My Body Is Hers, His Body Is Ours

June 1, 2022

My wife’s stroke brought home to me our “one-flesh” union — and the union between Christ and the Church

By Tom Hoopes

June 1, 2022

Man women holding hands — Luke Chan/EyeEm/Getty Images

WHEN I CAME HOME from work Dec. 21, 2021, my wife, April, was in bed. She had been sick for a while, but her voice sounded unusually weak as she called out to me to hand her a tissue.

That was strange. The tissues were less than an arm’s reach away.

That’s when my marriage prep training kicked in. My wife and I have been teaching marriage preparation classes for years, and one of the lessons is about the “one-flesh union” between spouses in the sacrament of matrimony.

“One-flesh union means you have to do things for each other,” I tell couples. “If she wants the ketchup, don’t tell her, ‘You have two legs. Get the ketchup yourself!’ No. She also has your two legs. Get the ketchup for her.”

So I fought the urge to say, “Reach it yourself!” and got her the tissue. Then she asked me to help her out of bed. I did. And that’s when I realized her left side was completely paralyzed. She crumpled to the floor. I called an ambulance. She had suffered a massive stroke.

In the months since, I have learned the meaning of “one-flesh union” more than I ever had before.

“Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies,” St. Paul wrote to the Ephesians. “He who loves his wife loves himself” (Eph 5:28).

Women already know how connected their bodies are to ours: Their bodies go through an ordeal to make us fathers. But I had to learn to offer my body back, fast. My wife has spent months in recovery. She has her speech back, mostly. She can walk, but tires quickly. And she doesn’t have much use of her left hand or arm. I help her dress, make her meals and keep her and the children on schedule.

These days, it isn’t hard to see how our union is meant to reflect the relationship between Christ and his bride, the Church.

“No man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the Church, because we are members of his body,” St. Paul wrote. “This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the Church” (Eph 5:29-30; 32).

A married couple is a close partnership in which spouses do things for one another such that, together, they act as one. Women make men fathers, men make women mothers, and together they make a family home.

Christ and his Church, likewise, form a close partnership and together they act as one. The Church, the bride of Christ, is our spiritual mother and makes priests spiritual fathers. As we have children and nourish them, the priest baptizes them and gives them holy Communion. We are each integral to the Church’s work, and therefore integral to Christ’s mission.

In addition to marriage preparation, my wife and I teach confirmation classes, and every year I tell the students how important this sacrament is because it makes them grown-ups in the Church. What does a mature Christian do? What are we called to do as Knights? Go to Mass, where Jesus comes to you, truly present in the Blessed Sacrament, and then walk out of the church into the world. Jesus in the host can’t speak, he can’t walk, and he can’t reach out with his arms. He relies on us to speak for him, walk for him, and reach others for him.

In other words, in his real presence in the Eucharist, Jesus wants the same kind of “one-flesh union” with the Church that I have with my wife, April — only he loves me more than I love her, and I need him more than she needs me.

My job, I now know, is to be in the habit of doing for Christ what I do for April — whatever he wants, whenever he asks.

*****

TOM HOOPES is writer in residence at Benedictine College and a member of Sacred Heart Council 723 in Atchison, Kan.

My Body Is Hers, His Body Is Ours

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