Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 13:24-32

The Gospel of Mark was written about the year 70 A.D., probably in Rome.  The war between the Romans and the Jews, which occurred around this time, resulted in the destruction of the Jewish temple.  The people who first heard this gospel were probably Roman Christians of Jewish ancestry, along with a few gentiles.  During the period from about 200 years before Christ to 200 years after, there was a popular kind of literature called apocalypse, which means “uncovering”.  Most of the time apocalypses talked about the future, but were really referring to the present.  The last book of the Bible talks about the end of time, but much of it is a criticism of the Roman Empire.  The Book of Daniel seems to predict five kingdoms, each succeeding the other -- but was written during the time of the last kingdom, the broken up kingdom of Alexander the Great.  Today we hear Mark’s “little apocalypse” and if you are like me, you are left scratching your head.  Stars can’t fall from the sky.  Did Jesus really say that this generation would not pass away before all these terrible predictions happened? If he really meant what he said, then clearly he was wrong.  There aren’t any people left from that generation.  So what is going on here? 

If you were one of those people for whom Mark is writing, you would be really worried.  Back in Palestine the Jews were being defeated by the Romans, and the temple was destroyed.  If you were a member of what then was a form of Judaism in which people followed Christ but kept many of the same traditions, you would fear for your life.  You would be getting dirty looks from your fellow Romans. You would try to fade into the background when the soldiers marched by.  And you would wonder if you’d made the biggest mistake in your life when you joined up with the Christians.  We forget that we Christians were subject to antisemitism a long time ago -- just like those Jews who came to Holland to watch the soccer play-offs.  

And Mark’s gospel addresses these fears, especially here in this part of Jesus’ discourse.

First, the gospel reminds us that everything comes to an end, eventually, even the world itself.  You and I will come to an end.  My marriage will end -- one of us will die before the other in all likelihood.  When we think about this fact, that everything we know about in our world will end, the first reaction is a feeling of hopelessness, purposelessness, maybe even despair.  But the little apocalypse we just read promises that God, who created the world and declared it to be good, will in some way deal graciously with all these seeming endings.  After all, we believe he loves his creation so much that he chose to become part of it as Jesus of Nazareth.  He isn’t a God that waits for us to fail, then punishes us.  He is there to forgive us time and time again when we acknowledge our failings.  He gives us grace to try again.

A second message is that we need to be lightly attached to the institutions and structures of this world.  God wants us to be good citizens and work for the common good.  We just went through another presidential election and you would think from the rhetoric that during the next four years we would have either a Nazi or a communist (depending on which side you were on) not only ruling us, but destroying all that we hold dear about our country.  Both sides claimed that if their opponent got into office, this would be the last free election.  Someday that will happen.  We would not be the first country to go from freedom to a form of political slavery.  Every now and then we have to step back and ask, to what are we really attached?  Because only God is permanent, only God lasts forever.  

A third message is that we have to be awake, alert, ready at all times.  We need to see the hand of God working in the world.  Jesus told us, “Be alert, I have told you everything”.  And yet most of us go through life half asleep, not aware of all the amazing things God is doing to us, for us, around us all the time.  Jesus urges us, his disciples, to see that whenever everything is falling apart, that God is there, the Son of Man is coming, nothing will be lost.  He will gather and preserve all that God has given him -- that’s you and I. And Jesus assures us that we will pass through whatever terrible things happen to us, because his word and his promises will never pass away.  

Christ the King

 Christ the King

John 18:33-37

This is the last Sunday of the liturgical year, and next week we start over again, with Year C, where most of the gospel readings will be taken from Luke.  Pius XI made this feast a universal one in 1925, after world war I.  It seemed like a good enough idea that when Catholics and Protestants got together to develop the revised common lectionary, some Protestant denominations decided to  celebrate the feast as well.  It’s the only feast common to both groups to have been set up after the Protestant reformation.

But what is it all about?  We don’t have kings and even people who do don’t understand what a king is.  During the middle ages in Catholic Europe there was a remarkable movement from kings who held unlimited power and were often corrupt, to kings and queens who went out of their way to live their lives as they imagined Christ would.  So you have Stephen of Hungary, Louis of France, Henry of Bavaria.  You have Margaret of Scotland, Elizabeth of Portugal, Hedwig of Poland -- and these are just a few of the remarkable rulers who achieved the title of saint.  And since that golden age the Church has tried in vain to influence subsequent kings and queens to imitate these saints, who in turn tried to imitate Christ the King.  But as the church's influence died out rulers relapsed into the old mold, where they were mostly dictators who considered themselves above the law -- the law of God as well as that of man.

So what made these individuals saints?  They listened to the gospel.  They heard Jesus say that if you wished to be great, you must become a servant.  They heard his parable of the sheep and the goats -- the idea that the Master will recognize his sheep by what they do for the least of their brothers.  And they knew that all men and women were called to follow Christ, so they encouraged missionaries, they set up dioceses, they built monasteries and on and on, all the while recognizing the Pope as the ultimate vicar of Christ on earth.

Many years ago when I was young I was invited to give a presentation in England.  Afterwards my wife and I boarded the flying Scotsman to Edinburgh. There we took a tour of the city.  The tour guide spent quite a bit of time talking about Saint Margaret.  Despite the fact that Scotland had become largely protestant since her time, she is still revered and remembered fondly.  Margaret was born into the English royal family -- her father was an heir to the throne.  Margaret wanted to be a nun, but through circumstances that almost seem miraculous, found herself encouraged by her confessor to marry Malcomb, who was then king of Scotland.  Scotland had been Christianized by Irish missionaries, but there was still a lot of the old pagan religion, and Malcomb’s kingship involved a loose rule over nearly independent dukes.

In addition to bearing eight children, three of whom would become saints in their own right, Margaret Christianized Malcomb into the kind of ruler she had seen in her time in Hungary under Saint Stephen.  The two of them would open the castle doors to the poor, and they would wait on them before they ate themselves.  Although he was illiterate, Malcolm and Margaret contemplated the scriptures that she read to him and put them into practice.  They built monasteries and  churches, and worked tirelessly to bring their subjects to Christ and unite the scattered christian communities under the pope.  It was said that Margaret, who was about four feet and ten inches tall, had a way about her that won over the men who ruled under Malcom, and gradually the kingdom became more homogenous and united.  The kingdom became an example to the rest of Europe, and acquired the nickname “Athens of the North”.  Margaret died six days after the news came to her that Malcomb and her oldest son had been killed in a battle with England over a border dispute.  She died with her eyes fixed on the crucifix.  We know a lot about her life because her confessor, who had been with her since she left England, wrote a little book about her.  It’s out of print, but I read an eighteenth century copy in the Catholic University’s rare book library.

You could read about the other royal saints who had heard the call of Jesus, that if you wanted to be great, you must become the servant of all.  

We still have rulers in democratic countries, who try to live lives compatible with the Gospel.  Former president Moon Jae in of South Korea comes to mind.  Hopefully there will be more.  But one thing we can learn from studying the lives of the royal saints is that becoming a saint is not limited to professional religious people, and that any legitimate vocation can be the means to holiness. On this feast of Christ the King, let us increase our efforts to submit to his rule.     

Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

 Mark 12:38-44

My mother was the sixth child out of ten born to parents who were themselves children of German immigrants.  Poverty was hereditary.  My grandfather was a farmer and as far as I know was illiterate.  His oldest son dropped out of school at an early age to help with the farm, and he also was illiterate.  The scars of poverty were apparent on each of the ten children in different ways.  My mother was no exception.  When I was a teenager I remember accompanying her to the bank to argue over a bill she had received which she believed overcharged her by ten cents.  Finally the man she was arguing with pulled a dime out of his pocket and gave it to her.  Another time she bought a watermelon which on inspection at home had a bad spot.  She carefully carved this out of the fruit, served the rest of it the family, and brought the rotten piece back to the grocer and demanded another watermelon.  She wore him down also.  My parents quarreled a lot, always about money.  Dad liked to spend, Mom liked to save.  

So thanks to Mom, God rest her soul,I have a very dysfunctional attitude toward money.  If you asked the average Christian what Jesus talked about, he or she would probably say love, peace, being kind to others, avoiding sin.  But of the 38 parables in the gospels that Jesus left us, sixteen have to do with money or possessions.  That’s 43 percent.  God cares about money, about possessions.  And he does so because we do.

The scene Jesus is observing went something like this:  people were coming into the temple and dropping money into the collection baskets.  It was customary to say something like “I am giving 20 dollars so that my business will pick up.  I am giving 50 dollars so that my son finds a good bride.  I am giving 100 dollars so that my mother-in-law will recover from her illness.  You get the idea.  Giving money was like a prayer.  It’s not a bad thing.  We still say that almsgiving is one of three legs on which the Christian life rests, along with prayer and sacrifice. As is always the case, there are people who pervert the system.  That’s what was happening with the scribes.  According to the law of Moses, you were supposed to honor scribes, because they studied the law.  It’s interesting that in Israel today and in some orthodox Jewish communities, studying the law exempts you from military service and even from working for a living, because there is nothing more important than studying the law.  The scribes wore distinctive clothing to signal their position in society, and some indeed misused their status.  Nothing new about that.  What Jesus objects to is the practice of praying in exchange for money.  And who is most likely to pray for money? A widow, who faces poverty and even starvation when whatever she has is gone.  In the first reading we met such a widow.

God cares about money because we do.  And the reason he cares is because money can become a god to us.  It certainly was to my Mom and her siblings.  And it probably is to me as well.  I can’t imagine giving away all my money.  I deeply sympathize with the young man who chose not to take Jesus up on his invitation to sell all he had, give it to the poor, and follow him.  Thanks to my wife, though, I’m pretty generous contributing from my surplus -- she sees to it that I give it away.  

God cares about money because we do.  Money can do bad things to one’s soul.  It can lead to a sense of entitlement; it can fuel addiction; it can cause isolation and strained relationships, especially among family members.  Being wealthy can lead to anxiety, stress, depression as one tries to protect one’s money or make even more money.  And being wealthy gives a false sense that you are somehow immune from things that most people fear.  Jesus told a parable about that -- the man who built bigger barns for his crops so that he could take it easy -- but God told him that his soul would be demanded of him that very day.  

Jesus praises the widow.  The words we read aren’t as stark as the original Greek text.  I don’t read Greek, but my sources tell me that what the Greek words basically say is that the widow put in her life.  Does Jesus complement the widow because she gave everything away?  Maybe not, two little coins almost worthless, aren’t going to make a big difference in the rest of her life.  But in that gesture of throwing away her last pennies, Jesus sees someone who escapes from the burden of having money, someone who decides to completely depend on God for what will be the rest of her life.  I think that’s what he wants you and I to see -- to recognize that money is in danger of becoming a god for each of us, and our task is to remember that we are completely dependent on God.   

Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 12:28-34

This is a familiar gospel, isn't it?  It's because Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell almost the same story.  In Luke’s version he has Jesus answer the question, “Who is my neighbor?” with the story of the Good Samaritan.  And maybe today we should look at this familiar gospel in a different way.  In the first part, Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy -- the prayer that a Jewish man is supposed to say when he wakes up in the morning.  It’s called the Shmah, because it starts out “smah yashrael” which means “Hear, Israel…” And to the people of Moses’ time who were surrounded by pagans, the commandment meant that only God, only Yaweh, was worthy of my love.  By the time Jesus came along the commandment had taken on some additional meaning -- what is there in your life that takes away from your love of God?  It's said that Jesus appeared to Saint Thomas Aquinas and said, “You have written well of me, Thomas.  What reward can I give you?” and Thomas replied, “Only you, Lord.”  How would you and I answer that question?  I know there are a lot of things I would be reluctant to leave behind when I die.  Certainly, my wife and my family, but my computer, my television set, my Netflix subscription.  And more seriously, my ability to walk, to see, to hear, to think. But like it or not, I will leave all these behind.  So loving God the way Jesus, and before him, Moses told us to, is more of a goal than a present reality for most of us, me included.  I have to work on getting to Saint Thomas' place – only you, Lord!

Love of neighbor also needs to be carefully thought about.  Do you remember when Jesus was approached by a gentile woman who wanted him to heal her daughter?  Jesus replied that he had been sent to the lost sheep of Israel.  But he healed the woman’s daughter.  Jesus was approached by a centurion who asked for healing for his servant -- and Jesus did so. Over and over again, we read about Jesus encountering someone and healing him or her.  

Love of neighbor has to do with action.  This is the time of year when my dear wife sits down and writes checks for the forty or so charities for which she feels sorry.  We pay income taxes, a very small part of which actually helps people in trouble.  We contribute to the bishop’s fund and our favorite college.  Is that what Jesus is talking about?  I don’t think so. In Jesus' time Jewish people recognized that you had an obligation to tithe – and besides the upkeep of the temple tithes were used to help the poor.  You and I still have that obligation -- that’s good, but it's not love of neighbor, it's an obligation.  As Jesus demonstrated in his life and his story about the good Samaritan, a neighbor is someone who crosses your path who needs what you can give.  The word Jesus and the scribe use for love is the word “agape”.  It isn’t just a feeling; it’s the willingness to be inconvenienced, to be put out, to give something up for the person who crosses your path and needs something from you.  It’s really an attitude, a change in how you look at the world.  It has to do with the encounters you have with other people every day.  If you meet someone in pain, what can you do about it?  If you meet someone hungry, what can you do right now for her.  If you meet someone who is anxious or depressed or angry or sad, what can you do? And if you can't see their need, what would you like someone to do for you in that circumstance?  A complement? A thank you? Because you would like those things for yourself if you didn't have them.  Don't love your neighbor in your mind.  Agape your neighbor.

Patrick Wisely, a Presbyterian theologian, says that love of neighbor comes from a broken heart.  When Jesus stood before a large crowd in Galilee, it says he had compassion for them for they were like sheep without a shepherd.  In the Greek words, he felt it in his gut, like a stomach ache.  And of course he was moved to sit them down and feed them. In those days that feeling was what we call a broken heart today.  When you see the young man holding a cardboard sign saying homeless, what do you feel?  When you encounter a displaced person from Ukraine, or Afghanistan or Haiti, does your heart break for him or her?  Walk around a nursing home someday and meet the people who have no families, who are lost in their failing minds, who are never going to walk again, who depend on machines to take the place of their kidneys -- do they break your heart?  If not, is something wrong with you?  Because allowing our hearts to be broken is the first step in loving our neighbor as ourselves.  It’s the power that moves us to agape love.

So in the straightforward commands of Jesus there is a lot to think about.  What could we really leave behind to possess God?  We can say “everything” but do we really mean it?  And when I encounter a person who is suffering, does my heart break?  Because a broken heart is the beginning of love of neighbor, of self-giving love.  It’s not easy to follow Jesus.  I can give away all my money to “the poor” but if I can walk by someone in pain and not feel my heart break, maybe I’m missing the point of his commandment.  Maybe if I walk past you without a smile or a greeting I'm missing the point.  But I probably will, because I have a lot of work to do still.  

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 10:56-52

Matthew and Luke also tell this story; Matthew talks about two blind men.  In Luke’s account it’s almost identical to Mark’s but he does not name the blind man.  Mark, as you may remember, was written about twenty years or more before Matthew and Luke, and some scholars think Mark’s gospel is really an account dictated by Peter because of its detail and because Peter looks bad in Mark’s gospel.  Mark does not tell the story just to amaze us once again.  He wants us to put ourselves, figuratively, in the blind man’s shoes and accompany him to Jesus.

I’ve never, thank God, been blind, but when I had the cataract removed from my right eye, I was totally conscious and could not see out of that eye because of the anesthetic.  It was frightening.  But Bartimeus, if he is like the blind people of that time, was cast off.  He depended for his living on the charity of strangers.  It’s doubtful that he had any close friends or relatives, otherwise he wouldn’t be on the street.  You can picture him sitting cross legged with his cloak folded on his lap to catch coins that were thrown to him.  He knew nothing better, expected nothing more.

Sadly, that’s true of a lot of people, Christians as well as non-Christians.  We don’t expect much.  Sure, we pray, we try to be charitable, but every day is like the day before.  

Bartimeus is not the only beggar on the road.  Since everyone was going to Jerusalem for the Passover, beggars turned out in droves because they expected that the pilgrims would be generous.  But Bartimaeus is different.  He’s restless and he has heard about Jesus.  So he does something totally out of character -- he cries out, "Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!”

Once in a while you see someone in church that you haven’t seen before -- a visitor from another town, maybe.  But I remember many years ago I saw such a person.  It was several weeks later that I met him again, because he was married to a woman who had just become a patient of mine.  I told him that I recognized him for the church, and he replied that he’d been to a lot of churches and had decided to sign up with the Vineyard church because he felt welcome there.  

The crowds following Jesus are there for many reasons.  They’ve heard him predict his death, more than once.  Some have turned away.  But crowds continue to follow, hoping that this is the Messiah, the one who will throw off the Roman yoke.  And like many of us “insiders” we are suspicious and not particularly welcoming of outsiders.  So when Bartimeus cries out, they shush him.  

Followers of Christ are of two kinds.  One kind looks for him to solve their problems, to work his miracles, to answer their needs.  But the true follower is sensitive to the cry of the poor, just like Jesus, who hears Bartimeus and demands that he be brought before him.  Notice that Jesus does not go to Bartimeus; he tells his followers to bring him before him.  And some do, some who, like Jesus, are sensitive to the cry of the poor. They say, “Take courage, get up, he is calling you.”

Now if you were a blind beggar, you would get up slowly, pick up your cloak -- because it’s probably your only possession -- and stumble along toward Jesus.  You would certainly not leave your cloak behind.  It kept you warm at night, it was a receptacle for alms, it was irreplaceable.  Not because you didn’t trust Jesus, but because that was always the way you moved about, holding the cloak in one arm and feeling your way with the other.  But Bartimeus doesn’t do that, he casts his cloak aside and leaps up, running to Jesus.  Bartimeus had a profession of sorts; he was a beggar.  Miserable as he might be he had some security, but now he enters a completely new life, not knowing what the future holds.  

When we make that leap to approach Christ, we have to leave something behind, because for every one of us there are things that are dear to us, people that we don’t want to abandon, comforts that we resort to at the end of the day.  We don’t like trouble.  At the end of the day we like things to be predictable.  Those who approach Christ will not have a comfortable and trouble-free life.  Bartimaeus gives up everything he has to receive the light of Christ.  His story ends with Jesus saying those familiar words ‘’ Go on your way, your faith has saved you.”  But Bartimeus doesn’t go on his way, he joins the crowd following Jesus.

I think Mark, or maybe Peter who told Mark what to write, insisted that Bartimeus’ name be in the account because people knew of him, a living witness to Jesus’ miracles.  And Bartimeus probably told his story over and over again -- If you want to be enlightened by Jesus, you have to choose between the old cloak and the new light. 

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 10:17-30

I listen to WJMJ, the radio station run by the Hartford archdiocese.  I like it because they play a lot of music that I liked when I was young.  I don’t even know what music is popular nowadays.  One song I liked was “Me and Bobby McGee”.  Janice Joplin made it famous but it was written by Kris Kristofferson who just recently passed away.  The chorus goes “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose, and nothing ain't worth nothin but it’s free.” 

If you aren’t tied down by stuff, wealth or power or pleasure or whatever, you don’t have a lot of worries or responsibilities.  But there is a story about a rich man who was noted for his piety; he prayed three times a day, went to daily Mass, helped out at the soup kitchen… and someone asked a poor man why he couldn’t be more like the rich man.  The poor man replied that he had to work all day long just to feed his family.  If you don’t have the dough to do stuff, there’s not a lot of stuff you are free to do.  Those people down in Florida who have lost everything are probably not feeling very free right now.  

And the rich man who approached Jesus -- he was doing everything he was supposed to, so much so that Jesus looked at him and loved him -- but he must have felt that he was missing something, or why would he have approached Jesus?

It’s very troubling, Jesus words to the rich man.  “Go, sell all you have and give it to the poor, and then come follow me.”  We know there are saints who took Jesus literally -- Saint Francis, Saint Anthony of the Desert, and you could probably add other saints to the list.  But there are saints who didn’t do this -- the saints who were kings and queens, rulers over people;  saints like Louis and Zele Martin, who had homes and furniture and means of transportation;  and indeed priests and nuns and brothers and monks -- who hold things in common.  So people have found ways to get around Jesus’ statement.  The easiest, of course, is to point out that Jesus was talking to this one person, not you, not me.  

But Jesus does go on to tell his apostles “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!”  But then he goes on to say, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God”.  He doesn’t qualify this statement, in fact, it is almost aimed at his disciples because those are the ones he calls “Children”.  And Jesus doubles down: it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”  My mother the theologian had pondered this and she may have read  that old excuse that Jesus was referring to a particularly narrow gate through the wall around Jerusalem that had the nickname “needle’s eye”.  But if that’s the case, why were the disciples exceedingly astonished?  I think Jesus meant what he said and that’s why they were astonished.  

But there is something else.  In our gospel passage, the phrase “those who have wealth” is obviously a translation from the Greek.  And the Greek words are literally “those who trust in riches.”  We aren’t going to get what God wants to give us if we put our faith in riches.  And we do.  We trust that between our 401k plan and social security we’ll get by.  I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone, even a Capuchin like Padre Pio, who would run around without clothing and search through garbage or forage in a forest for something to eat.  I don’t have that kind of faith.  

Peter, speaking for all the disciples,  begins to ask a logical question -- “We’ve given up everything and followed you…” In our gospel passage it looks like a complete sentence, but remember, he is just beginning the sentence.  The rest would almost certainly be something like, “what do we get?”  And Jesus answers the question.  And it’s a strange answer, because he is saying that if you give up all this stuff, you will get it all back in this life a hundred times more, along with persecution.  Do you know anyone, anyone for whom this is literally true?  I don’t.  But I’ve run across two theories, one being that Jesus is in a way rebuking Peter, who again may have missed the point.  If you give up everything to follow Jesus expecting a great reward, aren’t you just like the man who starts this whole discussion, wanting to add another thing to his things?  Another theory is that Jesus is referring to the family of people who follow him -- a far larger family than the family you have naturally, but a family that will be persecuted.  

But the bottom line is that all we can do is do our best to follow Jesus, because nothing I do can earn eternal life -- it is impossible for human beings, but for God all things are possible.  Someday we want to be like Saint Thomas Aquinas.  One day the Lord appeared to him and said, “Thomas, you have written well of me.  What do you want for your reward?”  And Thomas answered, “Only you, Lord”.   

Twenty-seventh Sunday of Ordinary time cycle B

Mark 10:2-16

During one of my philosophy courses in college, the professor spoke in a sort of monotone with eyes closed.  But if you listened, he was brilliant.  Many of our classmates weren’t listening.  They would read the assigned sections from the textbook and sort of doze through the classes.  It came time for the final exam.  It was an essay exam and there were four questions.  One student who had been listening was running out of time and barely started to answer the fourth question.  Another student, who had been dozing, answered all four questions in neat little paragraphs and turned in his workbook five minutes before the end of the time.  Later, he discovered that he had only gotten a C and the guy who had been listening but only answered three of the four questions had gotten an A.  He was outraged and went to the professor for an explanation.  The professor told him that he had indeed shown that he could memorize information, but the student who had been listening clearly had learned to think, which was what the professor was going for.

When we hear the first part of this gospel, we modern people focus on divorce.  Did Jesus really forbid divorce?  I suspect that this was a question the earliest Christians had to ask themselves, because Matthew and Luke, writing about twenty years after Mark, leave an opening.  They have Jesus saying “except for pornea” a word which has been translated in many ways -- indecency, impurity, prostitution, homosexual actions, marriage of first cousins, and so forth.  So our Protestant friends who do permit divorce have a way around Jesus’ commandment.  But we Catholics aren’t any better.  We have annulments, and recently I heard a priest proudly state that in our diocese, 95% of the cases brought before the tribunal are granted annulments.  

But maybe we shouldn’t focus on divorce, maybe instead we should think about what Jesus is saying in a broader sense.  During his time, there were different schools of thought among the Pharisees.  Some said the husband could divorce his wife for any reason.  Another said it had to be an awfully good reason, like adultery, like abandonment.  But it was always something a man did to his wife, never the other way around.   The Pharisees were interested in getting C’s, getting passing grades.  What was the minimum needed to comply with Moses’ admittedly vague rule that a man could divorce his wife?  But Jesus points to the ideal, that the whole purpose of marriage was that the man would leave father and mother -- and everything else that would try to compete for his loyalty -- and cling or cleave to his wife -- make her his priority -- and of course it goes the opposite way as well.  That’s the ideal everyone should strive for, that’s the A plus that married couples should be trying to get.

One lady I know made a very profound statement.  “I don’t have to be the best wife.  I have to be the best wife for my husband.”  If he has the same attitude as she does, that marriage will survive, that marriage will get an A plus.

And divorce isn’t the only thing.  We are all looking for what it takes to get a C in life.  It’s a mortal sin to miss Mass on Sunday.  But what if I have Covid?  What if I live twenty miles from the nearest church?  You’re not supposed to do servile work on Sundays.  Somehow my mother interpreted that to mean you could do up to an hour of servile work, which is how I ended up pushing a lawnmower around on Sunday.  If the cashier returns a ten-dollar bill instead of a one when making change, and I find out about it when I get home, what do I do?  What if it’s a five-dollar bill?  What if it’s a nickel?  We celebrated Saint Francis this last week.  When he got religion, he went for the A plus -- getting rid of everything that might hold him back, relationships with his parents, his possessions, even his clothing that his parents had given him.  

So I think that’s something that hits home with me.  I certainly have no interest in divorcing my wife and you probably don’t either.  But am I going through life looking for c’s or do I strive for A’s?  How about you?

And that’s probably why Jesus directs us to look at little children, who he says have the secret of the kingdom of heaven.  When a little child gets interested in something, she pulls out all stops.  When he has decided that a particular game or toy would make his life complete, he will nag until his parents finally give in -- of course we parents know that if you can outwait him, his interests will turn somewhere else at some point.  I’m old, but I can remember when I was about five, how badly I wanted to dress up like a cowboy -- and sure enough, I got a hat and a bandana and a belt with a holster for a toy gun for my birthday, and life was complete, at least for that day.

So Jesus is saying that the kingdom of heaven is open to people who are looking for A’s and will not settle for C’s.  How are our grades?