Homily for the Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
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“It is not good for the man to be alone.” In uttering these words during His final Act of Creation, God reveals, “in the beginning,” His intention for the human race. His intention is that we are to imitate the interior life of God, that “not-alone-ness” within the Holy Trinity that has existed for all eternity.For us to hear these words today, on Respect Life Sunday, we are reminded of: the sanctity of human life, and the dignity of the human person… all to be respected from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death.Many issues crowd our mind in this context:+ abortion+ end-of-life issues+ human trafficking+ murder and suicide+ rethinking the death penalty+ unjust war and aggression+ violent crime… to name the most familiar.We, especially in our Catholic faith, are charged with the protection of human life because of the “not-alone-ness” of the Christian community in which our love and care for the most vulnerable among us show us, and the society in which we live, what it means to be created in the image and likeness of God.The human capacity for love makes us unique in all of God’s Creation; it draws us into the Mystery… the very essence of God, Who is Love. Love, then, is both the dawn, and the fulfillment, of humanity; loving makes us holy.It was Saint Augustine who first explained the theological dimension of the Biblical statement, “God is love…” in the context of the Most Holy Trinity. It bears mentioning here:God the Father: Eternal LoverGod the Son: Eternal BelovedGod the Holy Spirit: Eternal spirit of love — that is— the love itself, so profound that it co-exists as a separate person within the mystery of the Holy Trinity.Creating us individually… separate from Himself… and distinct from one another, God did not wish us to be alone, so in His Divine Plan for our happiness:+ husbands and wives are given to their spouses+ nuns and monks are given to their community in the consecrated life+ parish priests are given to their parishioners by virtue of their vow of celibacy.However, because of the effect of Original Sin, since the days of Paradise Lost, this human love has been for us work: sometimes hard work… but is ultimately the means by which Paradise is re-gained. This is not meaningless labor, nor servile work; this challenge to love draws us back into the interior life of the Holy Trinity.Separating the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity once again, before reuniting them in our study, we often assign them various roles, such as:God the Father: CreatorGod the Son: RedeemerGod the Holy Spirit: Sanctifier… though they are always present to one another, and cannot be separated.By virtue of our Baptism, we are charged with working along with the Holy Trinity in the ongoing Creation… Redemption… and Sanctification of the world, beginning with ourselves. Echoing words heard in the Marriage Rite, and refigured for our use today: What God has joined together at Baptism — that is — our adopted Sonship/Daughter-ship with Him… man must not separate+ by wandering away from the fold - or -+ by way of developing personal/contradictory philosophies concerning life and Creation.Our Readings today, however, take us beyond Baptism or any of the aforementioned “issues” to consider how we cooperate with God in His ongoing Creation, Redemption, and Sanctification through the sacrament of marriage, and family life. Let’s look at these concepts individually (creation, redemption, and sanctification) in order to gain a wholistic understanding of the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person.SHARING IN GOD’S ONGOING CREATIONIn creating the complementarity of the sexes, God has revealed His Will that the ends of marriage be two: Unitive and Procreative.In the Unitive dimension, one seeks the Good of the other, not in lust, but in longing…. thus, love wills the good of the other in self-giving, to the eventual point of self-sacrifice. The giving of our bodies in sacramental love resembles the divine and human love of Christ giving His Body once for us on the Cross, and, perpetually, in the Holy Eucharist.Marital love is unitive in that it bonds two separate persons into one for the good of the marriage, and for the good of the persons.In the Procreative dimension of married love, the Unitive action of marital intercourse must always be open to the Procreative — that is — to new life. Human beings do not create new human beings. When it comes to engendering New Life, we come to know that God creates… we humans procreate… we collaborate with God, who draws new life into being. God unites the material and the immaterial… the body and the soul.Therefore, when an irresponsible… unplanned… or unwanted pregnancy occurs, we mere humans do not have the right to snuff out an innocent human life that God Himself has created.In another avenue of approaching the procreative… in Old Testament times, sterility within marriage was seen as a curse, a sign of abandonment by God. However, in our times, men and women introduce sterility into their married love through contraception. Others, acting upon same-sex attraction, engage in sexual activity that is also sterile: not capable of transmission of life through the mockery of fecundity in God’s plan for human sexuality known today as “same-sex marriage.”Though encouraged by secular society, it is not true marriage in God’s eyes, nor in the faith of His Church. One can call the sun the moon, but that doesn’t make it so. God knows the difference between men and women — He created the difference, and is gravely offended by our society’s re-definition of marriage.In his Christmas message to the Roman Curia in 2012, Pope Benedict XVI spoke on the current “attack on the authentic form of the family.” He wrote: “If the experience of being son and daughter, brother and sister, husband and wife, father and mother, is lost, this will also bring about the destruction of the natural basis for speaking about God, who reveals Himself as… the bridegroom of Israel… whom we invoke as Father… who sent us Jesus as His Son and our brother… and who gave us the Church as our Mother.” So, we cannot buy into present cultural re-definitions of Marriage and family life because, as Sister Lucia of Fatima revealed the words of the Blessed Mother: “The final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family.”SHARING IN GOD’S ONGOING REDEMPTIONTo show how highly God regards our humanity… our bodilyness… our personhood… the Second Person of the Holy Trinity took on all three of these in His Incarnation. Today’s passage from the Letter to the Hebrews states: “He, for a little while, was made lower than the angels…” This means that Our Lord became man - not an angel — to show us that in our humanity we are to find our redemption.The passage continues: “He who consecrates, and those who are consecrated, all have one origin. Therefore, He is not ashamed to call them brothers.” Anything God touches is made holy, therefore, our bodies are holy as temples of the Holy Spirit but also as the means by which+ The Father continues to create His World+ The Son continues to win our redemption+ the Spirit continues to make us holy.The Sacrament of Holy Matrimony is unique among the Sacraments. The ordained Priest, Deacon or Bishop administers other sacraments, but bride and groom, in their solemn vows before God, administer the sacrament to one another. The priest, acting here in persona Christi, witnessing these vows, validates the bond, calling upon the Holy Spirit to extend the Grace needed for a lifetime of fidelity, unity, and fecundity within the marriage.God, then, enters into the relationship, just as He enters into Baptism changing the un-baptized into His adopted sons and daughters, now changing the personhood of bride and groom into a new identity as husband and wife, united in Christ.
From this moment, the interior life of marriage resembles the interior life of the Holy Trinity: marriage becomes Trinitarian, with Our Lord Jesus Christ as a third and equal partner in a bond which is like the bond which holds together the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and has, for all eternity… now binding husband and wife together for the whole of their earthly life.SHARING IN GOD’S ONGOING SANCTIFICATIONThe Grace given in the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony is not available to those who live in a sexual relationship outside of sacramental marriage:+ living together — no matter their sexual orientation+ married outside the Church… or in civil union… or same-sex “marriage” as defined in civil law.These relationships are offensive to God because they are contrary to Natural Law, which God Himself has revealed as central to the nature of His Creation… and contrary to His Will for the good of married life. These situations bring the persons involved into excommunication from the Church. Therefore, Christ cannot be present to these relationships.In Sacramental Marriage, however, husbands and wives become the means and the agents of mutual sanctification. Christ truly becomes a third and equal partner through the Sacrament. He helps husbands and wives grow together in holiness. He becomes their ultimate “not-alone-ness.” It is for this reason that I instruct young couples preparing for marriage that a primary focus in their shared life is to get their spouse into heaven.In speaking of divorce and adultery in today’s Gospel, Our Lord shows us that He knows that there are real-life problems in marriage, but does not allow these problems to become excuses for infidelity or break-up.Just as in our protection of the sacredness of human life we make no judgment about the quality of life, but speak only of its sanctity… Our Lord gives us the Grace to supersede cultural judgments about the quality of marriage so that we can constantly seek its sanctity. God intends our marriages — like our Baptisms, to be permanent.Sacramental Marriage is a high calling, challenging for most: It provides the world a witness to the meaning and presence of God’s love for us, even though our love be imperfect and, sometimes, hard work, as well as the source and locus of real human suffering.The Sacrament of Marriage lived for better or for worse is a living image of the Church itself. As God has said, “It is not good for the man [and therefore every member of His Church] to be alone,” … we are meant to be “suitable partners” in our parish and in the larger Church, working toward a shared sanctification as partners in a shared pilgrimage toward Paradise regained, where our souls will eventually be re-united with that "not-aloneness” of the Holy Trinity for all eternity.