5.10.2003 Sunday 27^th Ordinary Season

First Reading: Genesis 2, 18-24

Psalm 127

Second Reading: Hebrews

Gospel: Mark 10, 2-16

Today’s gospel touches a sore point in the west! Broken families and the consequent problems are everywhere to be seen. Suffering alternates with anger, both of which accumulate in the hearts and minds of men and women who no longer know how to find true peace! Clear for everyone to see are the serious psychological and spiritual effects on the children and young people who have to go from one house to the other, from one affection to the other, torn between mothers and step-mothers, fathers and step-fathers. They grow up without knowing harmony, love, family, unity, unanimity, loyalty.

What can we do? The word of God, if followed, creates well-being, brings serenity, life, harmony. Jesus, today, reminds those of us who have worked out solutions to satisfy men and women and their desires and mistakes, their love-like sentiments and the hardness of their hearts. Jesus shows us the true way: look again at God’s initial intention. It is with this intention that one should lay the foundations of one’s life; one should train both heart and mind in the light of the Word of the Father, let the love which illumines from above show us the way.

Our families break up because husband and wife are not taught about true love, which has been confused with pleasure and possession. If a person feels loved when something is done for them, or thinks that he/she loves if he/she does something for their loved one, after a while they feel enslaved and then suffocated; that type of love turns out to be a trick and gives rise to the desire for freedom! True love can be learnt from faith, from being close to God and from obedience to Him! Families stay together when the faith of the husband and wife is greater that their feelings for each other, when their faith is the true source of their love, when their faith is strong and precise, when their faith sees and listens to the living, true God.

Jesus suggests that we look at marriage through God’s eyes and that we listen again to his word: “a man shall leave his father and mother and the two shall become one flesh.” “What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder”.

Can a man unite indissolubly with a woman? And why must their union be considered lasting? Woman was presented to man by God! Man found her when he awoke from his sleep; he received her from the hands of God and recognises her as “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” because God had acted!

God made for man “a helper that was fit for him”, who could complete or correct what was lacking in his heart, in his thoughts , in his desires. He should be aware that woman did not look for him and find him, but that he received her as a gift from the Father and should therefore, love and respect her as a gift from God! Woman should be for man a “co-respondent”, a person who may say yes, but also no, when he, at any time should distance himself from God. Man should be able to teach woman control of herself in order to allow God to act!

For man and woman to be what they are intended to be for each other, it is necessary that they reach true maturity. Both must be able to live without the need for support, otherwise they will weigh too heavily on each other, find each other suffocating and try to free themselves to find someone else! Maturity in life is reached when we cultivate an inner life, an intimate relationship with God, when we find the source of being and of acting within ourselves. This happens when we are close to Jesus like the branches of a vine, filling ourselves with His presence, following His wisdom, leaning on his shepherd’s “crook”.

He suffered and died to become our leader, to be the one who leads us to salvation! He knows that we are creatures of his God and Father and is not, therefore, ashamed to call us his brothers! We are sinners, we need to be forgived, saved, sanctified. He is not ashamed of us, in fact he offers himself to sanctify us so that our lives may become a sign of God. Even life in the family, in particular the union of husband and wife becomes a sign and instrument of divine love! For this reason Christians celebrate the eucharistic sacrifice during their wedding: their love is an expression of the same love of Jesus for the Father, of Jesus for the Church, of the Church for her Lord! If the love of Jesus remains alive in them they will continue to deepen their union and will find in it strength, joy, peace, wisdom and salvation.