27th Sunday in Ordinary Time
October 4, 2015
10 AM & 12 Noon Liturgies
J.A. Loftus, S.J.
Today, in Rome, Pope Francis will convene the Ordinary
Synod of Bishops concerning the family. (He may have already
convened it at the opening Mass by this time.) What we’ve just
heard are the very same readings he will be presented to preach. I
dearly wish I could have heard what he had to say to the bishops.
But it was not yet posted on line. So I will have to fend for myself.
Parts of today’s readings have become quite controversial.
Other parts just remain puzzling. The puzzling part today is Jesus
returning at the end of the gospel story to again talk about
children. This is the fourth gospel in a row wherein this is so.
What is it about children Jesus keeps repeating? Let’s get that out
of the way first and let it perhaps enlighten some of the
controversy.
A brief summary of Jesus’ teaching about children might be
characterized like this. For Jesus, children know just how much
they need others; they need help; they need love; they need
forgiveness. That’s first. They know, quite explicitly usually, that
they need help from others to negotiate their new worlds.
Then, secondly, they are never at a loss to ask for that help.
They often ask insistently. They cry; they pound on doors; they
pout. But they “seek and they find.”
Finally, children know rather instinctively that things in the
world are not always what they seem to be. Deeper meanings and
purer colors are often hidden on first glance. And children expect
to be surprised by the world, and surprised by us adults too.
That simple phrase, “things are not always what they seem,”
comes in handy a lot—even for adults. The Irish claim the phrase
as one of their own old sayings. But the oldest written form seems
to have come in Plato’s Phaedrus dialogue. It says there: “Things
are not always what they seem; the first appearance deceives
many.”
On first reading, today’s gospel seems to contemporary ears
to sound like a flat-out, no exceptions allowed, treatise on divorce.
It does sound that simple. But, I’m afraid, it’s not that simple.
In all the gospels, Jesus is always presented as too smart to
get caught-up in the Pharisees’ plots to trip him up with trivia.
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Both Jesus and the Pharisees knew the Mosaic Law. No one was
looking for “new” information about divorce. What Jesus does—as
he does so often in his answers to the Pharisees—he pushes the
envelope much further and much deeper.
The reading from Genesis today sets the stage for what Jesus
was really saying. God created everything and everyone to live
together in harmony, in peace, and in loving relationship. God
creates Adam from the dust and breathes—literally blows the
Spirit—into him. Then, from the same ground or dust, God
fashions all the animals and birds, all living things. And from the
exact same material, from the earth itself, God sends man and
woman out as complimentary partners to enjoy the earth, their
earth, in all its splendor. We all come from the same basic dust—
all living matter does, indeed even all non-living matter does.
There is only one source of life. And that source intends
mutually respectful and even loving relationships among all the
“dusty” entities. That’s the whole point of “The Big Bang!”
The real message here—the sub-text if you will—is God
saying to us all: let no one, for whatever reason, ever separate men
and women from their partnership with God, or from their
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partnership with their fellow creatures, or from their partnership
with each other. It is a reminder from God that we are all meant
for each other. Laudato Si! This gospel is the seed of all Care for
our Common Home.
Jesus is not simply providing marriage laws. It is a much
bigger framework. And Jesus’ later followers, and even the other
Evangelists, knew that clearly. Both Matthew’s version of this
saying and St. Paul already reveal exceptions to the marriage laws.
Perhaps the author of the Letter to the Hebrews captures the
“real” message, oddly enough. “He who consecrates [God], and
those being consecrated [Jesus and the rest of us], have the same
origin. So he [Jesus] is not afraid to call them brothers and sisters.”
Hence, Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Mother Earth, are all joined in the
dance of the cosmos whenever two human beings live together in
love. And let no one put that asunder!
Let me end as Jesus does. Learning from the children.
“Things are not always what they seem. The first appearance
deceives many.” Peace!
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