Endure and Love the Necessary Member

Even if you say that your wife’s condition is incurable, that she has received much care and still remains the same, you must not cast her away. We do not cut off a bodily member merely because its sickness is incurable. And she is your member, for Scripture says, “The two will become one flesh.”

With a diseased bodily member, once its condition has become incurable, treatment may bring us no benefit at all. But with a wife, even if her moral sickness remains incurable, a great reward is laid up for us when we continue teaching and guiding her. Even if she gains nothing from our instruction, we ourselves will receive a great reward from God for patience: because out of reverence for Him we showed such endurance, bore her wickedness gently, and kept our own member united to us.

A wife is a necessary member of us, and for that very reason we especially ought to love her. Paul teaches this when he says, “Husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. No one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the Church, because we are members of His body, from His flesh and from His bones.”

Just as Eve came from Adam’s side, Paul means, so we come from Christ’s side. This is what it means to say, “from His flesh and from His bones.” Everyone knows that Eve came from Adam’s side; Scripture says plainly that God caused a deep sleep to fall upon him, took one of his ribs, and built the woman. But how can we show that the Church too came from Christ’s side? Scripture shows this as well.