The Great Mystery of Man and Wife

What, then, is that great mystery signified under the name of the man and his wife? Let us ask the apostle himself, who elsewhere, teaching the same thing, uses words of the same force: “And clearly great is the mystery of godliness, which was revealed in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached to the Gentiles, believed in the world, taken up in glory.” What, then, is that great mystery which was revealed in the flesh? Clearly it was God born of the flesh, God seen in bodily form, who was openly taken up in glory just as he was openly revealed in the flesh. This, then, is the great mystery of which he says: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and will cling to his wife, and the two will be one flesh.” [a]

Who, then, were the two in one flesh? God and the soul. For in the one human flesh that is joined to God, God and the soul are present, as the Lord himself says: “No one can take my life away from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.” So you see three things here: God, the flesh, and the soul. It is God who speaks; the flesh is that in which he speaks; the soul is that of which he speaks. Is he, then, the man of whom the prophet says, “A brother cannot redeem, nor will a man redeem”? He is the one who, as it was said, “ascended where he was before,” and of whom we read: “No one has ascended into heaven except he who came down from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven.”

For this reason, I say, he has left his father and mother, that is, God, from whom he was begotten, and that “Jerusalem which is the mother of us all,” and has clung to human flesh as to his wife. And that is why, in the case of the father, he says explicitly, “A man will leave his father,” but in the case of the mother he does not say “his”; he simply says “mother.” For she was not so much his mother as the mother of all believers, that is, of all of us. And he was joined to his wife. For just as man and wife make only one body, so the glory of the divinity and the flesh of man are united, and the two, that is, God and the soul, become one flesh. For just as that flesh had God dwelling in it, so it also had the soul within it, dwelling with God.

This, then, is that great mystery which our admiration for the apostle summons us to search out, and God’s own urging bids us to. And it is not foreign to Christ and his Church, as he says: “But I am speaking of Christ and the Church.” For the flesh of the Church is the flesh of Christ, and in the flesh of Christ God and the soul are present. And so the same person is present in Christ as in the Church, because the mystery we believe in the flesh of Christ is held by faith in the Church as well.