Women: Agony And/Or Ecstasy

Nearly all of life’s experiences consist of a combination of bitter and sweet, pleasure and pain, blessing and curse. Indeed, every blessing has its curse, and every curse has its blessing.
Even the Lord Jesus Himself—the greatest gift known to humanity—brought the Blessed Mother incomparable joy and unfathomable sickness of sorrow.

Your wife is no different.

A wife is one of God’s most tremendous blessings, but also can be the source of significant angst, frustration, and heartache.

Recall that in Hebrew literature the word “garden” was often used to symbolize woman.
The name of the first garden, Eden, literally means “delight, “paradise.”
By means of associating these terms, we discover that God created the woman as a symbol of delight; and properly speaking she affords men great delight.

Recall also that Jesus, the New Adam, on the night of His betrayal, entered a garden—the garden of Gethsemane.
It was in this garden that Jesus agonized over His impending torture, Crucifixion, death, and surrendered Himself and His cause over to His Father.
It was in this garden that Jesus triumphed over the temptation to preserve Himself, and rather offered Himself in sacrifice for His bride, the Church.
Without His sacrifice, the Church, would have never blossomed into existence.

The word “Gethsemane” means oil press.

Woman, the garden—created to be a delight—can often become a place of incredible tension, and resentment.

In Jesus’ day the process of extracting oil from olives was called treading.
Olives were set in a small cove or well of a rock and crushed by another rock, excreting the oil from the olive into the cove of the rock.
This process occurred in Gethsemane—hence the name.

When you, as a husband, press forward—like Christ and St. Joseph—to set the pace of self-giving love, you will often experience the burden and sting of rejection, resistance, and perhaps even betrayal from your wife.
In a sense, we husbands will be tread.

But as you undergo the crushing blows to your pride and ego, if you embrace them properly, the oil of charity—forgiveness, forbearance, and freedom to love without expecting anything in return—will be squeezed from you and poured out, anointing your wife and children.

Unfortunately, such pressure and conflict can cause us, much like Jesus’ disciples on the night of His betrayal, to flee the garden.

According to one study, “Emotional infidelity is far more common than most people realize. Fatherly.com recently shared research involving 90,000 men and women that found that 78.6% of men and 91.6% of women admitted to having an emotional affair.”

Consider also that approximately 69% of American men and 40% of American women view online porn each year. Though 51% of Americans disagree that porn use is immoral, in essence it constitutes virtual infidelity.

According to a 2014 Barna Group survey, 65% of U.S. non-Christian men, and 64% of U.S. Christian men, looked at pornography at least once a month.
Here’s the breakdown according to age:

79% of 18- to 30-year-olds
67% of 31- to 49-year-olds
49% of 50- to 68-year-olds

According to the 2022 General Social Survey (GSS), 20% of men and 13% of women admitted to infidelity.
Additionally, 67% of men and 53% of women who cheated on their spouse did so more than once.

Often men will remain happily in the garden, if it brings them the fruit of delight; but if the garden becomes an oil press that begins to demand that more love be squeezed from them, they flee.

What a man is and does under duress is what he truly is.

This process of treading is essential for you to become the father, husband, leader, and man of greatness that God has called and destined you to be.
Only by means of suffering can we reach our full capacity to love.
Pope St. John Paul II said that “[s]uffering exists in order to unleash love in the human person.”

Suffering, particularly within marriage, if embraced, can serve to unite the couple, while also offering their children an example of heroic, enduring, self-giving love.

When your wife witnesses you overcoming the temptation to retaliate against her; or flee from her and rather begin to offer yourself in little ways to and for her, she will begin to experience an anointing with the oil of your charity, which will begin to heal her. When this happens the bitterness of Gethsemane can become truly what it should be, a garden of delight.

One of the greatest ways a husband can fail his children is by withdrawing from his wife.
This does not apply only to the divorced husband whose children are in his wife’s custody.
A husband can be absent physically, spiritually, emotionally and personally.
One reason that a man flees is because he resists being crushed by his wife’s demands, her burdens, her desires, her neglect, her demeaning attitude.
However, if you can embrace such “blows” and respond with love, a “holy oil” will anoint your marriage.