Men, Women, Children, and Christianity

It is in the context of the domestic Church that we live out our daily lives as Catholic families. In Ephesians 5, Paul gives us a template, by which we are called to manifest the love of God for his people. 

 21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 

²² Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. ²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
 ²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ²⁶to make her holy, cleansing^[b] her by the washing with water through the word, ²⁷ and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. ²⁸ In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— ³⁰ for we are members of his body. ³¹ “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”^[c] 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. ³³ However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

 This is a difficult teaching. Especially for we who are in the world in our work and our daily lives, it can become overwhelming to remember not to be "of" the world. The secular world does not accept the Christian doctrines of self-sacrifice and redemptive suffering, and being submerged in the culture daily can make it easy for those of us who are Christians to forget that we are to witness for Jesus Christ at all times--to preach the Gospel, and if necessary, to use words. The way we live as families can be the most apparent and effective witness to the life, death and resurrection of our Blessed Lord that we can bring to the world. Let us remember that he calls us to evangelize, and by our example, we do that most convincingly.