27th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year B
Genesis 2:18-24; Psalm 128:1-2, 3, 4-5, 6; Hebrews 2:9-11; Mark 10:2-16 (or 2-12)
Timing is everything.
A gospel reading from Mark that talks all about divorce and marriage,
and by implication, the family?
That reading popping up now, on the first weekend of October,
especially considering what great event this weekend marks?
I’m pretty sure we are all asking ourselves whether or not this is a coincidence,
and I’m here to say that the answer is “no”:
no, it is not a coincidence that I am preaching at the 5:30 mass,
and at that, dealing with the same gospel that appeared this weekend
exactly three years ago,
the day I preached my very first homily…at this mass.
We were all thinking of the same thing there, right?
Of course not.
I had to remind my own mother that this was the anniversary of my ordination
to the diaconate.
She was not impressed….
More likely, we were all thinking of the Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops
that began today in Rome.
The Synod, as you may know, has taken as its topic the life of the family,
and as the secular press has reminded us, this will probably include conversation
among the bishops on topics such as marriage, divorce,
reception of Holy Communion by those who are divorced
and civilly remarried, and families who have
gay or lesbian members.
Whether these themes will be as central to the Synod
as the press would like us to think they will be remains to be seen.
But given tonight’s gospel reading, it seems to me that it would be
a missed opportunity not to reflect on these matters, if only briefly,
and thus, if only partially.
But before moving to the heart of our reflection, let me address an obvious peculiarity:
the guy with the microphone, the guy about to reflect on marriage and divorce,
has never been married or divorced, has never been part of raising a family.
I push ahead anyway, however, because as I look back at the ten years I spent in formation
before becoming a deacon,
and the three years I have spent ministering since ordination to the diaconate,
I think of the many, many people who helped me get where I am:
other Jesuits, other priests, yes;
but even more lay women and men, girls and boys,
people who, though neither priests nor religious,
taught and still teach me
a tremendous amount about what
it means to be a Jesuit.
All of us have something to learn about our vocations from one another,
and when we talk about those vocations,
those concrete, messy, difficult, joy-filled ways
of responding to God’s call of friendship,
we ourselves are forming our own synod,
a word that simply means, “the path together.”
And that, in short, is the heart of my reflection:
we, the church, walk the path together, we form a synod,
when we talk about reality.
Take divorce.
When I was a child, back in the 1980s, we did not talk about divorce all that much.
No doubt, we spoke about it more than my parents did when they grew up
in the 1950s, but it was still a topic that,
if it were completely unavoidable in conversation,
demanded a certain lowering of the voice.
One place where voices were not lowered on this matter, however, was in church.
Voices seemed to be raised there, lest anyone not hear that the word “divorce”
needed to be linked with the word “sin,”
and remarriage linked with the terrifying phrase “living in sin.”
That sort of speech, which, I grant, occurs in some quarters to this day,
had and still has the very high potential of doing more harm than good.
Now there are, sadly, some divorces that appear to have the telltale marks
of sin about them – I think of two people I know, one man, one woman,
both of whom, just a handful of months into their marriages,
were presented with divorce papers by their spouses,
as both spouses decided to resume sexual relationships
that they had never really ended.
But in all situations, I have yet to see the divorce that does not include at least some,
and often tremendous pain, profound alienation,
and the deep, frightening question of “what now?”
Because we, the church, talk about the reality of divorce more today than we did
in the 50s, or the 80s, or even three years ago,
most of us recognize that the category of sin is almost always far less helpful
than the category of healing.
When it comes to marriage and family life,
let us hope that we talk about all of its real-life dimensions, not just divorce:
let us talk about marriages that flourish,
like that of the couple who told me last week
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that they were celebrating sixty-five years as husband and wife;
let us talk about marriages that have grown lukewarm;
married couples who are discerning divorce;
people who have filed for divorce
because they are in dangerous marriages.
Let us talk about families that looked like mine when I was a kid –
mom, dad, three kids, one grandmother;
or like mine when my grandmother had to be institutionalized
on account of Alzheimer’s Disease;
or like mine when my father died suddenly,
and my mom was left to raise three children on her own;
or like your family, with all the complexities,
tensions, and unique situations that it embraces.
And let us talk about these things not just on a worldwide church level,
but on the level of each of our families, which the Second Vatican Council calls
“the domestic church” (Lum. Gen., §11).
As the bishops and others gather in synod in Rome,
perhaps each of our families can gather in some type of synod to talk about
whatever it is we do not talk about.
You know what those issues are in your family,
just as I know what they are in mine.
Your family’s synod need not be formal – it could be convened at the dinner table,
in the living room, in the backyard…if it warms up a bit.
Wherever you do it, ask yourself:
can we speak to one another with parrhesia, as Pope Francis says,
with a loving boldness and confidence;
can we listen to each other with the assumption that no one
is saying anything to hurt or tear down another;
can we talk about reality, as it becomes incarnate in our families?
We, the church, walk the path together, we form a synod,
when we talk about reality.
And talk is not cheap.
Recall the opening verse of the Gospel according to John:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God” (Jn. 1:1).
Recall that the opening chapter of Genesis tells us that it was God’s word
that created the entire universe.
God’s words, our words, are effective.
May the words we speak to one another in the family of the church,
and in our own families,
be words that effect greater love, greater depth,
greater commitment to walk the path together.
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