So last Sunday was "Elbow Sunday" — the one where the second reading is St. Paul's exhortation to husbands and wives. Half the pulpits in the United States choose the shortened version and only lecture husbands to love their wives as Christ loved his church; the other half are full of husbands and wives elbowing each other in turn.
Did anyone else notice that also, last Sunday, the Gospel reading is the one where many of Christ's disciples abandon him because the truth of His Body and Blood is "hard--who can accept this?" This is not by any means the only hard teaching, and the teaching half of us had just heard may, in this day and age, be one of the hardest. But that doesn't prevent it from being just as true, and just as incapable of being rationalized away, as the teaching of the Eucharist.
Now I am not really what people have in mind when they call a woman "traditional." I know some such, and I respect them immensely. Their patience, selflessness, and womanliness are neither weak nor self-denigrating. I have long sensed that there was wisdom in St. Paul's words, and rejecting them as mere cultural artifacts was foolhardy. It's not so easy, though. Maybe if I remember to look at all hard teachings in light of the difficulty of the Eucharist, and the disaster of rejecting that teaching, it will be easier.