Mark 10:45

Tag: marriage

  • The Paradox of Love: Friday of the 19th Week in Ordinary Time

    Joshua 24:1-13; Psalm 136:1; Matthew 19:3-12

    Today’s readings remind me of that famous scene in the musical Fiddler on the Roof when Tevye asks Golde, his wife of 25 years, do you love me? She replies, “Do I love you? For 25 years I’ve washed your clothes, cooked your meals, cleaned your house, given you children, milked the cow, after 25 years, why talk about love right now?” He repeats, do you love me? “I’m your wife.” I know… But do you love me? She thinks out loud, “Do I love him? For 25 years I’ve lived with him, fought him, starved with him, 25 years my bed is his, if that’s not love, what is?” Then you love me? Finally, she replies, “I suppose I do…”

    Why does this scene remind me of the readings? Because today Scripture focuses on what love is in its essence, and that scene highlights three key aspects of it.

    First, love is a verb. We love not in what we say but in what we do. Through Joshua, God speaks to people who, from the time of Abraham, through the oppression in Egypt, the fleeing, struggling, and starving in the desert, might well have asked, “God, do you love us?” Today we hear God reply: “Do I love you? Remember all the things I’ve done for you, and look what lies before you: You’ve made it to the Promised Land!”

    That reply echoes through the ages to today, to every one of us. We each have our own struggles, physical and spiritual. Through all of them, God isn’t sitting silently in the background; he is in every moment, working in ways beyond our understanding. His work may be unknown to us this moment, this month, or this year, but like the Promised Land, its fruit lies waiting. We must never mistake silence for inaction or indifference; God is eternally vigilant, eternally loving, always acting for our good.

    This brings up the second point: Love is timeless. How fitting that we hear Psalm 136 today, especially the antiphon, His mercy endures forever. The Hebrew word translated as “mercy” is hesed, which includes mercy but implies action, things we do when we are motivated by love and loyalty to someone else. In the scene from Fiddler on the Roof, remember that Golde replied, “After 25 years, why talk about love right now?” To her, the amount of time was not the point; she had committed her life to her marriage.

    Jesus speaks of this kind of commitment in the gospel when he quotes the passage from Genesis that a man is joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh (Genesis 2:24). Again to go back to the ancient language, the word for “joined” literally means, “glued.” Imagine gluing two pieces of paper, allowing them to dry, then trying to tear them apart. We know what will happen; the kind of pain and suffering that only such tearing can bring.

    This leads us to a third aspect of love, which in the words of venerable Fulton Sheen is that love is the soul of sacrifice. Recall how Golde replied when Tevye asked if she loved him: all the sacrifices she had made, the things she had endured, for him. But not just for him, for herself as well. Only those willing to make the greatest sacrifice for love’s sake can know the deepest joys that love brings. When it comes to love, joy and sacrifice can never be separated; in married life, in ministry, in whatever kind of service we are called, only those who are most fully open, who risk the greatest vulnerability, can know the deepest, most fulfilling joy: to know and to be known, to accept and be accepted; to love and to be loved.

    As in all things, the best model for all these aspects of love is our Lord, Jesus Christ. Who performed greater works of love than he? Whose love is more timeless? Who is the soul of sacrifice more than he who was willing to empty himself into his own creation to show us that those who risk the ultimate sacrifice of themselves are given the ultimate joy of resurrection to eternal life? Only Christ could most perfectly show us all this, the great paradox of love: that giving is receiving; that most fully knowing means to be most fully known; and that only by dying to ourselves can we reach the promised land of eternal life.

  • Lost and Found in Translation: Tuesday of the 30th Week in Ordinary Time

    Lost and Found in Translation: Tuesday of the 30th Week in Ordinary Time

    Ephesians 5:21-33; Luke 13:18-21

    When people say, “it’s all Greek to me,” they mean that they don’t understand what they’re hearing or reading. We may not realize it but we could often say the same thing about the bible, not so much because it really was written in Greek (and Hebrew) but because things get lost in translation. Sometimes those things don’t matter much; other times they can make a great deal of difference.

    Today’s first reading is a perfect case in point. What may come across as little more than a discourse on marriage is actually a beautiful meditation on various aspects of love that can benefit all people, married or not. The problem is that some of the subtleties lie hidden beneath the surface, lost in translation.

    For example, he begins: Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ. Although the meaning seems obvious, there are nuances. First, the word we translate as “subordinate” also implies obedience, like servant to master. Second, when he says “one another” he means everyone, not a select few. Third, the phrase “reverence for Christ” literally translates “in the fear of Christ.” So, what seems like a simple exhortation to treat each other well is actually a bold challenge to love like Christ: with the humility that seeks to serve and not to be served, and the fear of the Lord by which we reverence God above all things and others out of love for him.

    When it comes to the married, St. Paul begins with what many today see as a put-down of women: Wives should be subordinate to their husbands…. And while he clearly does follow the custom of placing men at the head of the household, an important subtlety is missing from our text. The original Greek reads, wives should be subordinate to their own husbands…. Whatever the reason, St. Paul clearly feels the need to remind the Ephesians of two additional aspects of love: Chastity and faithfulness. Once again, this is a lesson for us; just as we love the Lord and have no false gods before him, so we are to be chaste – faithful to our state in life – whether lay or clergy, married or single.

    Notice too that St. Paul quotes Genesis: a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is the highest unity we can achieve – a bodily and spiritual communion ordained by God and indivisible by man. When I say “indivisible” I mean exactly that. In the original Hebrew and Greek the word is not joined, but glued. Imagine gluing two sheets of paper together and then, after it has set, trying to separate them. They will tear. We all know of the pain and sadness of the disunity that comes with divorce.

    Not that unity is pain free. In any long-term relationship like marriage, unity requires self-sacrifice. This is especially true as relationships mature over time. Life tends to show us things we didn’t see in the early years; among them, the weaknesses and failings of others. Our natural tendency is to focus on our own pain and suffering, to place blame on others rather than see our own role in them, and to withhold forgiveness rather than make peace with them and ourselves.

    But as St. Paul reminds us, we are to love as Christ loves the Church: Completely, despite and beyond its weaknesses, to the point of dying that she may live. This is the daily discipline of being servant of all, faithful to our state in life whatever it is, and bound to God and each other in a relationship that is life-giving, life-sustaining, and life-affirming, no matter the cost. This is painful but that is the pain of healing, the death that gives way to the new life of resurrection.

    Our Lord points to this in parable form in the gospel, where we see another aspect of love: that it not only unites but multiplies. When the Christian dies to self like leaven, the Church rises like three measures of flour; when husband and wife die to self, their new family flourishes, rising like the branches of the mustard plant toward Heaven, a home for its children.

    This is not possible apart from the grace of God, for God is Love and his grace the glue that binds us one to the other. The power of his grace works within us to form the mind of Christ, to imitate the love of Christ, and to hope more and more in the promise of Christ: that those who love as he loves will one day live as he lives, in the eternal life and infinite love of the Most Holy Trinity.