October 3rd 2021. Twenty-seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

GOSPEL Mark 10:2-16

Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

 

Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading . . .

 

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GOSPEL Mark 10:2-16

The Pharisees approached Jesus and asked,
"Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?"
They were testing him.
He said to them in reply, "What did Moses command you?"
They replied,
"Moses permitted a husband to write a bill of divorce
and dismiss her."
But Jesus told them,
"Because of the hardness of your hearts
he wrote you this commandment.
But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.
For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother
and be joined to his wife,
and the two shall become one flesh.
So they are no longer two but one flesh.
Therefore what God has joined together,
no human being must separate."
In the house the disciples again questioned Jesus about this.
He said to them,
"Whoever divorces his wife and marries another
commits adultery against her;
and if she divorces her husband and marries another,
she commits adultery."
And people were bringing children to him that he might touch them,
but the disciples rebuked them.
When Jesus saw this he became indignant and said to them,
"Let the children come to me;
do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to
such as these.
Amen, I say to you,
whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child
will not enter it."
Then he embraced them and blessed them,
placing his hands on them.

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

 

SUMMARY OF HOMILY

 

1. This Gospel is for everyone because our nature is SPOUSAL.

The first reading from Genesis and the Gospel from Mark both speak of the call of married couples to indissoluble union. As always, the Gospel is not just relevant for one sector of humanity (married couples) but speaks to every person in every condition of life. Each one of us is challenged to deepen our understanding of our fundamentally spousal nature. St Paul tells us that the union of man and woman must be understood in the light of the relationship between Christ and the Church, which is all about the gift of oneself. In Italian, there is the expression, “You have not wed yourself to this plan”. Of course, you cannot marry an idea or a thing, but the expression refers to one’s self-involvement in a project. It is possible to live without ever entering into a spousal type of relationship. Some people have been married for decades without ever donating themselves to the other! On the other hand, there are single people who live lives of love, putting themselves entirely into the service of others. God issues a universal and radical call to do everything by giving ourselves, by offering ourselves, by uniting ourselves to others.

 

2. What stops us from true spousal behaviour? Hardness of heart

What opposes this universal call? The hardness of our hearts. At the very moment we need to be true to our call, we invent rules that permit us to be released from the bond. In moments of crisis, when it is hard to remain with the other person, our hearts harden and we return to the business of defending my own little space. Once we enter into marriage, we soon discover that reality is different to our dreams. The moment comes when we must transcend ourselves and enter into God’s plan for us, no longer being two separate people, but one flesh only, where we forget ourselves. We can go through life, selecting our relationships, uniting ourselves to others insofar as it suits us, rejecting the very things that we are called to do. The word “conjugal” has interesting origins. It means to have the same yoke (the instrument laid upon a beast of burden so that they will bear the weight of the load they are carrying). This requires that both walk at the same pace. If one beast of burden in a pair stops, then the other must stop also. Either the rhythm of my life is dictated by my own egotistical preoccupations or it is open to walking with others. How beautiful it is to do things together, to sing together, to do the little and large things of life together. This is the call of the Gospel.

 

3. We should have no fear of living in a spousal way; this is how Christ loves us

The passage ends with the disciples trying to stop people bringing children to Jesus. He rebukes them, saying, “To ones such as these belongs the Kingdom of Heaven”. What does he mean, that we take on attitudes that are infantile or immature? No. We are to welcome the Kingdom as a pure gift, without the tortuous suspicions of adults who wonder what God really wants from us. In fact, there is an ambiguity in the original Greek. It might mean, “to welcome the Kingdom as a child welcomes the Kingdom”, OR, “to welcome the Kingdom as you would welcome a child”. We should have no fear of the Kingdom, of God’s rule, no more than we fear a child. He calls us to live. The Gospel ends with Jesus embracing the children. Everything that Christ does is an echo of the love he receives from the Father, a love that he has brought to us so that we might love each other as Christ has loved us.

 

ALTERNATIVE HOMILY . . . Would you try to climb the Himalayas with tennis shoes? No, but how often people in our world try to embark on the journey of marriage without being remotely equipped in the right way! In the Gospel this Sunday, the Scribes want to talk about how to escape from marriage once it has gone wrong. Jesus, instead, wants to return to the ultimate foundation of marriage, a matter of the heart. He takes a child, embraces it and places it in the centre of the discussion. We must first of all embrace Christ in a childlike way before we can embrace each other. The relationship with Jesus is the basis of the indissolubility of marriage and the eternity of all our other relationships. The problem is that we seek to undertake marriage on the basis of hormones or passions, but these come to an end all too quickly. If we try to found our relationships on the capabilities of our own flesh, then we will find that it is a very fragile foundation indeed. And if our marriage is in difficulty, then trying to straighten out some of its superficial features can only have very limited success. The solution to marriage problems is to return to the origin of marriage: God’s love for us, his forgiveness, and his call to us to love and forgive each other. This is the true source of the indissolubility of marriage.

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