Should a Wife Try to Be Beautiful?

Should a Wife Try to Be Beautiful?

A bachelor wants a beautiful woman.
A husband desires his wife to be beautiful.
Both have been accused of being shallow.
Shallow?
Or misunderstood?

God created beauty.
God created women beautiful.
God created sexual difference and sexual attraction.
God created men to be attracted to women, and their external beauty.

This is not man’s fault.

Paraphrasing Pope St. John Paul II, sensory, bodily attraction is reflexive and constitutes the “raw materials” of the invitation to love.

Adam conveys this in coded prose:
“At last, this one is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!”
“at last,” … he is relieved by her presence.
“!”… He is elated by her beauty.

Both her presence and her beauty communicate her person.

Men rejoice in woman’s beauty.
The Lover in the Song of Songs conveys this delight by describing his Beloved’s feet, thighs, hip-joints, navel, breasts (often), cheeks, eyes, teeth, and hair.
He delights in her external beauty because it signifies her internal person… and something about God.

But doesn’t a man delight in a sunset, or a mountain wreathed in clouds, or a field adorn with flowers, or a car? Don’t they speak of God?
Yes.
But flowers, mountains, and sunsets are not made in the image and likeness of God.
Despite referring to his car as “She” a man cannot have intimacy with “her.”

God created a woman’s’ body to bespeak His gift of self.
A wife’s beauty—yes, her naked beauty—is a touchpoint between a husband and God.
Her body speaks on God’s behalf, reminding a man that God desires union with him.

A wife and her beauty are not her husband’s god.
She and her beauty are an invitation to God’s love.

A wife’s beauty communicates that her person is present, and also God’s presence and His Persons.
A wife who applies little effort to be beautiful for her husband communicates to him that he is no longer worthy of her efforts.

When a wife applies effort to be beautiful for her husband, she communicates to him he is still worth trying for… and that God still desires him.