Section 5

Do you not see that in royal households those who are honored remain inside near the king, while those without honor remain outside? You too should remain inside near the bride. Remain pure within the house; do not parade your virginity in public. The two groups are standing there: one shows what sort of woman they are giving, and the other receives her in order to guard her. Why disgrace the state of virginity? If you behave this way, the bridegroom will suspect that the bride is the same. If what you want is to attract lovers, leave that to shopkeepers, vegetable sellers, and tradespeople. Is such behavior not shameful? Indecency is shameful even if the woman is a king’s daughter. Does poverty prevent modesty? Does one’s occupation prevent it? Even if an unmarried woman is a slave, let her remain chaste, for “in Christ Jesus there is neither slave nor free.”

Is marriage a theater? It is a mystery and a type of a great reality. Even if you do not reverence marriage itself, reverence what it represents. “This mystery is great,” Paul says, “but I speak concerning Christ and the Church.” Marriage is a type of Christ and the Church, and you bring prostitutes into it? “If neither unmarried women nor married women dance,” someone asks, “who will dance?” No one. What need is there for dancing? Pagan mysteries have their dances; ours should have silence and good order, modesty and restraint. A great mystery is being celebrated. Let prostitutes stay outside; let the profane stay outside.

How is marriage a mystery? The two come together and become one. Why, when the man first entered this world, were there no dances or cymbals, but great silence and stillness; yet now, when two people come together and make not a lifeless image nor an image of anything earthly but an image of God Himself, do you introduce such noise, disturb those present, shame the soul, and throw everything into confusion? They come together to become one body. Here again is a mystery of love. As long as the two do not become one but remain two, they do not produce many; but when they come into unity, then they produce others. What do we learn from this? That the power of union is great.

God’s wise design divided the one into two at the beginning. Yet, wishing to show that even after being divided the two remain one, He did not allow either one alone to be sufficient for generation. The person apart from this union is not yet the one whole, but half of the one; and it is evident that alone he does not beget children, just as before the union. Do you see the mystery of marriage? God made one from one, and then, by making these two one again, He produces one. Thus even now a human being is born from one. For woman and man are not two separate human wholes in this union, but one human reality.

This can be confirmed in many ways—from James, from Mary the mother of Christ, and from the words, “Male and female He made them.” If the man is the head and the woman the body, how are they two? For this reason she occupies the place of the disciple and he of the teacher; he the place of the one who leads, she of the one who is led. From the very formation of the body one can also see that they are one: she was made from his side, and they are like two halves.

For this reason God calls her a “helper,” to show that they are one. For this reason He gives their life together priority even over father and mother, to show that they are one. A father likewise rejoices when either a daughter or a son marries, as though the body were hastening toward a member belonging to itself. Even though marriage involves great expense and diminishes his wealth, he cannot bear to see the child remain unmarried. As though their flesh had been separated, each is incomplete by himself with respect to having children, and each is incomplete by himself with respect to the organization of this present life. This is why the prophet also says, “the remainder of your spirit.”

How, then, do they become one flesh? It is as though you took the purest part of gold and mingled it with other gold. So here: the woman receives what is richest in the man’s contribution, melted, as it were, by pleasure; she nourishes and warms it, contributes what comes from herself, and gives it back as a human being. The child becomes a kind of bridge. In this way the three become one flesh, because the child connects the two parents from both sides.

Suppose two cities are divided throughout by a river. They become one city when a bridge joins them from both sides. So it is here—and even more strongly, because in this case the bridge itself is made from the substance of each parent. Likewise, the body and head are one body. The neck lies between them, but it does not truly divide them; rather, by standing between them it joins them together. It is also like a chorus that has been divided and becomes one again when its two parts join; or like people standing close together and stretching out their hands, becoming one because their extended hands do not allow them to remain separated.

For this reason Scripture spoke precisely, not simply saying, “They will be one flesh,” but that they will come “into one flesh”—that is, they are joined in the flesh of the child. What, then, if there is no child? Do they remain two? Certainly not. Their bodily union itself brings this about, joining and mingling the bodies of both. Just as someone who pours perfume into oil makes the whole mixture one, so it is here as well.