“From the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one.’ So they are no longer two but one. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder” (Mark 10:6-9).
This is God’s original plan for man and woman. This is why God created woman, saying, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (Gen. 2:18). The woman was created from Adam’s rib and is therefore, as Adam said, “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen 2:23). She was created after Adam, to be his helper, his assistant, one suitable for him, unlike the beasts of the field. She will live with the man, as one flesh with him and will help him. The man is the head of his wife, and she is subject to him, just as Christ is the head of the Church, and the Church is subject to Christ. “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands” (Eph. 5:22-24). Husbands, for their part, are to love their wives. “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25).
This is the ideal relationship of love between spouses in which they behave well and live in faithfulness to each other and love. In such a situation, the wife will be happy to submit to her husband and be subject to him; and he will love and care for her. This is God’s plan for married people. It is what married people should try to live. Thus the wife will help her husband as an assistant appropriate for him. It is true that there are many problems in actual life, but this Biblical teaching orients us correctly so that we know what the ideal is in the eyes of God and then can try to live it.
But we also see here that St. Paul says that the relationship of the Church to Christ is like that of the wife to her husband. That is, our relationship with Christ is a nuptial relationship, and as such should be as exclusive as possible. We should love Christ as the only spouse of our soul. “I feel a divine jealousy for you, for I betrothed you to Christ to present you as a pure bride to her one husband” (2 Cor 11:2). Marriage is thus the model for our relationship with Christ.
Both married and single people should have this nuptial relationship with Christ, in which Christ is the only spouse of our soul. Married people do this together as a couple, and celibates do it as solitaries and can therefore have an even more exclusive nuptial relationship with Christ, as literally the only spouse of their soul. This is why celibacy for the kingdom of God is a higher calling than the vocation of marriage, as the Church has always taught—and still teaches. “The unmarried man gives his mind to the Lord’s affairs and to how he can please the Lord; but the man who is married gives his mind to the affairs of this world and to how he can please his wife, and he is divided in mind. So, too, the unmarried woman, and the virgin, gives her mind to the Lord’s affairs and to being holy in body and spirit; but the married woman gives her mind to the affairs of this world and to how she can please her husband” (1 Cor. 7:32-34 JB).
How beautiful is celibacy. It is the gift of those “who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19:12). It is another kind of marriage, a marriage with God, with the Lord Jesus Christ, in which we reserve our heart for him alone and guard it lest it become divided by the love for another person or for a thing or for the pleasures of the world.
A celibate who falls in love with a woman has divided his heart and loses the advantage of his celibacy, which is to have an even more radically undivided heart than married people in his nuptial relationship with Jesus Christ. The ideal of celibacy for the kingdom, of religious life, of priestly and monastic life is to have a nuptial relationship with Christ that is radically exclusive so that all the love of one’s heart goes only to Christ, his only spouse. The celibate is not even divided by the love for a human spouse in the sacrament of matrimony.
The celibate should also guard his heart from other divisions as well. If a celibate dedicates himself to the pleasures of the world, he is divided. Hence he should live an austere and ascetical life, a life of simplicity and evangelical poverty, a life of prayer and fasting. His delight is in prayer, the word of God, spiritual reading, lectio divina, his spiritual studies, and his work for the Lord. His delight is in Christ, in his peace and love, in his splendor and light, in silence and solitude, in prayer and contemplation, and in love and service to his neighbor.
The celibate, therefore, should live apart from the world and its pleasures, noise, superficiality, delicacies, and distractions. He wants to live recollected in Jesus Christ, with the love of Christ burning in his heart, and thus be an example for others, someone who uplifts and renews the world. People like this are oases in the desert, refreshments in the heat, people who nourish and give life.
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