Friday, March 30 (O.S., March 17), 2018: Friday of the Sixth Week of Lent; Venerable Alexis the Man of God († 411); Venerable Macarius, Abbot of Kaliazin, wonderworker († 1483); New Hieromartyr Priest Alexander († 1919); New Hieromartyr Priest Victor († 1942); Martyr Marinus; Venerable Paul of Cyprus; St. Patrick, Bishop of Armagh and Enlightener of Ireland († 461).
Sixth Hour: Isaiah 66:10-24
Vespers: Genesis 49:33-50:26
Vespers: Proverbs 31:8-31
Well, actually, not all the readings.
The selections from Isaiah and Genesis make sense. Once again, Isaiah reminds us of the impending judgment in which, to borrow from Jesus’ words in Matthew, God will separate the sheep from the goats (Matthew 25:32).
The reading for Genesis is likewise a sensible choice.
With the death of Jacob and Joseph, the patriarchal age comes to an end. There will soon arise “a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph” (Exodus 1:8, NKJV). His rule will bring a dark and tragic change. Sin’s hold over humanity will become institutionalized as the Hebrew children find themselves enslaved. It is from this, sin’s “anti-church,” that Jesus comes to save us.
But what are we to make the third reading? Why do we hear about “a good wife” who is “far more precious than jewels”?
Solomon’s description of the good wife isn’t limited to her moral virtues important though they are. No for the King whose “wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the men of the East and all the wisdom of Egypt” (1 Kings 4:30, NKJV), the good wife isn’t simply a morally good woman, she is a successful entrepreneur. She not only excels in managing the household but in business. Far from being a passive participant in her own life, “she girds her loins with strength and makes her arms strong” through her domestic and commercial industry.
The Fathers see in the good wife a type of the Church. St Gregory Nazianzen alludes to this in his funeral oration for his sister Gorgonia.
Solomon … praises the woman who looks to her household and loves her husband, contrasting her with one who roams abroad, and is uncontrolled and dishonourable, and hunts for precious souls with wanton words and ways, while she manages well at home and bravely sets about her woman’s duties.
For marriage to be, as St Paul says, a revelation of Christ’s love for the Church (Ephesians 5:22-32) requires not simply virtuous and entrepreneurial women but men who are worthy husbands of such wives. Men who are worthy of women like those Solomon describes.
With His death on the Cross, the reign of sin and death comes to an end. Though composed of sinners, the Church is also “a city on a hill” and a “light to the nations” (Matthew 5:4). The Church is a foretaste of the Kingdom of God and a “sign contradiction” (see Luke 2:34, Acts 28:22) to the kingdom of sin and death (Mark 1:14-15).
For the Church to fulfill her vocation requires that, like the good wife, Christians learn to be not only virtuous but practical. As we’ve seen throughout our mediations, wealth and power are blessings given to us by God for His glory and the salvation of the world. If we take seriously the “good wife” as a revelation of the Church, we must all–men and women–imitate both her virtue and her industry.
Having been freed from sin by Christ’s death and resurrection, fortified by the sacraments, and trained by the ascetical life, what Solomon presents as an ideal for some, is now a possibility for all.
Let us all of us then become a “good wife” by being a “good and faithful servant” who by our fidelity “over a few things” in the practical order, prove ourselves to be able to rule “over many things” and able to enter “into the joy of [our] Lord” (Matthew 25:23) in the Kingdom to come.
Kalo Pascha!
In Christ,
+Fr Gregory