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27th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

October 06, 2024

Fr. John Colacino C.PP.S.

Introit

Kyrie

Gloria

Collect

Almighty ever-living God,
who in the abundance of your kindness
surpass the merits and the desires of those who entreat you,
pour out your mercy upon us
to pardon what conscience dreads
and to give what prayer does not dare to ask.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.

First Reading Gn 2:18-24

The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, 8 and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. 18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” 19 So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.” 24 Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Responsorial Psalm Ps 128:1-2,3,4-5,6

R/. May the Lord bless us all the days of our lives.

Second Reading Heb 2:9-11

We do indeed see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honour because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. 10 It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings. 11 For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.

Alleluia 1 Jn 4:12

Gospel Mk 10:2-16

Some Pharisees came, and to test Jesus they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” 3 Jesus answered them, “What did Moses command you?” 4 They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” 5 But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. 6 But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ 7 ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, 8 and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” 10 Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. 11 Jesus said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; 12 and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” People were bringing little children to him in order that Jesus might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. 14 But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them: for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. 15 Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” 16 And Jesus took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

Catena Nova

If a man and a woman marry in order to be companions on the journey through earth to heaven, then their union will bring great joy to themselves and to others (St. John Chrysostom).

Man and woman walk hand in hand to the Kingdom. Christ calls both man and woman, at one and the same time without distinction, united by God and joined together by nature, giving them a share in the same actions and tasks, in wonderful harmony. Through the marriage bond, God makes two, one and one, two in such a way, that another self is discovered, without loss of individuality or mingling in duality (St. Peter Chrysologus).

In his book Moses wrote that a man should leave father and mother so as to be joined to his wife, that the two might in very truth become one. The prophet Moses spoke of man and woman in this way in order to foretell Christ and his Church.With a prophet’s penetrating gaze he contemplated Christ becoming one with the Church through the mystery of water. He saw Christ even from the Virgin’s womb drawing the Church to himself, and the Church in the water of baptism drawing Christ to herself. Bridegroom and bride were thus wholly united in a mystical manner, which is why Moses wrote that the two should become one....In an outburst of inspired joy the apostle Paul exclaimed: this is a great mystery! (Jacob of Serugh).

Love is had only by loving. If you want love, you must begin by loving—I mean you must want to love. Once you want it, you must open the eye of your understanding to see where and how love is to be found. And you will find it within your very self. How? When you recognize your nothingness. And once you see that of yourself you do not even exist, you will recognize and appreciate that God is the source of your existence and of every favor above and beyond that existence—God’s graces and gifts both temporal and spiritual. For without existence, we would not be able to receive any grace at all. So everything we have, everything we discover within ourselves, is indeed the gift of God’s boundless goodness and charity (St. Catherine of Siena).

God is our Heavenly Father but in such a way that God loves all and loves each incomparably more and more tenderly than any human parents can love each of their children. Since our God loves each of us in just this way, and loves all and each without any exception, God wishes to see among us that same love and tenderness, and when it is needed, that same leniency and yielding gentleness that loving parents always long to see among their own children. God would have you give in to one another, helping one another without stint.... All are, in truth and in fact, brothers and sisters in God. God is our parent and God wishes all of us to regard and to love one another, and treat one another in every way and at every moment, like persons we love most tenderly.... Compassion is part of the love that lives in every heart; it is part of all human love. In Christ we can find new strength for compassion and for every dimension of genuine love. (St. Charles de Foucauld).

The biblical text provides sufficient bases for recognizing the essential equality of man and woman from the point of view of their humanity. From the very beginning, both are persons, unlike the other living beings in the world about them. The woman is another "I" in a common humanity.…Being a person in the image and likeness of God thus also involves existing in a relationship, in relation to the other "I". (Pope St. John Paul II).

In the first reading we hear that God was pained by Adam’s loneliness. He said: “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (Gen 2:18). These words show that nothing makes man’s heart as happy as another heart like his own, a heart which loves him and takes away his sense of being alone. These words also show that God did not create us to live in sorrow or to be alone. He made men and women for happiness, to share their journey with someone who complements them, to live the wondrous experience of love: to love and to be loved, and to see their love bear fruit in children, as the Psalm proclaimed today says (cf. Ps 128). To a rhetorical question – probably asked as a trap to make him unpopular with the crowd, which practiced divorce as an established and inviolable fact – Jesus responds in a straightforward and unexpected way. He brings everything back to the beginning, to the beginning of creation, to teach us that God blesses human love, that it is he who joins the hearts of two people who love one another, he who joins them in unity and indissolubility.... And the Church is called to carry out her mission in charity, not pointing a finger in judgment of others, but – faithful to her nature as a mother – conscious of her duty to seek out and care for hurting couples with the balm of acceptance and mercy; to be a “field hospital” with doors wide open to whoever knocks in search of help and support; even more, to reach out to others with true love, to walk with our fellow men and women who suffer, to include them and guide them to the wellspring of salvation (Pope Francis).

Homily

For putting too much salt in the soup. Because he wanted to marry another woman. Because his wife did not bear him the right children. Under Jewish law, a man could divorce a woman for any of these reasons--or for no reason. According to the Law of Moses, all the man had to do was write a bill of divorce, hand it to his wife, and send her away. And the rabbis of Jesus’ time taught only the husband could initiate a divorce. And his wife could not prevent him from doing so. (By the way, if you’re wondering why Mark mentions a woman divorcing her husband, it’s because he’s writing in part to a Gentile audience, to people living outside of Palestine, in places where a woman could divorce her husband). As Fr. Eugene LaVerdiere pointed out

In all three [rabbinic] interpretations of Deuteronomy 24:1-4, it was always a matter of a man divorcing his wife, never of a woman divorcing her husband. In this respect, Mark 10:1-12, which addresses cases where a woman divorces her husband, is almost unique in biblical and early rabbinical literature. In Mk 10:5-9, Jesus spoke to the Jewish context of very early Christianity, where divorce was possible only for the husband. There were exceptions, but these were far too few to influence the moral climate. Jesus' radical stance could be seen as defending the position of wives, who were quite vulnerable and could be dismissed for little or no reason at all (“Marriage and Divorce in the Gospel according to Mark (Chapter 10:1-12),” (The Way 34:1; 1994: 54-64).

But in Jesus’ own time and place, of course, none of this was done.Which makes his teaching on divorce appear in a new light, doesn’t it? And while the church has looked to this teaching as proof Christian marriage is permanent, ending only with the death of a spouse, you can see how, originally, the gospel has more than that in mind. For we find in this passage, among other things, yet another indication of Jesus’ profound concern for the weakest and most defenseless people of his time–in this case, women, and as we read a little further, children too.

So we would be wrong to hear these words and think only of the church’s regulations on marriage, its lengthy process for granting annulments, or its prohibition on the divorced and remarried in canonical marriages from receiving the sacraments without a declaration of nullity — though these things take their cue from the gospel.

Indeed, we should first hear Jesus’ words as coming from someone who, in John's gospel, despite cultural taboos once sat by Jacob’s well next to a Samaritan woman in public drinking from her cup—no matter the fact she had five husbands, and the man she was living with at the time was not her husband. For in the words of Pope St. John Paul II, “In all of Jesus’ teaching, as well as in his behavior, one can find nothing which reflects the discrimination against women prevalent in his day. On the contrary, his words and works always express the respect and honor due to women” Mulieris dignitatem, August 15, 1988, no. 13.)

If anything, Jesus’ teaching on marriage affirms a relationship of equal dignity where both partners are made in the image and likeness of God. He recalls our creation where neither human being is subject to the other -- when Adam, upon on seeing Eve, said, This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh (I). Such that all those things throughout Genesis, from the expulsion from Eden to the murder of Abel by his brother Cain to the confusion of languages at Babel to the flood in Noah’s day to his brothers selling Joseph into slavery all mar the relationship between people because of the hardness of your hearts (G). But it’s that original rupture that set the stage for sundering human equality that Jesus sought to highlight when fundamental he “enters into the concrete and historical situation of women, a situation which is.... expressed is habitual discrimination against women in favor of men” (ibid., no. 14).

The church understands, of course, how some domestic problems arising from this "rupture," are best handled by a separation of spouses. And it knows not every marriage that appears to be valid is (“what God has joined together”) -- else there would be no annulment process. And for those who were in a presumably sacramental marriage, are divorced and remarried without benefit of an annulment, Pope Francis – in something toward which his critics have been especially strident – has been especially understanding given past attitudes and policies:

The divorced who have entered a new union, for example, can find themselves in a variety of situations, which should not be pigeonholed or fit into overly rigid classifications leaving no room for a suitable personal and pastoral discernment. One thing is a second union consolidated over time, with new children, proven fidelity, generous self giving, Christian commitment, a consciousness of its irregularity and of the great difficulty of going back without feeling in conscience that one would fall into new sins (Amoris laetitia 298).

But what appears to me central in Jesus’ teaching and presumably in the church’s praxis, is how hardness can be melted only if we love one another, and God remains in us, and [God’s] love is brought to perfection in us (Gospel Acclamation). For whom and through whom all things exist, forever and ever. Amen (II).

Intercessions (Joe Milner; The Sunday Website)

For the Church: that we may be a sign of communion between God and humanity and a means of reconciliation amongst all people.

For the grace of fidelity: that we may each be faithful to our promises and commitments, to spouses, children, parents, communities, and friends.

For all married or engaged couples: that they may recognize Christ in each other, grow into true oneness of life, and bring God’s love to others.

For all who are in lonely or troubled marriages: that they may find support in the Christian community and receive strength and courage to work to renew their relationships.

For the work of the United Nations: that their conversations will promote peace and cooperation, develop shared understandings of the challenges that exist, and give them the courage to confront the evils that plague the human family.

For all who are suffering: that God will heal the sick, free those caught in addiction, restore those who have experienced abuse, comfort the grieving, and send relief to those entrapped by poverty.

For leaders of government: that God will give them wisdom and courage to address the crucial issues of society and to work together to address the common good.

Creator God, in Christ you call man and woman to the fullness of glory for which you created them in your image. Heal our hardened hearts, renew our obedience to your spoken will, and conform our lives to your gracious design. Grant this through Christ our Lord. Amen (ICEL 1998).

Gloria

Gospel Mk 10:2-16

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