Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 12:38 - 44

My family has been very supportive of a college in Virginia. We like the idea that it doesn’t take federal money and therefore would have to comply with many rules that seem counterproductive to us. We like that it is really and truly Catholic, and teaches what the Church teaches. We’ve sent five of our six kids there, and we’ve been involved since it only had about a eighty students and four campus buildings to its present state where there are 570 students and 13 buildings. It’s a great school and part of a growing movement in this country. The college had a very nice chapel on the campus. However, recently the decision was made to raise money for a new, larger chapel for the growing student body. In the annual fund drive, we were asked to decide between contributing to the endowment fund, which helped defray student tuition, or to the fund for building the chapel.

Today we hear about the widow who deposits all she has in the treasury of the temple. Jesus remarks that she has given more than any of these others, because she has given from her need, while the others have given from their surplus. Is Jesus telling us to dip more deeply into our pockets on Sunday? Many times we interpret the story we’ve just heard in that way. The widow gave all she had, and in the eyes of God that was more than all those others had given. Sometimes in addition to reading this as an appeal for generosity, we even read it with a sense of guilt – it’s not likely that any of us will give up everything, will toss everything into the collection basket in the hopes that God will reward us. But I think that’s an important thing to recognize; when Jesus told the rich young man to sell all he had and give to the poor, he said, you will lay up treasures in heaven. Jesus says nothing of the kind here. We hear no more about the widow than that she gave everything she had.

But there is another way to look at this story. First, a widow was not just someone whose husband had died. They were “voiceless” in that society. No one spoke for them. Some of the prophets called on the people to be concerned about widows and orphans, but widows were not expected to speak up. In fact when Jesus tells the story of the persistent widow who kept bothering the judge, part of the shock of that story was that the widow was speaking up for herself. It just wasn’t done. And widows had no claim on what their husband left behind. That went to the children, or back to the parents. Widows had a very hard time, and in the early Christian community care of widows was a major concern. In fact, that’s why the apostles created deacons – to make sure the widows of the Gentiles andthe widows of the Jewish Christians were treated equally.

The second point is that the people dropping money in the treasury were not just being generous; they had to tithe. And the custom was to drop the money into large urns, and say out loud how much they had given and what they hoped it would be used for. This was recorded, and to be in good standing as a Jew meant that there was a record that you tithed.

The third point is that the teachers of the law, the scribes and the pharisees, were proud of their status in society. They did indeed wear clothing which set them apart from the people. Among Jews if you were a tradesman and you met a teacher of the law, you were the first to greet; the lesser deferred to the greater. And in the synagogues, the learned ones sat in the front facing the congregation – a sign of honor. And for a fee they would offer elaborate prayers in Hebrew, the sacred language, and who needed prayers more than a poor widow? That is how they devoured the houses of widows.

The widow has to pay something; everyone had to tithe. And she probably felt that it didn’t matter whether she had two pennies or no pennies, and maybe she dropped the two pennies into the treasury hoping that God would take care of her, or maybe it was an act of defiance, or maybe of despair. She knew, as well as Jesus knew, that her contribution would make literally no difference to anyone.

And that may be why the Church puts these two seemingly separate passages together. In the first case, Jesus is condemning the teachers of the law not only because of their pride and rich living, but because in order to maintain this life style they got their money from the most vulnerable. And Jesus looks with a broken heart at the widow, whose last pennies are going to support the teachers of the law – and nothing is being done about it.

We can read this story as a call to greater generosity – heaven knows we need to be reminded of this all the time. But we can also look at it as a call to take more responsibility for the way our gifts are used. We know there are charities where most of the money goes to pay the executive staff. There is no law against that. And when we see someone like certain megachurch leaders or television evangelists living a life that would be the envy of a king, we can’t help but wonder how many houses of widows they have devoured to support that life style.

And it’s true within our Church as well. And it’s always a dilemma; should we build another elaborate church or should we do something about the homeless people or the hungry people or the drug addicts or the students who will be the next generation of convinced, convicted Catholics? It’s a good thing to support teachers of the law, and help support seminarians, and honor God with beauty and wonderful monuments. The world needs to see that we Christians put God first. But when we decide where our charity is going, who has the greater claim? God, who doesn’t need anything we could possibly give him? Or God’s children, made in his image, whom he loves as much as he loves the Blessed Mother or any of the saints? When the woman poured expensive perfume over Jesus’ feet, and Judas objected, Jesus said, “The poor you will always have with you, but the Son of Man you will not.” This same Jesus who told the parable of the rich man and Lazarus – the rich man who doesn’t even notice that there is a poor brother at his feet. It is a wonderful thing to be able to give to charity. It is sometimes very hard to decide where our gift will do the most good.

Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 12:28 – 34

There was a rabbi named Hillel who lived about the same time as Jesus. He taught in the temple of Jerusalem and is still highly regarded as an authority on the Jewish religion. The story goes that someone approached him and dared him to say the whole Jewish law while standing on one foot. Hillel took up the challenge and replied, “Do not do to someone else what you would not have done to you. That is the whole law. Now go and study it.” The Budda, Confucius, Lao Tse, and many other great religious leaders had this insight as well. So what is so special about the Jesus’ statement? After all, he simply puts the great command of Deuteronomy together with another commandment in Leviticus. The scribe who asked which commandment is the greatest gets back two commandments, it seems. And since Jesus says that these two commandments are the greatest, it is worth thinking about them.

One way to begin is at the end of the passage. It’s a good thing to love yourself. There are plenty of people who don’t – people who have unhealthy relationships with food, with alcohol, with tobacco, with drugs. People who ride motorcycles without helmets; people who juggle chain saws. And there are people that harm themselves because of depression or sometimes, a severe personality disorder. We are supposed to love ourselves. How do we do that? Well, in addition to avoiding damage to our selves, we love our bodies by trying to keep them healthy. We make it a point to learn about what foods to eat and what to avoid. If we love our minds, we are concerned about what we put into them. Pornography, hours of video gaming, Binge watching television, mindlessly surfing the internet are all ways to abuse our minds. And if we love our souls, we are concerned not only about sin but about things that bring us close to sin, and when we sin we get to the Sacrament of Penance as soon as we can. Love for oneself is not just a warm feeling.

Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourself”. In Luke’s gospel, this leads into the story of the good Samaritan. But we’ve just considered how we love ourselves, and that is how we love our neighbor. We do what we can so that they will have healthy bodies, healthy minds, and God willing, eternal happiness in heaven. The Church believes in the principle of subsidiarity. This means for our purposes that our love should translate into action especially with members of our family, our close friends; and then those we associate with at work, and so on. Perhaps the neighbor in Pakistan might be touched by a few dollars given to a charity. But those for whom we are most responsible are the ones for whom we should be making the most effort.

And finally, we work our way back to the first of the two great commandments. If we have loved ourselves, and loved our neighbor, we will have seen glimpses of God. We see God in the beauty of nature and in the marvelous achievements of arts and science. But we especially see God in other people; they are made in the image and likeness of God. Loving God with all our hearts has to do with wanting to be close to God, to enter into a deep relationship with Him. This is not something that just happens.

Loving God with our whole souls has to do with our wanting to do what God wants us to do, precisely because we want to have a relationship with Him. My soul is the part of me that sets goals, that places value on things, that decides where I will put my energy. Loving with my soul means that I will make it a priority to do what I understand He wants me to do.

Loving God with our whole minds means that we want to learn all we can about his nature, his laws, his actions in history. Sincere Jewish people consider the study of the Law as the highest pursuit of the intellect. We Catholics have a rich intellectual heritage as well, that too few of us know about. I wish every Catholic would make it a point to spend a few minutes every day reading some good spiritual literature. The more we know about God, the more we love Him.

Loving God with our whole strength means that we use what he has given us to serve him. If we see one of his children in need of something, we give it. If we come across someone who is on a bad path, we gently offer correction. We use our powers to carry out what we have learned about God.

And we find that the two great commandments are really one. Because loving God with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength is really the greatest way we can love ourselves, because that is what we are made for. And in loving God with our hearts, souls, minds, and strengths leads us naturally and inevitably to loving our neighbor.

Jesus is different from the various religious leaders down through the ages who have given voice to different formulations of the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule, love your neighbor as yourself, is empty and anemic without loving God with our whole hearts, souls, minds and strengths.

The two great commandments are really tied together, and if we set out to obey them we will be doing what we were meant to do, and that will lead us to our fulfillment as human beings.

So look around you for glimpses of God in yourself, in your neighbor, in beauty, in truth, in goodness. Don’t stop there; there is Someone behind all of this who invites you into a relationship, greater than any friendship, greater than any lover. Find out what He wants and make it your priority to do it. And study; the more you know about this God, this Lover of your soul, the more you will love Him. And carry out what you learn from your studying. Love is not just a warm feeling. Love is a plan of life, and as Jesus told us, “Where your treasure is, there your heart shall be.”

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 10:46 – 52

The story you just heard from the Gospel of Mark is also told in Matthew and Luke. There are differences; in Matthew Jesus comes across two blind men, neither of whom is named. In Luke, the blind man is encountered on the way to Jericho. But in all three cases, the next major event is to enter Jerusalem, where Jesus will be arrested, tried and crucified. But there are many details in Mark that aren’t in the other accounts. Only in Mark do we hear the name of the beggar, Bartimeaus. Mark was writing for a community of Christians living in Rome, suffering persecution, probably mostly of Jewish ancestry. Remember, when Mark was writing, there was no formal break between Christians and Jews. Jewish people in those days spoke Aramaic, which in the Eastern part of the Roman empire was a common language. In the western part of the empire Greek was the common language. It took a couple more centuries for Latin to replace Greek. You have to have this background to understand the name Bartimeaus. If your ears were tuned to Greek, it would sound like “Son of the honored one”. If tuned to Aramaic, it would sound like “Son of the despised one.” If you were Jewish living in Rome, you might immediately think of the whole story of the Hebrew people – once part of a rich and prominent independent kingdom under David and Solomon, now a little remnant ruled by the Romans, in a way as helpless and dependent as a blind beggar on the side of the road. So Mark wants the story to take on a larger dimension than a simple healing.

Bartimaeus may be blind, but he is not unaware. He hears people talking, and undoubtedly has heard about Jesus and his miraculous healing powers. And now there is a crowd passing through on their way to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, and he hears Jesus is among them. If you are blind and helpless it’s best not to be assertive and call attention to yourself; you might get kicked or spit on, because everyone knew that blindness was a sign of God’s wrath. But Bartimaeus has a little courage, and calls out “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.” Scholars have pointed out that this is the first time in Mark’s gospel that Jesus is called “son of David.” To Jews, that referred to the expected Messiah. When Bartimaeus gathers his courage to call out to Jesus, God confirms through his voice that Jesus is the expected one. That’s an important point, because when we put our faith into action, we can expect that God will magnify our efforts, and lead us in directions we didn’t know we were going.

When Jesus hears Bartimaeus, he does not go to him. He tells his disciples to go get him. We never know why God does things the way he does. Jesus could have healed him from a distance. Jesus could have saved us without dying on the cross; Jesus being God could bring about the kingdom of Heaven here on earth with a wave of his hand. But here, as in most of God’s work he works through human beings. And perhaps Jesus is telling you and I to find Bartimaeus and bring him to Him. Because there are a lot of blind people in the world, many of whom are your friends and neighbors. Someone needs to make it their mission to bring them to Jesus. Because Jesus is the only way to the Father. If we love our fallen away friends and relatives, shouldn’t we have their salvation as a high priority?

In a dramatic sign of his faith, Bartimaeus casts aside his cloak. People didn’t have closets full of clothes in those days; especially blind beggars, and the cloak may have been what he sat on when he begged, what he threw around his shoulders when it got cold, what he covered himself with when he slept; in other words, it was his major possession. But unlike the rich young man we heard about two Sunday’s ago, Bartimaeus was able to give up his possessions to go to Jesus. In the olden days, Catholics used to fast and abstain at certain times of the year; we used to fast from midnight on when we wanted to receive Holy Communion. We were urged to tithe our possessions because in addition to the obligation to be charitable, all these things reminded us that we had to cultivate detachment from material goods if we wanted to make room for Christ in our lives.

And Jesus asks Baritmaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?” Last Sunday he asked that of James and John. You remember that he turned down their request to sit at his right and left hand when he came into his kingdom. They had made a self-serving request, based on desire for power, or fame. Bartimaeus prays from his deep need, his desire to be whole: L”Rabbi, that I may see!” That should be at the root of our prayers as well – that we may see. That we may see the person who is in need of our touch; that we may see where we can be most effective in bringing about God’s kingdom in our lives; that we may see what we need to do to create space in our souls for the presence of Jesus; and I’m sure you could think of many other areas where it would be wonderful if God would give us sight. And Jesus sees Bartimaeus faith and tells him that it is his faith that healed him.

So, like much of Mark’s gospel, there are several levels; Bartimeaus is a blind man, the son of someone named Timeaus, in need of healing. Bartimaeus is Israel, fallen far from it’s glory under David and Solomon, reduced to helplessness, in need of a Messiah, and the Messiah indeed comes to rescue Israel. And Bartimaueus is you and I, persons on the journey, persons who, if we call out, our Lord will give us the strength, often from those around us, to come to him; persons who always need the gift of sight so that we can follow Jesus through his Passion and death, and Resurrection, as Bartimaeus did.

I started my sermon by telling you one theory of why Mark names Bartimeaus. I think it’s a good theory and makes sense. But I have to leave you with another theory. Mark is not writing for the ages; he is writing for a community of Christians in a specific place and time. And Bartimaeus is well known to them. After all, he accompanied Christ, and like many of those first Christians, went out proclaiming the good news, and it wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility that he might have been instrumental in establishing the Christian church in Rome). And Bartimaeus is living proof that Jesus is who he says he is. And you and I have been touched by the Saviour as well, and we need to proclaim that to the world.

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 10:35 – 45

During the year before I entered first grade, I became curious about reading and writing, and annoyed my mother no end. I would find letters in my Little Golden Books and ask her what they were and what sound they made. She was patient for the first ten or so. But I really wanted to learn to read because I could then find out what those comic strips in the paper were saying. I still turn to the comics every day – for inspiration, of course.. There was a good one a few days ago – in the Pearls strip. Rat was telling Goat that he wanted to be looked up to. Goat replied that the way to do that was to accomplish something great. Rat decided an equally effective way which would be much easier would be to belittle everyone else.

During the year we read Mark's gospel, we sometimes think the apostles must have been pretty clueless. In fact I think Matthew and Luke, who wrote their gospels about twenty years later, and obviously knew about Mark's gospel, tried to show the apostles in a better light. When Matthew tells this story, he has the mother of James and John approach Jesus. Luke doesn't even have James and John initiate the exchange; Jesus just starts talking about how the rulers of the gentiles lord it over them. But I think you have to always ask what Mark is up to.

Last Sunday's gospel was the story of the man who could not give up his possessions. Jesus then talked about the camel and the eye of the needle and promised the apostles that because they had given up everything they would receive a hundred times what they had given up in the present age, and persecution, and everlasting life. You remember that? Today's gospel starts out with James and John. What we haven't heard is the paragraph in between these stories in which Jesus tells the apostles that the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and pharisees who will hand him over to the gentiles who will mock him, spit on him, scourge him and kill him, and on the third day he will rise again.

When they hear that he will rise again, it makes more sense that John and James ask to be at his right and left hand. They may not know how he would do it, but they were convinced that he was the Messiah, and they probably believed what everyone was saying, that the Messiah would conquer the enemies of Israel and restore the glory of the Kingdom of David. And when we hear Jesus say, “Can you drink the cup I must drink and be baptized by the baptism I must be baptized in,” we think about his passion and death; but those phrases are used in the Old Testament to indicate a trial that you have to go through before you are vindicated. That's why the other apostles are indignant – Jesus has just promised James and John that they will go through this trial.

As was the case with the rich young man, Jesus has allowed the two apostles to swear their loyalty. Now he turns the tables. The Gentiles are the ones who want what you think you want, what you think I am going to give you. But that's not how it will be. Greatness in my kingdom is measured by the degree to which you are a servant. If you really want to be great, then you must be a slave to everyone. And I am going to give up my very life so that many will have life. In other words, the Kingdom Jesus brings is a kingdom where everyone outdoes themselves in waiting on each other.

When we have someone's funeral, we say, “Eternal rest grant to him or her, O Lord” Heaven, we imply, is a place where we no longer have to strive or worry or work. But whether or not this is the case, Mark makes it clear that the eternal life we hope to inherit is not the same thing as the Kingdom of God. Jesus says that Kingdom is already here, already among us. It's like a mustard seed that grows into a large plant. Jesus is not content to wait for the next life; he wants the Kingdom of God to begin right now, with you and I. And for some people, it has. It doesn't matter if you are rich or poor, male or female, religious or lay, a child or someone old and gray. The kingdom Jesus is talking about is as near as the next time you give something to your neighbor, the next time you meet his needs, the next time you listen to her worries. The kingdom is a mind set which always asks, “How can I serve you? How can I be another Christ for you? How can I lay down my life for you.?”

Most of us Christians encounter little bits of the Kingdom every day, either on the giving end or the receiving end. If you are a medical professional, you do a little extra studying to try to figure out a way to help your patient. If you are a grocery clerk you are patient and helpful with the elderly person who is having trouble with the chip reader. If you are a car salesman, you try to help the customer decide what would be best for him, rather than for you. You get the idea. The Kingdom is where all our interactions are colored by mercy and love. And most of us have a few of those moments every day. But as Jesus says, if we want to be great , we have to grow into this way of acting, this thing called servant leadership. For some of us it may indeed lead to admiration, to positions of authority, to power, prestige, pleasure or possessions. For others it will lead to obscurity or even pain. But Jesus is saying that the more we get out of ourselves and answer the needs of those around us, the more we partake of the kingdom.

Someone said that the afterlife is like a great banquet where everything you could possibly want to eat or drink is right in front of you. But hell is the same way. People who die rise again with arms that have no elbows. The people in hell are frantically trying to eat and drink, but can't, and of course they are hungry and thirsty and miserable all the time. If you look at the people in heaven, they are totally happy, since each feeds the one across the table from him. This life we are living now is practice for the next.

Twenty eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 10:17 – 30

There was a little girl sitting in church on Sunday. When you are little services seem to last forever. She colored in her coloring book. She crawled around under the pew. She tried to take a nap but it didn't work. Finally she tugged on her mother's arm and in a loud whisper, asked, “Are you sure this is the only way to get to heaven?” Today we hear Jesus answer that question.

We've heard this story so often, because Matthew and Luke tell it as well, almost in the same words. And Matthew calls the man “young” and Luke calls him “rich” and as you noticed, Mark just calls him “a man”. And if you are like me, when you hear the story you see a rich young man. And only in Mark do we hear the words, “Jesus looked at him and loved him.” There is one more interesting bit. When Jesus talks to his disciples about how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God, only in Mark does he address them as “children”. And I think these little differences might be a clue as to how Mark wants us to take the story.

First, in Mark he is just “a man”. If we make him rich or make him young, well, most of us are not rich or young, so it becomes a story about someone else, and we can sort of sit in judgment. And that is even more obvious in the Greek, because the one who runs up to Jesus is referred to as “one”, not “a man. So Mark wants us to identify with this one, he's talking about you and me. Mark makes sure we know that Jesus loved this one. And I think that tells us something as well. This is a good person, someone who not only keeps the commandments that Jesus lists, but probably all the commandments. As you've probably heard, the rabbis and pharisees eventually identified 630 commandments, and to a good Jew, eating pork was not different than adultery; every commandment of God was to be kept. And there were lots of commandments about taking care of widows and orphans, and welcoming strangers into your midst, and treating foreigners like natives before the law. Tithing of course was a commandment. So Jesus is looking at this person, who has been trying since he was a child to keep the commandments out of love for God who gave them to Moses.

But the person's joy is short-lived. Here he figured he had it made. He'd been doing everything right. But Jesus says “You lack one thing; go, sell all you have and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me”. Now I have to pause and give you a little bible history. You probably remember that Saint Jerome translated the bible into Latin. In those days, the Gospel of Matthew was considered the “real gospel” and Matthew was considered more reliable because after all, he was there, he was an apostle, and Mark and Luke weren't. Modern scholars, both Catholic and Protestant, know now that the Apostle Matthew did not write the gospel, at least what we have today. So Jerome left out some words in his translation of Mark because they weren't in Matthew. Those words were “take up the cross” and follow me. Many modern translations from the original Greek include those words, but others don't. I think Mark meant to include them because Jesus tells us in other passages that we will have to take up the cross.

The person's face fell and he went away because he had many possessions. He could not part with them; Jesus is asking way too much.

Now if you were reading the gospel of Mark in a continuous way, instead of only hearing a little bit on the weekend you would remember than only a few verses ago the apostles were trying to keep children from approaching Jesus, who told them, “let the children come to me” and he added that you had to become like a child to enter the kingdom. Now Jesus calls the apostles children and he points out that people who trust in riches simply cannot enter the kingdom that way.

That is why the apostles are astonished. After all, as everyone knows, if you are rich, it's either because you are dishonest or because God favors you. And God would favor you if you keep all his commandments, right?

But Jesus goes on to say that even if it's impossible for man, with God all things are possible.

And Peter picks up on this. We have left everything to follow you, he says. And Jesus says, “You've got it. The only way to heaven is to follow me, to take up the cross.”

You know, we human beings spend the first halves of our lives getting stuff. Almost everything we do is rooted in that instinct. We get stuff; we work hard to get stuff, most of us try to find someone to spend our lives with; we want children, a car, a house, a flat panel TV set, and stuff leads to more stuff. We may not be rich, but what we have we want to keep. I visit a lot of people who are shut-in's and sometimes you see evidence that they are hoarders. But being a hoarder is just an exaggeration of our instinct for stuff. And stuff gets in the way of a relationship with Jesus. Jesus wants to give us himself, and he will not hold back his gift. Every time we receive His Body and Blood in the Eucharist, we are reminded that he is always offering himself to us. But we can't receive his gift without getting our stuff out of the way. Do we have to sell all we have and give it to the poor? If so, we are all in trouble, even the Franciscans over at Saint Stan's, because they may not technically own anything, but they have stuff – clothing, a bed to sleep in, a computer to use, a television to watch.

The little girl finally went home and got out her dolls and her stuffed animals and a little table and set everything up for a tea party. Then her father walked through the door and held out his hands and she dropped everything and ran over and jumped into his arms, abandoning all her toys. That's what Jesus wanted from the person in the story. And that's what he wants from you and from me. Because that is what makes a little child different from someone who is attached to stuff.

Twenty seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 10:2 - 16

A young couple decided to get married. The future groom went to his father and said, “I know I want to marry her, but my feet smell so bad she won't want to come near me. The father replied, “Just wash them with soap and water twice a day, and keep your socks on when you are in bed. The future bride went to her mother and said, “When I wake up in the morning my breath is so bad; I'm afraid he won't want to be in the same room with me.” The mother replied, “First thing in the morning before you open your mouth go to the bathroom and brush your teeth.” So the young couple got married and everything was going fine until one day the new husband woke up in the middle of the night and noticed he was missing a a sock. His wife woke up and asked “What's wrong, honey?” The husband looked at her with horror and said, “Don't panic, but I think you swallowed my sock.”

Today we hear Jesus echoing that passage in Genesis. I looked at several translations, and it's interesting that in all of them Jesus does not exactly quote Genesis. If you look at the first reading, it says “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife and the two then become one flesh.” Here the reason is that God made woman from the body of the man and Adam recognizes that they are part of the same substance. Of course the first couple disobey God by eating the fruit of the forbidden tree, and this unity which existed before the fall is ruptured. God asks Adam why he disobeyed, and Adam replies “This woman whom you gave to me, she gave me the fruit, and I ate it” Now there is a wedge between Adam and Eve. She then says, “The serpent tricked me, and I ate it.” Eve drives a wedge between humanity and nature. And the consequences are grave; nature will suffer, women will bear their children in pain, man will have to wrestle with the earth to keep himself alive, and ultimately all will die, death has been introduced into the world. And one consequence can be seen in the Book of Deuteronomy, where Moses decrees “When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out from his house.” The relationship envisioned by God is completely disturbed and ruined. In Jesus' time there was a great debate about divorce; some rabbis thought that any reason was reason enough, while others thought that there had to be a very good reason, like adultery. Jesus, however, calls their attention back to the beginning, but uses slightly different words: “God made them male and female, and for this reason a man shall leave his mother and father and cling to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” Now that original sin has entered the world, becoming one flesh is a process, not something that instantly happens.

My wife and I have been married for more than fifty two years. I think we have a happy marriage; she is pretty close to perfect and one quality that I really like is that she has poor taste in men. But we are not really one flesh, not yet. There is still in each of us an essential loneliness, we will never know each other completely, nor will we be known on this side of the grave. Every loving relationship is the same; a mother never completely knows her daughter; two friends never completely fill up that empty space. And children can grow apart from their parents, and friendship can cool down, but married couples cannot easily call it quits; they've made public vows, they have children – and there are two ways married couples deal with this; the first is that they struggle for dominance, they struggle to make the other into the ideal. And when the other doesn't change enough it can lead to mental and physical abuse, or to indifference. Like the young man who approached his father with the news that he was planning to divorce his wife. “Why, son, why?” said the father. “I guess she just doesn't make me happy,” replied the son. The father said, “Don't be a fool son. Your mother and I have been married for 50 years and we've never been happy.”

The other approach is to forgive each other – forgiving him or her for not being the person that completes you, that fills up all your empty space, that completely relieves your loneliness, that is the missing piece of the puzzle. Forgive the other because you are not yet one flesh, but still are in the process of becoming. As Father Ronald Rolheiser said, “We cannot not disappoint the other”. Because of original sin, because of the fact that we are real people with our own egos, our own personalities, our own pattern of sinfulness, and mostly because, as Saint Augustine put it, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee, O Lord.”

Marriage is an icon of the Trinity, where three persons love so perfectly that they become one. Marriage is an icon of the love between Christ and his Church, where He lays down his life for his Bride, and she joyfully submits to his headship. But marriage is also an icon of all loving relationships between human beings, which are meant to partially and incompletely answer those longings that will not be truly satisfied until we raindrops dissolve into the ocean that is God, as Saint Jane Frances de Chantal said.

And if we forgive, if we accept that we cannot not disappoint the one we love, we can move on from that point with our lover as we both seek to join our souls with Jesus himself.

Jesus ends his discussion by pointing out that unless you become like a little child you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Little children, of course, have nothing of their own and are completely dependent on others just to live. And yet to them everything, however imperfect, is gift. And when we recognize that our loving relationships, especially if we are married, are sheer gifts, we will begin to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 9: 38-43, 45, 47-48

The world was a different place when I was growing up. Republicans and Democrats got along and generally worked together. The place you found conflict was among Christian churches. Of course that was not nearly as bad as it had been in the past where people were put to death, often in extremely unpleasant ways, because they chose to believe differently than the more powerful majority. In the 1940's and early 50's at least in Montana we tolerated each other. But still … we were told that it was a grave sin if you sent your kids to a public school assuming there was a Catholic school nearby. Mixed marriages were frowned upon and my grandmother, who married a Mormon, was married in the Church rectory because you couldn't get married in the church proper. And although my teachers, members of the Sisters of Charity, allowed that it was possible for non Catholics to get to heaven, the -- analogy was that for them, it was like finding their way through a jungle whereas for good Catholics, it was like driving down a superhighway.

Things have gotten better. In much of the world we have learned to tolerate each other. Live and let live, we say. But Jesus has something even more radical to tell us today.

First, a language lesson. Skandalon is a Greek word which originally referred to a stone which you had stumbled over and now cursed. Can you picture it in your mind? Someone who is walking down the road, stumbles, turns around and yells at the stone. Another Greek word we encounter is sin. The Greek word means “to miss the mark” or to not get the point. Finally, Gehenna, which we often think means “hell” refers to a place outside of Jerusalem where people burned their garbage. What you threw in Gehenna was less than useless.

Now we can look at our gospel. John says, “we met a man casting out demons in your name, so we tried to stop him”. Jesus says, “why did you try to stop him? Isn't it a good thing to cast out demons? Isn't that what we are doing?” And then Jesus sits everyone down and says in a very earnest voice, “When you tried to stop him you put an obstacle in front of someone who was doing a good thing, and it would be better to be cast into the sea with a millstone around your neck than to do that to someone. And then Jesus goes on to say, “If your hand causes you to miss the mark, to lose sight of what you are supposed to be doing, to be distracted from what really matters, cut it off. It's better to live maimed than to be tossed into the garbage pit with both hands. And the same with the feet and the eye.

So Jesus has the same thing in mind as Moses in our first reading. Two elders were prophesying and Joshua was alarmed and asked Moses to do something. And Moses wished that all of God's people would have God's spirit.

So what does that mean to us today? We have a lot of people in our world who are trying to change the world for the better. When we watch what is happening with the supreme court nomination we see what should be a thoughtful deliberative process turned into an irrational hate fest and character assassination. And that seems to be the level of political discourse today. And we see the homeless, the drug addicts, the mentally ill, the children living on the streets, and the newspapers tell us that all these groups are getting larger. And though we all know better, there seems to be no solution to the ongoing pollution of our planet, which really means to leave the next generations, our children and grandchildren, impoverished. And of course I could go on, you could go on.

We mean well, and so do the people down the street at Saint Andrews or First Church. All of us Christians want to change the world for the better, that's what Jesus means by entering into life. If we are Christians we want to be like Jesus and do all in our power to make sure all of our brothers and sisters who have a spark of God's life in them, who are made in his image, are healed, have their demons cast out, and are raised from the dead. But we all like to be where we are comfortable. So we do our thing, the Christians at Saint Andrews do their thing, the Christians at First Church do their thing – when maybe what Jesus is saying is that we should be working together to solve the problems he wants us to solve. Oh, there are real differences in the way we worship, in the theology we embrace, and those things are important – but you know, we aren't going to change that until the time the Lord comes again. When I was very young I was told that someday everyone would be Catholic, and all those other people who belonged to other denominations or other religions would see the error of their ways. Maybe so, but not in my lifetime or yours.

John was upset because a few passages ago we heard how Jesus had given the apostles the power to cast out demons. John is upset because being able to cast out demons makes him special, and someone who hasn't got the license, the training, the special power from Jesus just has no business in the field of demon casting.

I believe we Catholics have the truth. Vatican II says that Christ's Church subsists in the Catholic Church. But it goes on to say “...it is possible, according to Catholic doctrine, to affirm correctly that the Church of Christ is present and operative in the churches and ecclesial communities not yet fully in communion with the Catholic Church, on account of the elements of sanctification and truth that are present in them.”

Jesus told his disciples to teach all nations, baptizing them, even to the ends of the earth. Maybe to actually achieve what Jesus wants, to transform the world, requires that we work closely with other Christians, even when we disagree about fundamentals. Jesus wants us to see the absurdity of the man who is walking down a road, stumbles, and turns around and curses the rock he stumbled on, and thus loses sight of his original goal. You and I always have to keep our eye on the road and not the stumbling blocks.