“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).
These few words encapsulate the entire mystery of redemption—for it is a mystery of love, springing from God’s love for humanity—and in this, the relationship between Christ and the Church is epitomized.
The Apostle Paul reiterates this image in the fifth chapter of his Epistle to the Ephesians, likening the relationship between a man and a woman—that is, a married couple—to the relationship between Christ and the Church: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her” (Ephesians 5:25–26).
The goal is love and holiness. Marriage constitutes one of the two paths to holiness—the other being virginity—because love is the fundamental pillar of both. Therefore, according to the biblical perspective, if we wish to learn the meaning of love—especially marital love—we must look to Christ’s love for the Church and learn from it what the greatest love truly is.
