The answer
St. Clement of Alexandria says, “For with perfect propriety Scripture has said that woman is given by God as a help to man. It is evident, then, in my opinion, that she will charge herself with remedying, by good sense and persuasion, each of the annoyances that originate with her husband in domestic economy. And if he did not yield, then she will endeavor, as far as possible for human nature, to lead a sinless life … considering that God is her helper and associate in such a course of conduct, her true defender and Savior both for the present and for the future; making Him the leader and guide of all her actions, reckoning sobriety and righteousness her work, and making the favor of God her end. Gracefully, therefore, the apostle says in the Epistle to Titus that: ‘the older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things— that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed’ (Titus 2:3–5).”1743
Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty
Notes
1743 St. Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, or Miscellanies 4.20 (ANF 2:432).