A Wife’s Wink

Learning five small secrets to a successful marriage

10/30/2018

Ephesians 5:21-33 Brothers and sisters: Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the Church, he himself the savior of the Body. As the Church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the Church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the Church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So also husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the Church, because we are members of his Body. For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the Church. In any case, each one of you should love his wife as himself, and the wife should respect her husband.

One of the many things I love about Fort Smith is how often we celebrate marriage anniversaries. And I do not just mean an anniversary of ten years or twenty-five years, but quite regularly we have special Masses for couples who have been married for forty years, or fifty years, or sixty years, and one couple had been married for seventy-five years. They must have gotten married while they were still wearing diapers. What secrets to these couples possess that helped them to weather the storms that so many modern marriages shipwreck on?

In my spare time I work in the marriage tribunal with annulments, and I see the opposite side of successful marriages, that is, when couples cannot stay together and divorce. It is a heart-breaking ministry and the only thing that keeps me going is the hope of healing broken hearts. But often I feel great frustration in the face of so much pain and hurt, like the story of Humpty Dumpty, “who all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again.” That’s how devastating a divorce feels – shattered hearts and lives that feel almost impossible to put back together. But seeing both sides of marriage – the successes and the struggles – emboldens me to offer some secrets of a successful marriage. I need to be bold because being a celibate priest and not married, I am sort of looking into the house of marriage through a window from the outside. Let me suggest five secrets for a successful marriage.

First of all, St. Paul tells the Ephesians in his celebrated fifth chapter that husbands and wives should “be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.” By the way, priests fear reading this passage more than the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1 with all the Old Testament names! Even though St. Paul goes on to say wives should be subordinate to their husbands, he has first said they should be mutually submissive out of reverence for Christ. I take that to mean that there should be mutual respect and deference. One spouse is not the boss and the other the employee, much less one the master and the other slave. Rather sometimes, the husband gets to decide, and sometimes the wife is in the driver’s seat. In successful marriages sometimes the husband is subordinate, and sometimes the wife is subordinate, out of reverence for Christ.

Secondly, my parents have been married more than fifty years, and my father always said the family that prays together stays together. Every night my parents gathered the three children before bed and we sat in the living room and prayed one Our Father, five Hail Mary’s (one for each of us), and then a prayer in an Indian language, which I did not understand but I hope God did! I wonder how many couples who get divorced prayed together each day? I think the great blessing and benefit of praying together is you begin to see your spouse the way God sees them, a beloved son or daughter, and it’s a little easier to love them.

Thirdly, good communication is critical. And communicating well has a lot more to do with listening than with talking. What do people do when they struggle to communicate? They turn up the volume like T.V. commercials. She didn’t hear what I said so maybe I should say it louder, and spouses end up shouting at each other when they argue. Rather, I think communication has as much to do with what you don’t say as with what you do say. That is, pay attention to the body language. Spouses share a lot through a frown, crossed arms over their chest, tears in the eyes, a sigh, eye contact – or lack of eye contact. Because husbands and wives miss non-verbal cues, their verbal communication is impaired. Successful marriages are highly attuned to both verbal and non-verbal communication. Couples communicate a mountain of meaning with just the wink of an eye. Neal McCoy sang about how his wife’s wink made everything better. He sang: “And slam bam, I’m feeling alright / Troubles take a hike in the blink of an eye / Don’t need to psychoanalyze or have a stiff drink / All she’s gotta do is just give me that wink.” A wink is non-verbal communication.

Fourthly, trust is the bedrock and foundation of any healthy relationship, especially of marriage. Trust overcomes your feelings of jealousy because you know the other person is totally committed to you. Trust also leaves room for freedom of action because you do not feel the need to force or manipulate the other person into certain behavior to keep you happy. Trust allows each spouse to explore their own talents in careers and with friendships because the other spouse does not feel threatened – they feel trust.

And fifthly, this surprises some couples when I say this but marriage is only for earth and not for heaven. Remember in your marriage vows you said, “Until death do we part,” and when you die, you part. In heaven we will be married to Jesus and not to each other. I shared this in RCIA class recently, and I could tell some people were saddened, but others reacted with relief, saying, “Yes!” In other words, human marriage is a sort of marriage preparation for your real marriage to Christ in eternity. Maybe one reason couples stay together in marriage for 50, 60, 75 years is because they know that this won’t last forever. Couples recall St. Paul’s words in Romans 8:18, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed to us.” That glory is the marriage of Jesus and his Bride, the Church.

These are just five small secrets to successful marriages, and I am sure there are many more. Let us pray for all marriages today – both the successful ones and the struggling ones. And do not forget, the One you are praying to will one day be your Spouse.

Praised be Jesus Christ!