Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year B
Homily
[Genesis 2:7ab, 15, 18-24; Psalm 128; Hebrews 2:9-11; Mark 10:2-16]
As you know by now, we have launched our three Archdiocesan pastoral priorities for the next three years. The third of them is formation for service to marriage and family. This will be a privileged opportunity for us to consider carefully and prayerfully all that the Church proclaims about marriage, grounded in the teaching of Jesus himself.
I recall this because a key instruction our Lord gives pertaining to marriage is recorded for us today in the text from the Gospel of Saint Mark. His words speak clearly of the nature of marriage as a union of man and woman, joined in a bond that is indissoluble because fashioned by God himself. His words are well known by us, and I am sure we will have many occasions to study them deeply as the priorities unfold. For our purposes today, I would like to focus with you on the mission of marriage, the vital role it plays in our society and world. I believe it is critically important that families not only understand but also live this mission, in light of the circumstances – the very troubling situation – in which the world now finds itself. Here is what I mean:
Tomorrow is October 7th, the first anniversary of the horrendous and barbarous attacks by Hamas upon the Jewish people. Since that day, as we are all painfully aware, the tragedy has broadened into a lethal and frightening regional conflagration. Sadly, battles are not limited to the Middle East. Think, too, of the war in Ukraine, and the many conflicts exploding in Sudan and elsewhere in Africa. What we have is a global situation of deep division among peoples. Although not as dramatic or violent, fracture marks our own society, too, here in Canada, evidenced not least in a loss of civility among peoples, even at times within the Church, moving us away from one another. Division, fracture, separation: increasingly these are the hallmarks of our era.
This situation places in high relief the mission of marriage. As the Church states in the Catechism, marriage is at the service of communion. It has always been thus, with marriage spoken of frequently as the foundational and vital cell of both Church and society. A careful consideration of how Jesus begins his teaching today helps us to see why this is so.
His reply to the question of the Pharisees regarding divorce begins with these words: “from the beginning of creation…” Here, Jesus is taking them, and us, back to God’s original intention in creating human beings. That divine purpose is communion. Recall that God, in the beginning, created us in His image and likeness, that is to say, in the image of God who is Himself communion – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So, to serve as a reflection of God in the world, the human being is created male and female, called by the complementarity of the sexes to deep personal communion with each other. By taking us back to the beginning of creation, Jesus makes clear that God’s intention in fashioning humanity must be the standard for not only marriage but also all human relationships.
In this light the mission of marriage becomes clear – to stand forth in the world as a sign of the communion God wills to exist among all peoples. And not only the sign but also the instrument. In the living out of the full meaning and mission of marriage, the family becomes the place where unity among persons is first forged, thus becoming that unifying cell of societal and world order.
This is not to say that the mission is easy. Fidelity to the marital bond and all that is involved in the raising and education of children demands self-denial and humility. The fact that these virtues are seldom celebrated in secular society can place great strain and stress upon family life. Yet neither does our Lord expect us to live out the family vocation unaided. He himself wishes to enter into every detail of family life, so that he can be the source of our communion and the inspiration of our every effort to live that unity faithfully and joyfully.
We see an indication of this in the Lord’s encounter with children that follows immediately upon his teaching on marriage. People were bringing their children to Jesus just so he could touch them. Echoing in the background is the command of God – again, issued at the beginning of creation – that the man and woman be fruitful and multiply. Included in the divine intention for marriage is the gift of children. Here Jesus is demonstrating not only how precious children are to God, but also indicating that it is by God’s touch, God’s blessing, that marriage and the family can live the mission to be a communion of loving relationships, one that shows forth to the world the unity and harmony God wills to exist among all peoples.
God is the author of marriage, and has endowed it with a magnificent and necessary mission in our increasingly fractured world. May our celebration today of the Eucharist, the sacrament par excellence of communion, strengthen and deepen the unity of married couples and the lives of their families, so that, by the blessing of God, they can be effective agents of unity in the world of our day.
Most Reverend Richard W. Smith
Saint Joseph Basilica
October 6th, 2024