Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament

Today, we celebrate Catechetical Sunday and ask God’s blessings on those who will serve in our religious education ministry in our school and parish programs.  We will have a special blessing for our catechists near the end of the Mass.  As these parishioners, our brothers and sisters, have volunteered their time and talents to share their faith with others, to instruct others in what the Church believes and teaches, we are reminded of society’s responsibility for teaching and nurturing our children, a responsibility that we, as Church, share with all people.  As our Gospel tells us, whoever receives one child in Jesus’ name, receives Jesus, and, in turn, receives the One who sent Jesus. 

Welcoming a child also signifies welcoming the stranger, the one who has no voice in a society, the one who seeks entry into that society.  And a key part of welcoming the stranger, of making him “one of the family” is to instruct him in the rules of the society, the truths and the customs alike by which the society is organized, by which all learn to live together.    Catechesis is the way that the Church welcomes others into our society of Faith, the Faith in and of Jesus Christ, the Faith that seeks not to oppress but to bring freedom to all of God’s children.  Sometimes it seems that the Church is filled with “Thou shalt not’s”; but, if we are really honest about it, it is really filled with, “You really don’t want to do that, and this is why.”  The Church, as established by Jesus Christ and as sustained by the presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit, wants only to lead her children, the children God has given her, to lead them back to their heavenly Father.  As such, she takes seriously anything that would tend to lead her children away from the path to the Father.  And, on those matters of public activity, those areas which affect the common good, she has a responsibility to speak out, to counsel her children and the society at large when she sees danger.  This is nothing new - she has always done this, especially in her social teaching, in her concern for the common good. 

One such area in which the Church sees danger today is in the public understanding of marriage.  As we know, there is a change in societal attitudes toward marriage and family life.  When we consider how marriages are portrayed in movies, on television, how marriages have become largely disposable, or even considered unnecessary, we can see why the Church feels the need to speak up, to call attention to what marriage is, what it is meant to be.  I wanted to address this issue over the next few weeks, leading up to Jesus’ teaching on marriage in the Gospel of Mark, which we will see in two weeks.

I want to start with consideration of Natural Law.  I know, Natural Law – time to take a nap.  But hear me out.  God, in creating the world, created a perfect world.  All things worked the way they should, they followed God’s blueprint, the Natural Law.  Men and women did not sin; there was a proper ordering of the senses.  Man’s intellect prevailed over his passions, his sharing in the life of God meant that he could be happy following the proper order of the universe, living by the rules by which man would be fully and truly human – to live as man.  If man decided to fly under his own volition, he would fail – that isn’t being a man, it’s being a bird.  If he wanted to live underwater, he would drown:  that is the life of a fish, not a man.  Unfortunately, Adam and Eve sinned.  They stepped outside of the proper order, they wanted to live as God, they wanted to live a life apart from God.  They probably assumed this separation from God was a little one, one that would not affect their overall relationship with Him.  But the effects were catastrophic.  Mankind became completely separated from life in God.  All of creation was affected by this break.  Pain now existed in the world; danger; predation, not just from the previously friendly animals but from each other, from the elements, and from within ourselves.  Disorder was introduced to the world, and part of this disorder existed within man:  the intellect no longer controlled the passions, but the passions now had the ability to control the intellect, even to coerce the intellect into submitting to its slavery to the passions. 

With the sin of Adam and Eve, their relationship changed.  Instead of being able to look at each other as different but complementary equals, they became rivals: they could look at each other more for what one could get from the other rather than what one could give to the other.  I say they could look at each other that way, but they didn’t have to.  God still left us with the ability to see the right relationship we could have with each other; what we lost was the ability that belonged to our nature, that was an integral part of being fully human, and that is the freedom of having our intellects control our passions.  Because of that, because of the loss of the intellect’s natural control of the passions, we sin.  We become disordered.  We choose based on our passions, on our own pleasures, and not based on what we know is right.

In two weeks we will discuss how Jesus ties the concept of marriage to Adam and Eve and the Fall.  But for now, I want to provide a little more foundation for our discussion.  Marriage is a fundamental building block of all society, of the Church, of civilization.  From the very beginning a man has joined with a woman in what is intended to be a permanent, exclusive, and fruitful partnership, a covenant which, by its very nature, is meant to be ordered to the good of the spouses and for the procreation and education of children.  It was never meant to be a way of one sex dominating the other:  it was meant as a mutual agreement that promised a lifelong partnership for those two purposes:  the good of the spouses and the birth and education of children.  It is certainly evident that it didn’t and doesn’t always work that way.  But that is the fault of our fallen nature, of our tendency to let our passions rule over our intellects.  No one would marry if there wasn’t the promise of the ideal – not a fairy-tale ideal of a perfect life, no troubles, struggles, or arguments, no dangers from outside the family or within the souls of the spouses.  People marry because of the promise of an ideal that takes into account our fallen nature, the imperfect world that we inherited from the sin of Adam and Eve, an ideal that recognizes that, when troubles overtake us, when we fail, that the covenant, the promise to mutually support each other can still be effective, that the united intellect can hold sway over the separated passions.  Getting through life is difficult alone, and sometimes more difficult with another, another set of intellect and passion, not to mention the intellects and passions of offspring.  But the hope is that, with time, with each member of the household being both teacher and student, our intellects become more aware of their power, of their ability to control their respective passions, and of their ability to live in harmony.  This is the ideal, this is the promise of marriage.

Over the next two weeks I want to continue this line of thought in considering dangers to marriage – both within marriage and outside of marriage.  Within, as spouses get distracted from the mutual needs of the other, to satisfying selfish needs, to turning in on oneself by focusing only on one’s own passions to the detriment of the spouse; within, also, when the couple turns in on themselves, on their own selfish passions to the detriment of the couple’s relationship with society as a whole.  Outside of marriage, I want to address some of the dangers that exist – the misrepresentation by media and entertainment of the ideal of marriage, to its permanence and its progeny, and also to its very structure, the union of man and woman, complementary partners in the service of God and one another.  I will want to address those who wish to redefine marriage to allow for same-sex couples, how there are ways to accommodate those couples without trying to redefine marriage.  I want to discuss that without rancor.  The debate sometimes becomes heated, emotions run high.  There is no need for that kind of animosity:  the debate only needs to be properly structured.  That is what I hope to do over the next few weeks.

As we continue this Eucharist, let us ask Jesus to bless marriage, to bless our marriages and all marriages, that we can see and embrace the integral role marriage and the family play in being the one Body of Christ.

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