Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

 Lectionary: 140

But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate."

Each year in the United States, according to a recent article in the Washington Post,  thousands of bodies go unclaimed by family, friends, or church. The government must dispose of them. Some are found by neighbors or landlords, many die in a hospital having received the best care that institution could provide. Nurses are often the last and only caregivers. The problem is not new but has been worsened by the Covid pandemic.

I witnessed this once when a woman happened to come to the hospital with her two daughters to visit her ex-husband. She intended the visit to be her last -- ever. She found him dead in his hospital room, and I was called to be with her. Reluctantly she stayed long enough for me to offer a prayer. I hoped my few words might satisfy any charitable thoughts she or the daughters might feel they owed their dead husband and father. He had treated her cruelly; she had come to a hard decision. The VA took it from there.

Many of these unclaimed deceased were divorced, often multiple times. If they were once loved by their parents, spouses, or children a nation impoverished spiritually and financially cannot bear the cost of funeral expenses, much less of the psychiatric care they needed. 

I think of this ongoing tragedy when I read today's gospel. Jesus's disciples were astonished to hear him teach about the indissolubility of marriage. Can people be expected to live that way? Are his teachings realistic and necessary? Or, are they just somewhere over the rainbow; ideals attained by a few lucky couples in the best of times?

The Church believes that Jesus's teachings about marriage are not ideals, which are by definition unattainable. They are the only way humans can manage the challenges of mating and parenting . If we are impelled by obvious necessities to have children, only a commitment to monogamy and lifelong, exclusive fidelity make it possible. His teachings are as much law as the laws of gravity and thermodynamics. Ignore them at your risk.

Are they difficult and controversial? Yes, of course. No one said human life should be easy or simple. But the alternatives of living by your opinions, preferences, and wishes are far worse.

Many people will argue that divorce is necessary under certain circumstances, and they'll propose innumerable stories of violence to back that argument. But as a social policy, it only metastasizes the evil of domestic violence. Our life is not better and millions are suffering  intractable pain because divorce is taken for granted. Many children assume they'll be divorced several times even as they dream of their ideal lovers. And millions die alone, unloved and unknown.

Tragically, despite Jesus’s teaching and their much vaunted boasts of preaching the True Gospel, many Christian churches have accepted the inevitability of divorce. If they were reluctant at first, they came around. The Catholic Church struggles; she is caught between an all-consuming tide of family disintegration in a post-Christian, formerly great society -- and Jesus’s insistence. We have no choice but to obey the Lord and yet many feel misunderstood, neglected, and frankly abused by the teaching. Nor can we forget the millions of couples who, throughout the centuries, kept faith and their vows. Martyrs have died defending marriage; their witness cannot be dismissed.

Clearly, as the issue appears often in the scriptures and in all three synoptic gospels, the "problem of marriage" will not be easily resolved by any great, once-great, or yet-be-great society. The world has never felt an obligation to make it easier to live the Gospel. 

But the Lord must have the last word here. In a discussion about celibacy which complements and completes his teaching on marriage, "Jesus looked at them and said, 'For human beings this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.'”

As the disciples of Jesus live and breathe in the Spirit, they walk on water, handle dangerous serpents, and keep their vows of baptism, celibacy, and marriage.