Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time – August 27, 2006 – Blessed Sacrament
The passage from the Epistle to the Ephesians that we heard as our second reading is not thought to be good news by some people today. It is the first part of what scholars call a “household code” in which several of the later Epistles provide norms for family life–relations between husband and wife, parents and children–and for the relation between masters and servants, or even slaves. Listening to them today, we find ourselves back in the hierarchically ordered, patriarchal family that prevailed not only in the ancient world of St. Paul’s time but long after also, and indeed still prevails in many parts of the world today.
This code includes the injunction that wives should be subject to their husbands, a rule that has so upset some lectors at Mass that they have refused to read it! (more…)