(Sinead and Mark are two Young Adults).

Dear Sinead and Mark,

Did you ever hear anyone asking ‘How’s it going, oul’ stock?’  It’s a term of affection, and this is what my Googling of it told me: ‘Oul Stock’ -  Good friend. Generally used by the less than sober to assure the party being addressed that they are held in high regard and counted on as a close friend by the speaker. As in: ‘How’s it going, oul’ stock?”-

Well, I was reading one of the readings given to us for this 27^th Sunday,-  the reading from the Letter to the Hebrews (or Jewish followers of Jesus) Chapter 2, verses 9-11: ‘the one who makes us holy (that’s Jesus!), and the ones who are made holy (that’s us!) , are of the same stock; that is why he openly calls them his sisters and brothers.’ (See Hebrew’s Chapter 2, verse 11). Jesus of Nazareth, who never left that small portion of the Middle East, is the same stock as ourselves: he’s a human being, flesh and blood, knowing pain, temptation, struggle, tiredness, hunger, tears… just as much as we do. And so he could well say to you, Mark or to you, Sinead, or to any of your friends ‘How’s it going, oul stock?’,- ‘How’s it going, friends?’ Or if he lived in Belfast, he might say ‘What ‘bout ye?’

And the Gospel today (Mark 10: vs.2-16)  speaks to us of marriage, separation, the beauty of sex, and the extraordinary dignity of every child ! It’s a challenging reading, and I can’t deal with it all, in this letter to you. Let’s cut to the chase, and look at the beauty of our sexuality. Here, Jesus brings his hearers back to something that is a foundation document for Jews, Christian, Muslims,- the very first Book and the very first chapters of the what we call the Book of Genesis (‘Genesis’ means ‘the Beginning’).  Genesis teaches us this deep, deep truth,- ‘in His own image God created him, male and female

'Creation of Adam'- Michaelangelo, Sistine Chapel- the spark of the hands about to touch! God's spark is in us, we are each of us, female and male, touched and filled in all our humanness by the divinity of God.

he created them’.  Sinead, you are made female in the image of God,  and you, Mark are made male in the image of God! (God is Father, Mother, Brother, Sister, Lover to us all!)

And then, in chapter 2, another way of teaching the dignity of each woman, each man; ‘bone from my bones, and flesh from my flesh’ is what they were, and are, to each other: and then it adds,- ‘This is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two become one body’.  We are female in the image of God, we are male in the image of God, and husband and wife ‘cling to each other’ and the two become one body. And that’s the start of their wonderful journey of discovery of each other as two distinct, unique persons. And I love the way this is expressed in the formula one sometimes hears at weddings,- an older formula that is sometimes sadly neglected- ‘With my body I thee wed!’ .  That is why, in the Catholic understanding of a wedding, even when the couple have exchanged their wedding vows in words before the Christian community, their wedding is only completed, their marriage is only ‘consummated’,  when the couple have intercourse later. ‘With my body I thee wed!’ The couple exchange their vows AND their bodies,- and in this way ‘the two become one body’.  It is they, and not the priest or minister, who give each other the Sacrament of Matrimony. They keep in mind for themselves the first part as well, of that teaching from Genesis,- ‘This is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife…’.  Becoming one body with each other before they give themselves totally to one another (as’husband’ and ‘wife’), is missing the point, missing the meaning, of their physical sexual union. (Is it ‘putting the cart before the horse’, as the old saying goes?) Another way of putting this: did you ever ask yourselves why do people not exchange Christmas presents weeks before Christmas, instead of waiting for Christmas Morning? Is there something here about waiting until the time is right and the gift means what it says? Sinead, Mark, this might not be ‘modern’, but maybe there’s deep and ancient wisdom in it. What do you think?

One last thought for you, on this: in Marriage Encounter,- a movement that helps married couples to grow more deeply into their love and union,- there is a phrase,-‘When a husband and wife make love, they should hear God cheering!’ Does that surprise you? The same Creator taught us ‘Increase and multiply!’,- in other words, go and make babies galore! And our Creator is thrilled with delight when we do!

And when a recent Pope, Paul VI (’the Sixth’) taught us: ‘Sexuality is at the heart of being Human’, what a joy it was to hear it. And if it’s at the heart of being human, you can bet it’s at the heart of God,- because God created us in love, from love, and for love. Why? Because God is love! We are created to be Lovers, ‘in the image and likeness of God’. The Trinity, -Father, Son, Holy Spirit-, is one great cauldron of love: it is love.

So, that’s your calling, Sinead, Mark,- to be as genuinely loving as human beings as you can be, – to grow all your life long in the skills of loving, cherishing, touching, reaching out, serving,- in all the many ways and deeds that lie beneath that four-letter word,- L O V E

Finally, if you can, have a look at the last section of today’s Gospel-Mark 10:14-16- about  Jesus and the little children, and the indignation of Jesus when the disciples tried to keep the children away from a busy Jesus. At end of this piece, Mark tells us, ‘Then he put his arms round them, laid his hands on them and gave them his blessing’. There’s tenderness, respect and real loving.

Have a great week, Mark, Sinead! Will write to you next weekend, again,- please God!

God bliss you and bless you!

Seamus.

(Fr. Seamus Devitt C.Ss.R. –     email   seamus.devitt@redemptorists.ie )

‘He should have gone to Specsavers!’ That would be true of the (imaginary) reader who was stumbled through a public reading from St. Paul, and came out with ‘Husbands revere your wives…em, em..em..   Wives, reverse your husbands!’

When you cannot assemble that piece of furniture or equipment, and don’t have the foggiest notion how things fit together, there might come the moment when you just sit on the floor, amid all the bits and pieces, and say ‘Gimme the bloomin’ Manual!’,- or words not as mild, even.

Sometimes, in the great complications that are human relationships, when things everywhere seem to have gone astray, and people ‘have lost the plot’, it might be some help for a little while to go back to the ‘Manual’, -what has come to us from the Maker.

It seems that some Pharisees came to Jesus, -like some smart guys trying to catch him out- and gave him a puzzler about divorce and remarriage. They conceded that their leader, Moses, had indeed ‘allowed’ men to draw up letters of dismissal to be given to their wives, if they found something they deemed ‘objectionable’ about them. The poor women, the wives, had no such luxury regarding sending their husbands away. They were not allowed to ‘reverse their husbands’. Then Jesus refers to ‘the hardness of heart’ of the men that Moses had to deal with. They had lost the plot, had lost the dream of the Maker for women and men.

That’s where Jesus then brought them and brings us back to the two

The spark of the divine has touched each of us, female or male.

separate but interlinked accounts of the creation of men and women in the first place,-  back, that is, to Chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis, the First book of all. In the first account (Chapter 1, verses 26-28), we are ‘made in our own image’ says God, ‘in the likeness of ourselves’; ‘in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them’. And then said ‘be fruitful, multiply, fill all the earth’,- in other words, be united sexually, physically,- and remember that you are made male and female in the image of God! Enjoy your sexuality which is at the very heart of your being human!

From another tradition comes the second account, given to us in our first Reading today, from Genesis Chapter 2, verses 18 to 24. In this, they come to realize that they are flesh of each other’s flesh, bone of each other’s bone, that they are helpmates to each other. And then it says ‘THAT IS WHY… a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two become one body’.  The young couple leave their parents’ homes and set up their own, where they ‘cling to one another and become one body’. ‘With my body I thee wed!’ is how you will sometimes (not often enough!) hear it  at Weddings. Here, in sexual union, their Word becomes Flesh.

Jesus invites his hearers,- in the Gospel of Mark, it is his disciples, ‘back in the house’- to re-visit the foundation story, above, to see who they are, as men and women,- ‘in the image and likeness of God’,  in God’s own image male and female, because God saw that it was VERY good! (Chapter 1, verse 31). In the creation of human beings ‘God saw all that he had made, and indeed it was very good.’ (All the other parts of creation were ‘good’, but the creating of us humans He saw as very good.).

Does that answer our questions about the complications and difficulties of all human relationships? No. But it points us in a direction that , -if our hearts are not hardened and un-teachable as Jesus said to the Pharisees- will give us wisdom, and restore our vision of one another’s dignity. God truly knows that we are fragile, and that we get things wrong, that sometimes we may be un-teachable but at other times we must do the best we can in bad situations. God is the God of Compassion, even while all the times holding up to us the mirror of our extraordinary dignity, and how we might better relate, male and female, young and old.

Jesus won’t take back a single word of his teaching and vision of our worth and nobility, even as he takes us by the hand in our fragile and broken realities. The teaching is hard, but the vision is good.

Time to look in the mirror of our Maker’s face (our Heavenly Father’s face!)  and see ourselves immensely loved. ‘A friend,’- a recent poster says- ‘is someone who knows us as we really are, – and still loves us!’ Let’s continue paddling the canoes of our lives in the turbulent rapids of our many relationships, knowing that even if sometimes we get it wrong, the Master is always with us in the turmoil. ‘Do not be afraid, for I am with you!’

Seamus Devitt C.Ss.R.

seamus.devitt@redemptorists.ie