The Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, B October 7, 2018
Fr. Albert St. Peter’s, New Iberia
[Due to a cold and a cough, I couldn’t actually deliver the homily verbally. I instead gave a short summary at each Mass]
I love dogs. I think they are a marvelous piece of evidence of God’s design – that the universe is meant for us. What’s remarkable about dogs is that they sprang up all around the world at almost the same time and the best we can tell, we didn’t make it happen. It happened on its own. If you take two wolves who aren’t afraid of people – who have what is called a short “flight distance” – then their pups basically become dogs within one or two generations.
And dogs are amazing. They know how to read our facial expressions, recognize our voice, understand a certain number of our verbal commands, and they are naturally loyal and protective. It’s like they were designed to be man’s best friend. And there are a lot of other animals that fit well with human society, though they got like that in different ways. Cows, sheep, goats, horses, and others that seem friendly to people – there are lots of cute and funny videos of all sorts of animals who just naturally fit with humans. Not all animals do this, but some do, and it’s almost as if someone specifically designed a certain subset of animals to be friendly to human beings.
Well, that’s exactly what happened. The book of Genesis is not a science textbook, but it is true, and it does give us some important insights into the beginning of the world. It tells us that God brought all sorts of animals to Adam to help him find a “suitable partner.” The phrase “wild animals” is a bad translation. It is more literally “beasts of the field,” which is a Hebrew way of talking about domestic animals, friendly ones like dogs and cows. All of these animals are helpful partners to us, but they are not “suitable.”
So, Adam is given Eve, taken from his side: A symbol of the equality of man and woman. A “boy and his dog” is an awesome relationship, but it is dust in the wind compared to a man and his wife. And this story is not about God figuring out that men need women. It’s about him teaching humanity of this fundamental aspect of human nature: that it is male and female and that it is complementary. Earlier in Genesis, God makes it clear that human beings are made in the image and likeness of God, but he specifies that this image is seen in male and female. For all the amazing ways in which nature shows us God’s design, none compares to the original human relationship: marriage.
Marriage is not an invention. It is not a social convention. It is written into the very fabric of human nature. Every culture recognizes this, even though all cultures mess it up and twist it in some way through their sinfulness and perversion. And Jesus Christ is extremely clear about this. Jesus Christ, who is God, quotes God in Scripture to say marriage has been there from the beginning. To claim to be a Christian and ignore this reality is to be a hypocrite and a bald-faced liar.
Today’s Gospel is probably the most hated Catholic doctrine in the western world today. It prohibits divorce. It reinforces the reality of two sexes, two genders. Oh, and it “judges” people by calling divorce and remarriage “adultery.” But it is also evidence of just how amazing God’s love for us really is. Forbidding divorce is the negative corollary to the amazing positive reality I described just now: that we are made in the divine image.
God is a Trinity, a loving union of three persons. When he decided to create the universe, he decided to do it in a way that revealed something about who he is. Everything that exists reveals something about God. But, in all of the physical universe, there is one thing that stands out: human beings. In the hierarchy of the physical universe, we are vastly higher than everything else. Stars reflect the fact that God is light. Plants and animals reflect the fact that God is life. They tell us something about God. But we… we reflect who God is, the inner identity of God as an eternal exchange of love is see, in the natural world, only in us. Man and woman, united in love, produce a third who manifests and shares their love.
Marriage is not just a legal contract. It’s not just a convenient economic decision, or a good way to raise kids. It is, at its root, a revelation and a message of who God is – the great love letter of God to all creation. Even Jesus Christ, though he did not marry an individual woman, did get married. He married the Church, which is meant to incorporate all of humanity. He died for the Church, an eternal act of self-giving love. Actually, it’s the other way around. Marriage was created to prepare us to understand Jesus Christ’s gift of love. It’s not that Jesus got married, but that married people foreshadow Jesus Christ and the Church, that married people are symbols meant to prepare us for the even greater reality of union and love that is heaven.
So, yeah, when we break that covenant… when we pervert marriage and destroy it, it’s kind of a bid deal. In a great twist of irony, there are people today – even leaders of the Roman Catholic Church! – who call us “pharisees” for refusing to be okay with divorce and remarriage. But as you can see right here, it is precisely the pharisees who are okay with divorce. Jesus is not being legalistic and cold-hearted, he is passionately in love. The truth that he is defending is so great that adultery is never okay. For that reason, and by the grace of God, I pray that I am killed before I ever say otherwise.
But Father! Life is messy and we should accompany people! We should be patient and kind and forgiving! Absolutely. Life is very messy, and I do want to accompany you. One problem today is that there are many people who think they are married but are, in fact, not married. They’ve so twisted the definition of the word in their mind that when they make their vows, they aren’t actually getting married. When that happens, it takes some work to sort out the mess
The reality of divorce and remarriage today is complicated. The Church’s practice of “annulments” is also complicated and confusing. It’s more than I can cover in a single homily. But, the truth that lies behind all of it, the truth of who we are as created by God, is worth facing that mess. And I want to face it with you. If you are divorced, let me help. If you are remarried, but not in the Church, let me help. If you are just plain confused, let me help.
And all of us must pray. Visionaries and prophets have warned us that the final battle of Satan vs. the Church will be over the family precisely because it points to who God is. As goes the family, so goes the world. The world is very broken. It has been since the first sin, but that break seems to be getting worse because the brokenness of families has gotten worse. Strive to love your own family as God intended. Strive to be close to the Church as your spiritual family. And pray, fast, sacrifice, and if you have to, die in order to help every family embrace who they are: a sign of God’s love. To embrace why they were made: to love and be loved. And to embrace where they are meant to go: heaven, which is nothing more than an ever deeper journey into the Love of God.
My cousin Monsiegnor Mouton as reported to me by my mother refused to do any of our marriages or baptisms. He would not go to visit my grandmother who was his Godmother? The Doctors I worked with at the hospital laughed about him wearing his long black robes! He only came to dinner at our house once when I was a child and we were told to stay in the back room as it was after meeting any priest that came for dinner, it was a Scared time for adults and almost as is the Good Lord there! I never knew any other priest who acted this way and in his book when he transferred from Abbeville to St. Pius the people told him alotof people didn’t want him there and he said he had noooo idea why the would not like him! Then I realized all priests should have followed his way because that was what God wanted, but then the devil told the priests to become like a lay person and have fun like a lay person and God knows the rest is church history now!