TWENTY-SEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – OCTOBER 6, 2012
I
–The two of them become one flesh.
R
–May the Lord bless us all the days of our lives.
II
– He who consecrates and those who are being consecrated all have one origin.
A
– If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is brought to
perfection in us.
G –What
God has joined together, let no human being separate.
+ It is clear from our
readings today that the male
and the female of the human species have an essential and correlative relationship with one another that cannot be denied. [And here at the outset
in 2024, there is an ideology that says this is not so – God really got it
wrong.] But this is getting ahead of
ourselves in the story at hand. God, if we noticed in the account from Genesis
today, had originally intended to create just “man” – just Adam. This
was his original intent. Why? Because he as a Personal, Trinitarian God
thought it sufficient to show his love to just one expression of human
personhood, one Man, one enormously graced Friend of God!
But this Adam looked around
and saw other creatures with companions, helpmates and co-creators of new life
(babies), and so he asked God for a suitable partner for himself: “the Man.”
The suitable partner for the man became the wo-man:
one like him, taken from him! God then told them that they
belong together and the two of them
would best image this creation of “marriage” by uniting themselves in the
complementary way in which they were made – to form one flesh – which would in essence image the One Man that he
originally envisioned.
And so, the “marital
unification, embrace” of male and female instantly became the standard, the
visible manifestation and the pattern for eons to come of the mind of God
regarding the happiness of mankind and the means by which it would preserve the
species.
It is absolutely consistent to
say that the Creation of Man; and the Institution of Marriage between a man and
a woman happened at the same time. Both are entirely
dependent on the Divine Law which begot them, and both are forever tied to the
supernatural, natural, moral and ethical laws that derive from it. This
only makes sense. In our day and age – in our American society with its
penchant for seeking what is just and fair, come what may – a very fine line
must not be crossed when dealing with God on his own terms. For in the end,
it does not matter how we have rationalized anything at all; what will prevail is what God told us all
along about certain topics and how we respond to his clear message!
Therefore, marriage and family
life are to be highly regarded as gifts of God, not
personal rights, and that to consider altering not only their definitions,
but also their inherent structures by any rational, civilized society of any
era at all – is not only presumptuous, but also highly offensive to God the
giver of all Good Gifts!
Our responsorial psalm today
calls blessed and happy those who fear
the Lord and walk in his ways! It would not be untrue to say
that the converse is also true: those who do not fear the Lord – those who
think they know better than him – and walk in their own ways – will be called
unblessed and unhappy – most likely in this life and most assuredly in the
next!
Jesus came to us to remind us
of all the good things that are available for those who love God and walk
according to his immutable but very loving and wise ways – and
even when we sin and think that we know better than either himself or his
Father – he is always ready to take us back into the fold when we realize our
mistake and ask forgiveness.
Finally, this is a time for
seeking forgiveness in our sorely and dangerously confused American society –
before it is too late, and make no mistake the clock is ticking, and it is
ticking down more rapidly every day! There is an expiration
date on the “human experiment” – the wisdom of giving these highest forms of
creation “free will!” To help achieve a “happy ending” – God sent his Son
to take on our human veil, our human flesh, our human life – to model how it
can actually be done. And not only that he also provided a way to be empowered
from the inside to live on the outside, the value, norms, and objective of God
himself – so that we end up where we want to be when the new era is signaled to
begin. He did this by insisting that we not only be near him, but that we
can actually eat and drink him, so he can be inside of us, to fulfill in a very
dramatic way his promise “to be with us until the end of the age” – the end of
the age is NOW, it is HERE, and at this Mass Jesus is with us in a most
dramatic way! How fortunate and blessed we are and how empowered we are to
actually draw all things to him, so that he can one day soon hand us all over
to God his Father and ours, so the final act in human history can begin!
If we
love one another, from the heart, truly as brothers and sisters,
God remains in us and his love is brought
to perfection in us and through us countless hundreds and thousands as our
Light and Life ripple forward and out, and up and to the Kingdom.
Amen.
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