One of my long term friends, Fr Kenneth, is a Catholic priest. We grew up together in the same village and attended the same primary school. I tease him a lot about the priesthood, which he takes graciously.
Early last month, I called to check on him.
“You must have the most boring life. How can you live without the drama of a spouse?” I told him, echoing hubby who once told his single cousin that he must get married because there is never a dull moment with a wife.
“I live that drama tens of times, through counselling couples,” de said. “How would you know how to counsel couples if you have never been married?”
“Well, a doctor goes through training and has years of experience diagnosing and treating. He doesn’t need to have cancer to treat it,” I replied.
“Exactly the life of a priest, we go through marriage counselling training, and we counsel a lot of couples.”
“Save for the cases that need psychiatric help, most often, the issues in marriage has to do with disobedience,” he said.
“Expound please,” I told him, intrigued.
“You know, there are three key guidelines when it comes to marriage; a husband is to love his wife, the wife is to submit to the husband, and each is to submit to the other in reverence to Christ. The Bible…”
He was about to start a sermon, so I interrupted him, “that submit a bit? Expound.”
He took a deep sigh, and I imagined him making the sign of the cross. “Love is the greatest of all the commandments. When a wife feels loved, everything else falls in place.”
“That’s so true! How do you know that?” I was stunned that for a man, he knew the one thing that our husbands have never internalised. “The secret to making a wife feel loved is by her husband taking the time to learn her love language.” Halleluiah! “A husband is to lead in love. He is the head of the love department.”
“Not in exchange. Submission is not servitude even though many times it is completely mistaken and preached as servitude.”
“So, what does it mean to submit to one’s husband?” I had heard about this touchy word a zillion times. Many times it came out as a sexist idea and of course, very unattractive to any self-respecting, independent woman. He said something that gave me a different perspective.
“I expounded on love first, because, Biblical submission is based on love and trust. Submission means a wife can confidently trust and lean on her husband, who loves her unreservedly like Christ loves the church.”
We had a long discussion around it, and Fr Kenneth explained that submission means that there will not be unhealthy competition in the marriage relationship.
“Submission is not blind obedience to a husband, and yet, it means that a wife will not put up unnecessary resistance and defences against the husband.”
“Is it because men have fragile egos that we should not overly resist their ideas? And what if their idea is crappy and a wife can see it? Shouldn’t we point it out?”
Fr Kenneth chuckled once more before adding, “Indeed, men have fragile egos. But a Christian husband, in learning to love his wife, dies to self. Just like our Lord did.”
“It means his reverence is for the Lord, not to his fragile ego.”
“It means he will consult you because you are part of him. The two are no longer parts but one unit.”
This was quite some information to digest on one phone call. Besides, knowing Fr Kenneth, he would have quoted volumes of Bible verses if I let him. He concluded our conversation by saying, “So, as you can see, disobeying those basic guidelines is what causes a lot of problems in marriage.”
Who would have thought that a priest would give me such deep, practical insights into marriage, more than I have got from a married couple?
