Mass readings for the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Genesis 2.7ab, 15, 18-24 Psalm 128.1-5 Hebrews 2.9-11 Mark 10.2-16
In recent weeks I’ve been talking about the Church’s renewal, the diocesan Forward Together in Christ initiative; and the Holy Father’s call to synodality. And the readings spoke to the need to be re-oriented in our understanding of Christ away from a worldly perspective to being a spirit-led community. Engaging the world, and each other, in evangelization, catechesis, worship and pastoral care in this way is what Jesus was talking about. We are in the world, but we’re not to be of the world. Yet the Church often finds herself returning to that worldly outlook, and so, fails in her mission; sometimes spectacularly.
So, this week’s gospel may strike us as a jarring change in direction as it touches on the sensitive matter of marriage, and Christ’s prohibition on divorce. To be frank, it’s matters such as this that cause people to leave the Church, and abandon faith in any meaningful sense of the word – they may retain a belief in God, but bring a worldly frame of mind to moral and metaphysical questions; the Catholic tradition having little or no influence because they find its teaching difficult. By the way, this isn’t to say Catholics who’ve divorced have all left. Actually, that can’t be said at all. It’s not that those who disagree with the Church have themselves gone through a divorce necessarily – indeed, this is a matter of principle: they see the Church’s position as unrealistic, and even just plain unfair. Now here I remind, this isn’t about a policy of the Church. Christ teaches this.
So, we have people objecting to what Christ taught, even as they still find Jesus attractive. This is evidence of our capture by the world. Like the disciples in today’s gospel, we continue to unconsciously think according to its precepts, holding its assumptions about what life is about (in our modern era, that’s usually in terms of personal fulfilment), and so adapt institutions like marriage to fit these. Yet we also see how the adaptations have not served us well as either individuals or as a society. Many Catholics are then caught in a conundrum: the worldly perspective is found convincing even as Christ remains compelling. Pulled and tugged by this, they give up; and make no real choice between Christ and the world. They try to be nice people by their own estimation of goodness, trust God is alright with that, and avoid thinking about it. It’s the very thing Jesus warns us about: being neither hot nor cold, just lukewarm (Revelation 3.15-17).
But the issue is more than being tepid in our love of Christ; Jesus sees in the human desire for the freedom to divorce evidence of “hardness of heart.” Yet that seems quite a harsh judgement on those who wish to end unhappy marriages.
We need then to ask, why are they unhappy? It’s because those marriages are in the world and of the world. No ritual can make it otherwise, but the sacrament of marriage, even for the most worldly of couples, can open a way out of the world, and into God’s kingdom where we can be spiritually transformed in Christ. Yet so many of us are unaware of our situation, and accept what the world tells us: this is just what marriage is – a bit of a crap shoot! Some are lucky in it, others not.
I remember hearing a priest, years ago now, trying to grapple with this difficult teaching. His message was an exhortation to Catholics, to people in general, to be more discerning in marrying, to do the hard work of preparation, and so, reduce the prospect of failure.
Nice try, but I didn’t think it was going to make anyone feel better who found themselves in a difficult marital situation: this could only feed regret.
I remember my own entry into marriage. After at last proposing to my long-suffering girlfriend, we went to the church and sat down with an Anglican priest. He asked, “why do you want to get married?” And, for all the world, I had a hard time answering in anything other than the cliché language of our culture. My word! I even think I said something along the lines of “she completes me.” Which, to be fair to myself and others who’ve said as much, is derived from Church teaching that male and female complement each other. But as to what else was floating around in my mind in terms of motivations, I can’t say they were concerned with the Kingdom of God. Marriage for a lot of people is just something we’re expected to get around to, that it’s a sign of adulthood; for some, there’s a feeling of obligation, to family and society. But there’s also the sense of it being something from which we derive benefit; it facilitates personal development and helps us achieve life goals. It’s the kind of thinking one encounters in articles in the secular media that tell us how married people live longer, are happier, and so on, implying that these personal benefits are the reason people should get married. As to the rather diminished religious understanding of marriage people have, it’s in terms of the narrow matter of one’s scruples around sexual intimacy, the morality of sex outside of marriage. So, marriage is then just a means to guilt-free sex!
Enter into marriage with these things framing one’s understanding, and there is a high risk of failure. Be disappointed in one’s expectations, and it becomes difficult to stick it out. Encounter difficulties, tragedies, and too few of the benefits, and continuing seems pointless. Yet even if things go smoothly, with nice family vacations and so on, there is often boredom and lack of deeper fulfilment that so disappoints people they feel compelled to blow up their relationships.
The same dynamic has been set up for us in terms of understanding life itself: it’s a grand adventure, and we pursue personal fulfilment through it, in the form of wealth, or creative expression, family, fame, whatever. Yet for many these days there is not only a hollowness in these earthbound goals, but now the sense, especially among the young, that they can’t attain them! The despair that comes of this results in widespread depression, anxiety, and leads some to the kind of substance abuse that is killing so many – deadening the pain of an unfulfilling life to the point where they wind up dead.
In today’s gospel, Jesus is again trying give us
a sense of what the proper mindset ought to be, the frame of mind born of the spirit that brings understanding of the gospel. He tells them these hard lessons must be received “as a little child” would, or you won’t find your way into God’s kingdom ever.
But what does that mean? We’re now as puzzled as old Nicodemus was when Jesus told him he needed to be born again – how can one return to his mother’s womb? In this case, how can I be five-years-old again? A trusting, little child who intuits the need to be guided, and taught by parents, by older siblings and other members of an extended family. Yet, that is what is being put to us: to unlearn what we have learned from the world and its master, deceiving Satan, and take our lessons from God the Father, Christ our brother; by the saints, our extended family of faith who are not only examples from the past, but are even now praying for us.
Now, some people have been blessed by circumstances that make them open to the graces of the sacrament of marriage. They may have been naïve going in, but because both kept up their faith, they grow together into God’s design, just as we as faithful individuals conform ourselves to Christ over time. Even for those who’ve drifted into marriage, through the now very common process of common-law civil relationships, they can come into the fulness of being a living sacrament as a married couple through their progressing in faith. They start back on the journey with Christ, having their marriage convalidated, receiving the sacrament of marriage. Then, like all of us, in whatever state of life we are in, single or married, they begin to deepen their understanding of what God has called them to, in the case of married people, in marriage.
As Saint Pope John Paul II said, “As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.” Families are formed in marriage: families of two, families of twelve and everything in between and beyond. These can be of the world, built on human ambition, greed, lust, etc. Or they can have the firm foundation of faith, the nurture of the sacrament of marriage, and through its continuing grace, fulfil our human vocation to holiness. But for God’s plan to be realized in marriage, in all our relationships, in the Church and eventually in the World, we must reject the hardness of heart that the world demands, and enter the kingdom as trusting children, and there be taken up in our Saviour’s love.
Amen.