Contrary to certain secular opinions, husbands and wives and mothers and fathers cannot easily fulfill one another’s roles. As Christians, we know that the God-designed differences between men and women contribute to the enrichment of family life, as Pope Francis has been addressing in his general audiences.

God created men and women to complement one another, which works to our advantage in our spiritual lives and families. If married couples seek to capitalize on this complementarity, their efforts to be better spouses to each other and better spiritual leaders for their children work together with their God-given, natural inclinations, allowing them to better spiritually lead and love their families toward heaven.

Pope St. John Paul II wrote that a person’s sex, male or female, is not an attribute, but part of his or her essence.

“In the Church’s outlook,” he explained, “women and men have been called by the Creator to live in profound communion with one another, with reciprocal knowledge and giving of self, acting together for the common good with the complementary characteristics of that which is feminine and masculine.”

These complementary characteristics extend beyond the purely physical to the spiritual as well. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains, “Physical, moral and spiritual difference and complementarity are oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life. The harmony of the couple and of society depends in part on the way in which the complementarity, needs and mutual support between the sexes are lived out” (2333).

Dietrich von Hildebrand, the prominent 20th-century Catholic philosopher and theologian, masterfully argues for this unique complementarity in his lectures and writings: “Marital love — involving the gift of one’s own person … in which the whole personality of the beloved is grasped mysteriously as a unity in spite of all outer obstacles — can exist only between two types of the spiritual person, the male and the female, as only between them can this complementary character be found.”

He further points out that the dissimilarity, yet complementarity, between men and women allows for “deeper penetration into the soul of the other,” which, of course, fosters deeper understanding of the unique spiritual leadership capabilities that each spouse can bring to a marriage and family.

Sometimes, when my husband invites me to a deeper trust in Jesus while I am preoccupied with stress, or when he does something so profoundly sacrificial for me or for our son in just the right and unexpected moment, I look at him and think, “How did God know?” God knew, better than I ever could, what kind of person — what kind of man — I needed to complement me so that we could work together to have a richer family life.

If you aren’t able to see the complementarity in your own marriage, I encourage you to look for it. I have on occasion found that my pride can cloud my better judgment, making me think that I have a lot to teach my spouse in spiritual matters. More often than not, when one of those thoughts arises or when I find myself ready to insert my almighty opinion about my husband’s prayer life or whatever other spiritual activity is on my mind, I catch him being about a thousand times more virtuous than me, and it stops me and my inane thoughts dead in our tracks.

I recalibrate: “Actually, my spouse has a lot to teach me in spiritual matters.” Thank God we have each other. Thank God we were made to complement.

Katie Warner

writes from Florida.

 

Editor’s Note: This article is adapted from Warner’s book, Head and Heart: Becoming Spiritual Leaders for Your Family (Emmaus Road Publishing, August 2015), with permission of the author and Emmaus Road Publishing.