her husband.

~ Patriarch Daniel of Romania .