Serving One Another in Awe of Christ

“Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21).

I hear those words this morning not as an invitation to weakness but as a summons to a higher freedom: the freedom to lay down my pride, to listen, and to serve. When Paul places this short injunction before his teaching on family, ministry and marriage, he is setting a horizon for every Christian relationship — one that reorders power by love and makes the cross our pattern.

Mutual submission is not servility or erasing difference; it is a reciprocal disposition of will shaped by reverence for Christ. It asks me to prefer the good of the other, to look for common flourishing rather than personal advantage. The New Testament word Paul uses carries the sense of willingly arranging oneself under another for the sake of the common good; it presumes freedom, not coercion. Christians are called to a horizontal humility that reflects Christ’s self-gift and undoes the instinct to dominate one another.

I will be blunt: practicing this in parish life, in families, in work, and among friends will feel countercultural. But countercultural action in the Christian life is not novelty for its own sake; it is fidelity to Christ. When I yield my impatience, when I choose to hear someone whose outlook is different, when I serve without keeping score, I live the grammar of the Gospel.

The reason for this radical reversal is given: “out of reverence for Christ.” Reverence here is not mere external piety; it is awe before the mystery of the Incarnation and the Paschal gift. Our obedience to one another is a response to the One who humbled himself for us. Saint Paul does not detach moral advice from salvation history; our mutual subjection is a visible echo of Christ’s self-emptying love. Pope John Paul II explained that this “reverence for Christ” (pietas) provides the spiritual foundation for mutual relations, especially within marriage, and that the mystery of Christ should permeate the hearts of the faithful, forming how spouses and the whole Church relate to one another.

I call to mind St John Chrysostom who insisted that Christian authority must be exercised in service: leadership is measured by how one cares for the weakest. St Augustine taught that charity is the bond of perfection; where charity reigns, submission becomes mutual and joyful. St Thomas Aquinas reminds us that charity orders our acts — so a lawful authority is rightly obeyed when it fosters virtue and the common good. These Doctors do not reduce submission to blind conformity; rather they place it within the economy of grace: submission ordered by love and reason bears the fruit of unity.

Let me be practical and inclusive. If you are a parent, submit to one another means: listen to your children’s questions, model repentance, and accept correction. If you are a teacher or leader, it means: govern transparently, welcome scrutiny, and serve with humility. If you are unmarried, single, disabled, elderly, or young, it means you have a vocation to shape the community by your witness: patience, forgiveness and the dignity you show others teach us how the Body of Christ is meant to live. Mutual submission is patient with weakness and eager to remove obstacles so all may participate.

For those who have been hurt by authority or by families, I know these words can sting. Submission must never be an excuse for abuse or injustice. The Church’s teaching always condemns violence and coercion; true submission presupposes dignity and freedom. If someone’s “authority” degrades the human person, that so-called authority must be resisted and reformed by charity and truth.

So, I ask you: where is pride blocking your obedience to the Gospel? Where do you cling to honour, control, or status? Conversion here is concrete: apologise where pride has injured; welcome the counsel of those you have dismissed; refuse to use your role to silence another. When you do this, you reveal Christ.

I will end with Christ’s own pattern: “I gave you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you” (John 13:15). If we take up mutual submission, out of reverence for Christ, we will transform parish life into a school of service where every person — whatever their ability or knowledge of Scripture — is honoured, heard and loved. Let us be a community that practises what we preach, so that the world may see in us the logic of the cross: life given, dignity upheld, and love made visible. Amen.