Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXVII per Annum B
Gen. 2:18-24; Ps. 128; Heb. 2:9-11; Mk. 10:2-12 (shorter form)
6 October 2024

 The Pharisees test Jesus in the Gospel passage by asking about marriage and divorce.  The force of Jesus’ response remains powerful still today in an age marked by many challenges in relationships.  The Pharisees indicate that Moses permitted a “bill” of divorce.  Jesus responds to the Pharisees by himself quoting the Book of Genesis and taking them back to “the beginning.”  It’s like saying, see how far you have strayed… get back to God’s original idea and mind.

As difficult as this divine teaching from Jesus is for our ears in this age, it was likewise difficult for Jesus’ contemporaries in the Gospel scene.  They, like we, live in a culture where divorce is widely known and accepted.  There were different opinions about legitimate grounds for divorce in the Lord’s time, some more permissive, and some more restrictive, but the reason the Pharisees can even ask this question at all is because the legitimacy of divorce is assumed in Jewish society, since Moses had developed a policy for it.  It is probably very difficult for us to comprehend just how shocking Jesus’ answer was.  Moses is a revered authority in Judaism, but the Lord’s response reveals a flawed concession in Moses’ policy.  He tells the Pharisees that, yes, Moses allowed divorce, but he did so because of sin, the hardness of heart that kept God’s People from receiving the very Word of God.  And then, the next shocking move, by reinterpreting Scripture and, specifically the teaching from the Book of Genesis, Jesus says that divorce is not possible and that no human authority can separate what God has joined.  At the very same time, then, and this would shock them, Jesus is indicating that he and his teaching are of a higher authority than that of the revered Moses.  We get another glimpse of just how surprising this must all have been when the next verse tells us that the disciples wait until a bit later, in the privacy of a house, to circle back and ask Jesus again, as if to say, “Earlier, when you said divorce is not part of God’s design for marriage, did we hear you correctly?”  The Lord doubles down and says: The man who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery; and, the woman who divorces her husband and marries another commits adultery.

The same serious challenge confronts us as we hear this Gospel.  The larger question for us is whether we will listen to God’s Word and accept it as saving teaching to guide us, or whether we will listen more to the hardness of our hearts and our own struggles with sin, looking for concessions around divine teaching.  The context here in the Gospel is about marriage and divorce, but truthfully the implications are much broader.  Will we admit that divine teaching cannot be changed by us and that it makes demands upon us?  Even though our minds and our wills, darkened by the fall of original sin, struggle to grasp and to do what is good and right, will we admit that divine teaching is actually better for us and makes us more fulfilled, despite our challenges with obedience?

As the Lord referred to Genesis in his response about divorce, I also want to turn to that passage, which served as our first reading today.  I think refocusing on Genesis leaves us with the positive teaching that is the foundation of these difficult words in the Gospel.  What we learn in Genesis is that God Himself has designed the relationship of marriage.  By making us male and female, and establishing a unity among man and woman in marriage in the very act of creation, God has made marriage to serve as a sign of Himself and His own unity with and love for us, His creation.  Furthermore, in the New Covenant, endowed by the saving grace issuing forth from the Lord’s Cross and Resurrection, marriage stands as the covenantal sign of Christ and his Church.  Christian marriage is to be marked by the positive goods of unity, indissolubility, and openness to the blessing of children, by which marriage reflects the way God unites Himself to us (unity), the way God draws us to eternal life, never separating Himself from us (indissolubility), and the way God’s love issues forth for us in the new life of grace, especially eternal life in Heaven (fecundity).

This is the positive truth about marriage in our Catholic teaching.  This truth is actually better for us than what the world proposes.  This truth remains unchanged even when our sinfulness and doubts would have us believe things about marriage that are not consistent with God’s mind for marriage.  One final lesson from the Book of Genesis is instructive, I think, for understanding the type of sacrifice required of us to embrace even hard teachings, and this particular teaching on marriage.  When I consider how it is that the suitable partner, Eve, is made for Adam, it involves that well-known image and story of God casting Adam into sleep in order to take a rib from him and fashion the woman.  If we accept that divine teaching is better for us, even as it places demands upon us, then we can learn something from this act of creation that can inspire how we view marriage and, honestly, how we embrace any teaching of faith that strikes us as difficult.  What can we say that Adam learns when God finally makes Eve and he, Adam, first lays eyes upon her?  We can say Adam learns that he is no longer alone and his life has meaning and, in fact, is better when he makes sacrifice and gives of himself.  When he gives up his own flesh and blood, imaged in the rib, he awakes to that nuptial cry of the “finally!”, the cry of “This one, at last!” is the suitable partner.  It is precisely in laying down his life, precisely in giving of himself, even his very flesh and blood, that Adam finds meaning and purpose in his very being and in his living.  Yes, it requires sacrifice, but the nuptial cry of Adam, his “this one at last!”, anticipates the cry of Jesus from the Cross: “It is finished”; and, Adam’s gift of himself anticipates that difficult lesson that each disciple must accept: the way to follow the Lord, the way to be satisfied in this life, the way to lasting peace, the way to eternal life is by embracing God’s teaching, especially when difficult, and rejecting the worldly message that speaks to, and seems to make sense to, a darkened mind and a fallen world.  The lesson of Adam’s sacrifice and self-giving, whereby true meaning and life are found, remains for us, too, no matter how difficult it may be to accept God’s teachings, no matter how challenging it may be for us, no matter how our cultural forces may reject such teaching and make concessions due to hardness of heart.  Yes, we can admit this is difficult, it can bring suffering, it requires us to embrace the cross; but, in so doing we learn what Adam learned in his self-giving that resulted in Eve, and we learn to be like the Lord, the leader of our salvation who was made perfect through suffering (second reading).