32nd Sunday of Year (C)
(2nd
Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14; 2nd.Thessalonians 2:16 – 3:5; Luke 20:27-38)
Our readings this Sunday are very topical and timely because we hear much about ‘family’ these days, not so much as the basic Christian institution consisting of father, mother -- husband and wife -- and their rightly born or adopted children, but about modern, floating, ‘family-type’ relationships, concerning only one acknowledged parent, or two: complementary in their sexuality, or both of the same sex. And then there is another modern consideration, a ‘woke’ secular society and government, trying to loudly promote itself, by whittling down parental rights, authority and responsibility, in order to help -- so they say -- children of whatever parentage and in whatever need; all of which brings about the danger that even some simple Christian people may begin to think that marriage and parentage of itself is a merely natural matter.
We who are Christians and Catholics, however, whilst we are
grateful for any real help given to strengthen the Christian institution of
married life, confess and profess that marriage is a God-gifted institution,
established by Him for a spiritual and heavenly purpose, and bringing personal
and social benefits essential for human progress in true peace and right prosperity
(Matthew 19:4–5):
Jesus said, “Have you not
read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and, ‘For
this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife,
and the two shall become one flesh’?
God’s purpose for marriage calls for life-long, mutual and
exclusive love, leading to personal -- not merely sexual -- fulfilment for the
spouses; and stability, confidence, and growth for the family and indeed society
as a whole; while ultimately preparing for the eternal happiness and
heavenly blessedness of all who dedicated their married lives to Christ,
and tried to live them in the power and promise of His Spirit.
The Second Vatican Council taught us that God Himself is
the author of marriage when it declared: The intimate community of life and love which
constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed
by Him with its own proper laws.
Our Faith also tells us that human beings are created in
the image and likeness of God Whose Love is the ultimate, absolute, and
unfailing power which finds mankind good, very good, in all its powers and
possibilities, as the intention of His Creator’s thought; and that this divine love is intended to
be recognized and embraced by mankind, thus enabling them, in turn, to bear
fruit and find fulfilment in the work of presiding over creation:
Be
fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.
Man and woman themselves were originally created for one
another, they are divinely complementary; and Jesus showed that Christian marriage
-- requiring a sacred, and lovingly-unbreakable union of husband and wife -- eminently
manifests this divine intention, when He authoritatively recalled that in the beginning the Creator’s plan had
been:
That
they are no longer two, but one flesh.
Sin however, entered into the world; and now, especially in
our modern times of Western betrayal, everyone experiences evil all around,
openly portrayed and promoted by the media; and also from within his or her own
life-experience. But nevertheless, the
order of creation persists, even though men and women now know life as seriously
disturbed and disturbing. To heal the
wounds of sin, man and woman need anew, and so very urgently, the help of grace
that God in His infinite mercy will never refuse them. However, it is a grace originally won and supremely
exemplified by Jesus Christ Who was willing to suffer Personally in order that His
love might triumph in our sinful world, and without a like willingness to
embrace suffering that His love might triumph in us and through us in our
experience of life and living-together, men and women cannot fully achieve that
union of their lives for which God created them in the beginning.
Jesus had a great respect for the institution of marriage
as we see from the fact that, on the threshold of His public ministry He
performed His first miracle – at His mother’s request – during, and for the success
of, a wedding feast. In the course of that ministry, Jesus taught
unequivocally the original meaning of the union of man and woman as the Creator
willed it from the beginning: the matrimonial union is indissoluble: God
Himself has determined it:
What
God has joined together, let no man put asunder.
No matter what the trendy press may print, no matter what
public figures may do, no matter how much off-course human rights activists may
agitate against it, marriage is a Christian institution for man and woman only
and exclusively, and it cannot be terminated or broken by any civil authority. From these two principles we should begin to
see something of the seriousness of marriage and the dignity both of the
marriage bond itself and of the man and woman who together enter into that
bond.
Let us now, in the light of Jesus’ teaching in the Church,
have a short glance at today’s readings.
Let us begin with the Gospel reading.
You can see how the stiff-necked people whose hearts were hard, and who
had forced Moses to wrongly allow them to divorce, came to regard matrimony;
for the attitude of the Sadducees with their story of the seven brothers who
died and the one wife who survived them all, shows neither reverence for what
is holy, nor awareness of what is spiritual.
For them marriage was carnal and functional, nothing more.
However, Jesus’ answer to the Sadducees gives us guidance
with regard to another and more modern error.
Marriage is not an end in itself nor is it eternal. Marriage is, however, a pre-eminent means
God has established and uses for the sanctification of people here on earth; and
those who live their married life aright are thereby helped to become worthy,
as Jesus said: of a place in the other
world as children of the resurrection and sons of God.
However, an
overly sentimental and predominantly emotional view of married love can very
easily lead the partners to expect too much from it and demand too
much from each other; and, quite tragically, become unforgiving in their
attitude to each other.
Finally, let us have a short look at the first reading, for
here is an example and a teaching which is certainly much needed today. What a wonderful woman was shown us in that
reading! She did indeed live the role
marriage had brought her: she taught her sons, she disciplined her sons, by the
very love she had for them. Let me just recall
for you how she disciplined, by love, her youngest son:
In derision of the cruel
tyrant, she leaned over close to her son and said in their native language:
“Son, have pity on me, who carried you in my womb for nine months, nursed you
for three years, brought you up, educated and supported you to your present
age. I beg you, child, to look at the heavens and the earth and see all that is
in them; then you will know that God did not make them out of existing things;
and in the same way the human race came into existence. Do not be afraid of this executioner, but be
worthy of your brothers and accept death, so that in the time of mercy I may
receive you again with them.”
You who are mothers should recognize that YOU have, from
God, the key to your children’s hearts, and that you and your husband have also
God-given authority over and for your children.
Use those gifts with humility, prayer, and confidence. Do not let your children do
whatever they may want, but guide them, comfort, and, when necessary, discipline
them, with love. Realize that your
children are gifts to you from God and bring them up as children of His whom He
has entrusted to you; do not leave
them to guide themselves or follow the example of those who have neither faith
nor morals.
Parents and children are meant to thank God eternally for
each other:
mothers, teach your
children to respect their father;
fathers, teach your
children to love their mother.
Parents both, don’t
fail in your responsibility before God, because you are meant to be the first and
surest teachers and exemplars about God for your children ... don’t lose that heavenly
glory which will most surely be yours by loving and respecting each other, and together,
serving, calmly loving and trusting God, in all the joys and vicissitudes of
life.
