Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXVIII per Annum B
10 October 2021

Last weekend the Gospel selection ended with children in their humility, trust, and acceptance as an image of what is required to enter the kingdom of God.  Today’s passage features a rich man, who is certainly older and less simple than a child, asking a question that touches upon the same lesson: What is needed, what must one do, to inherit eternal life?  And today’s passage ends with Jesus’ remark that entering the kingdom is hard, very hard.  He notes that wealth and riches make it hard to enter the kingdom.  The words of the Lord amaze and astonish the disciples leading them to ask, “Then who can be saved?”  Today’s passage connects well with the conclusion of last week’s passage and presents us with a critical question that should be ours about what is needed to inherit eternal life.  The passage likewise should challenge us.  We should not pass over these words lightly.  We need to have the same interest in knowing what is needed to enter the kingdom.  We need to permit the discomfort, the amazement, the astonishment to impact us if we are really listening to the words of the Lord and taking seriously the call to reform our lives for heaven.

 The rich man is an example to us in two key ways for how we need to navigate this life in the hope of inheriting eternal life.  The rich man provides us an example both in what he does well and in what he does not do well, that is what he still needs to do.

In a posture of petition and humility and worship, the rich man kneels before Jesus and asks what he must do to inherit eternal life.  Notice what response Jesus does not give.  He does not say, just accept me as Lord and Savior.  He does not say, just be a basically good person.  No, notice what Jesus highlights as a foregone conclusion, one that would be familiar to any serious Jew.  The commandments.  Keeping the Law of God would be a common Jewish expectation for entering the kingdom.  And Jesus does not deny this.  Rather, the Lord highlights such obedience.  In response to the rich man, Jesus says, “You know the commandments.”  And the rich man does know them.  He responds that he has observed all these from his youth.  So, the first lesson of the rich man for us is in what he does well.  He is aware of, he is serious about, and he observes the commandments.  Doing what is right and living in accord with the commandments is key to entering heaven.  This is important for us to accept as a lesson because it is fashionable to dismiss a serious conforming of one’s life to the moral law.  Today we often hear approaches to living a godly life that are far less rigorous and robust than the example of the rich man.  Here are some examples of things we often hear: “I’m basically a nice person.”  “I don’t do anything THAT bad.”  “As long as your heart is in the right place.”  “I haven’t murdered anybody.”  We’ve all heard these generic or lowest common denominator appeals that reveal a less than robust striving for holiness.  This Gospel and the example of the rich man do not let us get away with that.  No, this rich man has observed all the moral commands and he has done so from his youth.  An appeal to some really bad thing I have NOT done cannot be the measure of my moral life and that does not get me off the hook for a serious examination of life and a vigorous life of faith.  Yet, this is the error that many people make in our modern age.  It is a well-worn road to hell.  The first lesson about getting to heaven is to obey and keep the commandments, to live a serious moral life.

But there is a second lesson for us in the example of the rich man.  He knows the commandments and he has observed them from his youth… yet, he must know deep inside that something is lacking for he comes to the Lord and asks what more is needed.  And the rich man is lacking something.  Jesus says so.  In context, it seems the rich man has his heart, his desire, his intentions focused on riches.  His treasure is on earth and not in heaven.  So, when the Lord tells the man to sell what he has and then come follow him more closely, the rich man goes away sad.  This lesson in what the rich man does NOT do well is what I will phrase or call the lesson of the heart, the lesson of love.  My spiritual interpretation of this passage is that the rich man, while following the commandments and being obedient, is lacking in love.  The deeper or richer motivation to follow the commandments is something that has escaped him.  He knows the commandments and he follows them, yet something deeper is missing.  To support my interpretation that he’s lacking in love I want to highlight a unique and captivating aspect of St. Mark’s version of this passage, where St. Mark writes, “Jesus, looking at him, loved him.”  That’s a really interesting phrase and it jumps out at me as a way St. Mark is trying to communicate something to us.  Added to this unique phrase is the fact that all the commandments that Jesus lists off, are commandments traditionally understood to guide what one owes other people, they guide love of neighbor.  Things like, you shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness.  When Jesus says to the rich man, “You know the commandments” but then the Lord doesn’t list those commandments traditionally understood to guide what one owes to God, to guide love of God, in my mind that serves to highlight this spiritual interpretation that what the rich man is lacking is a proper motivation, a desire of the heart, a deep love of God that should be the reason for why he leads a moral life.

Just as we cannot dismiss a robust living of the moral life and obedience to God’s commands, likewise we need to look deeper.  We need to notice the movements of the heart.  We cannot live the commands of the moral law in only a superficial or formal way.  We need to give attention to the matter of the love of God.  To strive for eternal life we cannot dismiss a robust living of the moral life; but we also must reform our heart to deeply love God and his ways so that we are not lacking in what will help us inherit eternal life.  It can be very easy for us to have our hearts set on what we can provide for ourselves and on what we can control.  We can fall into the trap of having our heart heavy with material goods and earthly riches.  But to have treasure in heaven starts with the heart and the work we must do to foster our love of God and to place ourselves before him, like the rich man, so that the Lord may look upon us and simply love us.  Before we love God, He has loved us.  Do we let ourselves accept the love of God?  Think of that unique phrase in this passage: “Jesus, looking at him, loved him.”  Do we simply let ourselves be in the place where Jesus can look upon us and love us?  Or does an excessive focus on earthly advancement keep us from meaningful attention to a prayer life that will address the deeper matter of the heart?

We can and should pray anywhere and anytime.  We can and should pray at Holy Mass, and on our own using our own words and turning to God’s word in the Bible as a rich deposit for our spiritual lives.  In all of this, we have various ways to place ourselves before the Lord, like the rich man, so that the Lord may encounter us and love us.  Letting ourselves be loved by God and growing in love of Him must be just as much part of our striving as keeping the commandments must be.  They go together.

My experience of the value of praying and participating in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament really struck me in this regard.  By participating and committing to a time in our adoration chapel we can quite literally re-enact this Gospel passage in its unique description of Jesus.  When we come before the Lord in adoration, we place ourselves before him.  We run up to him in the midst of our busy day.  We may even kneel before him, like the rich man.  We believe the Lord is present in the Blessed Sacrament.  Why wouldn’t we run up to him?  And in that time of prayer, in addition to whatever we might bring and whatever things we might want to pray about, we probably need the encouragement of this unique Gospel passage to simply be before the Lord, to let him look upon us and to love us.  As we have heard from the Book of Wisdom today we pray that we set our hearts on the Lord and on spiritual treasure, that we may not be weighed down by an earthly focus that prevents us from noticing our need to let the Lord love us and to call us to follow him.

Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXVII per Annum B
3 October 2021

 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 were a very devout group of Jews who knew the Scriptures well.  They indicate that Moses permitted a “bill” of divorce.  They are referring to the teaching of Moses found in the Book of Deuteronomy 24:1-4.  This is the first place in Scripture that mentions a permission for 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.  Jesus interprets the witness in the Book of Genesis and indicates that divorce is not the mind of God and, furthermore, that to divorce and remarry is tantamount to adultery.  The Catholic Church maintains this divine teaching because it is not human teaching but comes from God, and man has no authority to change divine teaching.  How can we not maintain this teaching, if we take the Scriptures seriously?

 In the exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees we learn that Moses permitted divorce due to the sinfulness of the people and their hardness of heart.  But Jesus purifies the vision of his listeners.  And he challenges them to live in accord with the mind of God.  This Gospel lesson is challenging.  I don’t want anyone to think that the message today is condemnatory.  Or that the result should be embarrassment and shame.  In speaking about the mind of God and the permanence of marriage we find a truth that we must hold up.  As a Pastor I know that there are many challenges that come in relationships.  I also know, as does the Church, that one rightly makes a distinction about the morality involved between one who breaks the marriage vows versus being a spouse who has been unjustly abandoned or divorced against his or her will.  I am keenly sensitive too because divorce has marked my own family.  But none of this changes that we must uphold what marriage is and we must expect spouses to strive for it, notwithstanding those cases where marriage vows have been irreparably harmed or one spouse refuses to work to improve the relationship.  If you have questions about divorce or need to address a new and subsequent marriage that was accomplished outside the Catholic Church then I urge you to come see one of the parish clergy soon.  Fr. Bali and I and Deacon Pereira will happily guide you.

 In the Genesis account we see that the relationship of man and woman, their oneness in the flesh that is a hallmark of marriage, is something found within the very act of creation.  It is God’s action that results in the creation of man and woman and it is God’s action that they belong together.  This is why we believe that marriage is not at all a man-made institution, but a God-made one.  Therefore, we accept in faith what God has made.  At the same time, man has no ability or right to dissolve what God has united, to change what God has made, or to make other relationships equivalent to marriage.  God made marriage within the very order of creation as a covenantal bond between one man and one woman.  This is important to note, and all the more so in our troubled age.  Notice that Adam does not leave his father and mother to marry Eve.  No, Adam and Eve were made for one another and established as fitting partners in life.  Since God established marriage and placed it within the very order of creation, “for this reason,” as the Scripture says, all future marriages involve a man leaving his father and mother and clinging to his wife.  In other words, marriage involves a permanent unity reflective of that unity in creation that we see in Adam and Eve and – for this reason – a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife.

But these biblical passages have implications far beyond the question of marriage and divorce.  This is so because we find here a Scriptural based anthropology, meaning an understanding of the origin and existence of mankind.  This Scriptural anthropology presents a biblical vision of creation, the divine institution of marriage, the meaning of the body, the life-creating power of human and spousal love, and more.  As Christians we accept as authoritative, divinely inspired, and inerrant, both the Old Testament and the New, and so the lessons of Genesis are brought together with the Gospel interpretation given by Jesus into a unified Christian anthropology.  Do we accept and embrace this vision of creation, mankind, and moral life, especially as regards relationships like marriage?  Do we let this vision transform us and our attitudes?  While today’s readings touch upon marriage, we can note that this Christian anthropology in the Scriptures gives us guidance on many other issues in our secular modern age.  In fact, given the tsunami of anti-traditional social constructions and novel ideas in the area of sexuality, gender, and marriage it is critical that we understand what godless forces in our society are proposing as a substitution for the Christian vision of creation.  For if we pull up anchor from the foundations of Christian anthropology we quickly find ourselves swept away into all types of man-made constructions that are delusions aided by fairytale language presenting itself as a new version of reality.  But it is no reality.  What are some examples of being unmoored from reality due to rejecting Christian anthropology?  I mean the separation and rejection of the procreative meaning of sexual love by use of contraception or by sterilization.  The proliferation of abortion that leaves a baby dead and a woman scarred, at the very least emotionally and psychologically.  So-called gay “marriage.”  The idea that there is no discernible difference or even meaning to the body, to our physicality, such that a man can become a woman or a woman can become a man.  The proliferation of made up genders on an almost daily basis.  Things like non-binary, non-conforming.  The claims of transgender ideology.  The experience of modern life, uprooted from a biblical and Christian anthropology, has consequences.  And very serious ones indeed.  And we are seeing this all around us precisely because a Christian view is no longer the view of those who drive culture in our world.  The experience of modern life apart from a Christian anthropology is like trying to tread water right near the edge of Niagara Falls and hoping not to get swept away.  The last few years have been marked by radical delusion powered by mainstream media, and by leftist elites in our political and monied classes. There are real people with struggles in all the areas of morality I have mentioned.  They need help, but instead are aided in living a fantasy by these made up ideas and nonsensical language.  The elites with power put forward the stories of such suffering souls in order to tug at the heart strings by invoking a compassion that is false because it recreates a world that is not based upon reality.  Would that our cultural response would be offering real help to the suffering, to help them see reality and to face their challenges, rather than going along with the lies and aiding and abetting the delusions we see all around us.  This is what happens when you pull up anchor from reality.  Reality reveals itself by the order of creation around us and it can be known by anyone of good will.  And if you have faith, you can see this reality even more clearly.

 Is accepting the Lord’s teaching demanding?  Yes.  But accepting his teaching is more than just a religious practice.  It has much deeper meaning and consequence because the Christian vision of creation and mankind and relationship is accessible to all, no matter one’s faith.  The rejection of the Christian vision revealed by God, is rejection of reality itself.  And we are seeing those consequences all around us.  As if on cue, this very week provided me with two relevant examples of what happens when we reject the Christian vision presented us in the Scriptures.  An op-ed appeared in the New York Times entitled “Divorce Can Be an Act of Radical Self-Love” (New York Times Opinion, Lara Bazelon, September 30, 2021).  In this article the author notes that her marriage was good.  There was no abuse or neglect.  No one was cheating.  In fact, she says, there was love.  She notes that she still loves her ex-husband and goes so far as to say that even now when he walks into the room her stomach drops just like a roller coaster drop, a reference to the breathlessness of love and attraction.  She admits, “I divorced my husband not because I didn’t love him.  I divorced him because I loved myself more.”  One wonders whether the author realizes what she has just admitted and whether the editors at the New York Times really intend to promote narcissism as a cultural value?  Also, this week a Texas abortion provider testified at a House Oversight Committee hearing saying, “abortion saves lives, …abortion is a blessing, abortion is an act of love, abortion is freedom” (Dr. Ghazaleh Moayedi).

 At this point in human history we are well beyond the testing of the Pharisees.  What a godless society proposes is not working because it is in opposition to the very order of creation, a creation we cannot pretend does not exist.  The lesson from the Lord in the Gospel passage is a call to get back to “the beginning.”  It is a lesson to accept God’s action in creation and the offer of His kingdom in childlike trust.  We marvel at the age of the martyrs and how Christian witness confounded pagan empires.  A new pagan empire is already here.  As he said to the Pharisees, Jesus says to us today, it’s time to get back to “the beginning.”  It’s time to be the saints, the witnesses, both the Lord and the world need!