Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man—there never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them. Never flattered or coaxed or patronized: who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as “The women, God help us!” or “the ladies, God bless them!”; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unself-conscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything “funny” about woman’s nature.
But we might easily deduce it from His contemporaries, and from His prophets before Him, and from His Church to this day. Women are not human; nobody shall persuade that they are human; let them say what they like, we will not believe it, though One rose from the dead.
Perhaps Sayers, like many today, included St. Paul among those contemporaries of Jesus who did not understand, especially when we consider the famous passage in his letter to the Colossians where he advises wives to be subordinate to their husbands.
For years I was a lector or reader at my local Catholic church. Ever since the Second Vatican council it has been the practice for the lector, usually a layperson, to read the first two scripture readings at Sunday Mass, after which the priest or a deacon reads the gospel. Reading the scriptures out loud to a congregation made them more meaningful to me than just hearing them read by others at Mass. I liked doing it but old age and diminishing eyesight made me give it up a few years ago.
However, something happened last weekend that made me recall an incident from my lector days. It was on the feast day of the Holy Family that usually occurs on the first Sunday after Christmas. I was in the sacristy before Mass looking over the readings when the young priest who was to preside approached me and told me to read the short form of the second reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Colossians. He must have seen a look of surprise on my face and added that the American Bishop’s Council allows shortened versions to be read on occasion. He didn’t exactly explain why but in this case the passage that I was to omit included St. Paul’s advice to wives to be “subordinate” to their husbands, a passage that even many Catholics today find objectionable.
I was younger then and declined to do it. Since childhood I had been instructed by priests and bishops to regard every word of the Bible as inspired, but apparently some words were not as inspired or sacred as others. It was jarring and I told him to find another lector and went back to join my wife in the congregation. In the years that have followed it has become standard to omit the controversial scriptural passage. This past weekend, it was again omitted. In all these years homilists just choose to ignore or omit this and other difficult passages that might be offensive to modern ears. Rather than explain, discuss, or confront the difficult passages head on, they just ignore or omit.
This failure was one of the reasons that I began to compose my own reflections on the Sunday Mass readings many years ago. Last Sunday I posted on the historical “context” of St. Paul’s words on my Sunday, Sunday blog. I tried to explain why Paul would have advised wives to be subordinate to their husbands, but also why his advice to husbands to “love your wives” was revolutionary.
I certainly agree with Sayers about Jesus, but I believe that if we look at the whole context of the life and writings of St. Paul, we will see that he was truly following in the footsteps of his Master. Despite today's popular opinion, Christianity elevated the role of women not only in society but also in the eyes of her husband. St. Paul understands the teaching of Christ to mean that Christian men must give up their whole lives for their wives and families, a rare thing in any time. The relationship in a family should consist of "heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience." A family built on these virtues won't have to worry about who's the boss.
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