A Wife’s Heart

By: Luke Parks from The Catholic Corner

After the Lord, a husband’s greatest treasure is his wife’s heart. Speaking from experience, it is difficult for a man to make himself vulnerable. His role as a provider reveals his desire to give himself to others. As a result, when a man finds himself in a moment of weakness, he feels like a failure.

In battle, a knight’s greatest weapons are his sword and his shield. The former allows him to fight his enemies without fear, whereas the latter protects his body from their attacks.

Analogously speaking, a husband’s sword is his intellect, while his shield is his wife’s heart. The former gives him the power to engage the flesh, the Devil, and the world with sobriety. The latter gives him the love and the strength to defend himself against evil. In short, in order to stay alive, a husband needs his wife’s heart: “The heart of a husband trusteth in her, and he shall have no need of spoils (Proverbs 31:11; Douay-Rheims Bible).

Whenever you see a married man bent on acquiring power, fame, and fortune, know that he is merely seeking to fill the lack of love within his soul. Although it’s true that God is the ultimate fulfillment of man’s desires, remember that, before the Fall, Adam’s heart yearned for “a helper like himself” (Genesis 2:20). Even though he had the Most Holy Trinity dwelling within his soul, the Father of Mankind recognized that “it is not good for man to be alone”—that is, without an intimate companion (Genesis 2:18).

As he gazed upon Eve for the very first time, one can only imagine the joy surging within Adam: “This is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23). At last, man had found a partner to share his life with. Eve, in turn, wanted nothing more than to serve her husband. According to St. Hildegard of Bingen, “She saw [Adam] as if she was seeing heaven, and as the soul lifts up desiring the heavenly, for her hope was resting in man”.[1] Thus, not only were our First Parents “two in one flesh,” but two in one heart, as well (Genesis 2:24). Since sin had yet to enter into the picture, Eve responded to her husband’s reign with obedience, submissiveness, and tenderness. Above all, she longed to be his beloved—literally, to “be loved” by him.

In a tragic way, then, Original Sin stems from Adam’s misplaced trust in his wife’s heart. The reason that I say “misplaced” is that he was well-aware of the drastic consequences of disobeying God’s commandment to avoid the fruit of the Forbidden Tree (cf. Genesis 2:17). Nevertheless, when Eve presented her husband with the opportunity to reject their Creator, Adam, “instead of reproving her for her rashness, did eat, through excessive fondness” for his wife.[2] In light of this observation, it is clear that Original Sin is a sin of malice. To quote Saint Thomas Aquinas: “Wherefore [man] is said to sin through certain malice or on purpose, because he chooses evil knowingly”.[3] As a result, despite God’s warning, Adam pridefully rejected His Father and, through his overattachment to Eve, disrupted their wholehearted togetherness. Now, instead of serving man as his heart, woman is tempted to place herself as his head.

In the post-Fall world, no woman expresses the heart of a wife better than the Blessed Virgin Mary, the New Eve. Unlike her Old Testament type, Our Lady served Saint Joseph as if he were God Himself. Consider the following excerpt from Edward Healy Thompson’s The Life and Glories of Saint Joseph:

She rejoiced to serve him as her lord, respect him as her tutor and guardian, and tenderly love him as her spouse, treating him with all the honour with which Scripture records that Sara treated Abraham, telling us that she called him ‘lord,’ implying thereby much more than the mere words [sic] express.[4]

Indeed, who could describe the humility and the love of the Queen of Heaven and Earth, the most powerful creature ever to exist? She commands all, yet she submitted to a man less holy than her. Out of all the children of Adam, she alone deserved exemption from the natural order’s placement of the husband as the head of his wife. Here, we find an excellent example of the profound role in which women play in Holy Matrimony. Regardless of her intellectual, moral, and emotional superiority over her husband, a wife must always seek to “render him good, not evil, all the days of her life” through her obedience to him (Proverbs 31:12). Just as she seeks to love and to serve God with her whole self, so, too, must she give her heart to her husband. Then, and only then, will they find themselves “of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3).

By: Luke Parks of The Catholic Corner

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[1] Hugh Owen, “Adam and Eve in the Writings of the Mystical Saints and the Doctors of the Church,” The Kolbe Center, October 6, 2017, https://kolbecenter.org/adam-and-eve-writings-mystical-saints-doctors-church/.

[2] Father George Leo Haydock, Haydock’s Catholic Family Bible and Commentary (New York, 1859), “Genesis 3,” https://www.ecatholic2000.com/haydock/untitled-05.shtml.

[3] Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, trans. Fr. Laurence Shapcote, O.P., ed. The Aquinas Institute (Emmaus Academic, 2018), q. 78, art. 1, co.

[4] Edward Healy Thompson, M.A., The Life and the Glories of Saint Joseph (London, 1891), 158, https://www.saintsbooks.net/books/Edward%20Healy%20Thompson%20-%20The%20Life%20and%20Glories%20of%20St.%20Joseph.pdf.