Faith, Commitment, Service

The 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time
Today’s Readings: Jos 24: 1-2a, 15-17, 18b; Ps 34; Eph 5: 21-32; Jn 6: 60-69

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been stressing the importance of cracking open the bible as one key way to figure out God’s will so we can live by it. And remember, I’ve also said that the words alone aren’t always easy or obvious in their meaning.

As a case in point, today, we have the well-known reading from the letter to the Ephesians. The apostle Paul writes: Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church…

To our modern ears that sounds downright insulting! I don’t even think the Cable Guy could get away with a remark like that. So much talk about all of us being equal in the eyes of God, and then this in the Holy Scriptures! Are we really supposed to take it seriously that women are subservient and asked to be submissive to men—or is this an example of a terribly out-of-date and prejudicial attitude?

Actually, if you study the passage that this text is part of, you’ll see that the reading begins: Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ. It also tells husbands to love their wives deeply, just the way Christ loves his church. In other words, this isn’t a one-sided teaching that the husband is the boss and the wife is a peon. Paul is saying that if a couple is going to have a loving marriage, then each spouse has to put the other first. The wife has to do her darnedest to be subordinate to her husband’s wishes and the husband has to do his darnedest to be subordinate to his wife’s. If the two partners try to outdo each other in loving and deferring to one another, that is the greatest proof and guarantee of their mutual love. There’s the marriage covenant in a nutshell.

As you know, besides my regular parish work, I also do work for the Marriage Tribunal. Most of what I do involves reviewing cases where people have gotten divorced and are asking for a church annulment.

In case you’re wondering why marriages fail in the vast majority of cases that I see, it’s because one or both of the spouses weren’t able to live by the simple principle we hear about today. Instead of trying to serve or defer to one another, the marriage partners put their own selfish interests first. Maybe the problem on the surface has to do with money or drinking or running around or whatever, but as an underlying issue, it often boils down to one spouse basically saying: I’m going to do what I want to do, and if you don’t like it—that’s too bad.

That kind of attitude, of course, isn’t going to cut it in any relationship—most especially in a marriage.

By the way, this gives me a little opportunity to talk for a minute about the whole idea of an annulment. I’m sure you’ve heard the Church’s teaching on marriage, which flows out of the bible text that’s quoted in Ephesians: For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. We understand Christ’s teaching is that once a couple marries, they become one flesh and they can’t be divided… so divorce is not possible.

If that’s true, then how can we have annulments?

Ah… once again, we see that you have to be very careful about taking everything in the bible at face value apart from the deeper meaning that God wants us to grasp.

One of the key ideas underlying a marriage is that the spouses commit themselves to one another freely and knowingly. So if there’s undue pressure to marry—like the old “shotgun” marriage—that’s not free. If there’s fraud—like a person not marrying for love but as a way to become a citizen… or a person deceiving the other in some important way such as secretly never wanting any children but saying that they do to get their fiancé to marry them—that’s not entering into marriage knowing the truth. Or if one or both partners are so immature or selfish that they can’t comprehend the idea of putting the other’s interests ahead of their own, then that, too, can show that what they attempted wasn’t really the kind of one-flesh union that Christ or his Church envisioned. The annulment process looks into that and recognizes it.

In many places, the Scriptures draw powerful comparisons between marriage and our faithfulness to God. It’s easy to see the parallel in today’s gospel.

When a bunch of Jesus’ disciples felt that he was asking too much of them in terms of their faith, they walked away—just as sometimes one partner may say, “That’s it. I can’t take it any more”—and walk out the door of a marriage.

But then Christ asks his twelve closest friends, the apostles: Do you also want to leave? Peter answers with beautiful honesty and commitment: Where would we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.

We have come to believe and are convinced. You see, it is always faithful belief that underlies a commitment, whether it’s to God or to a spouse. Then, that faith is lived out and backed up by our day-to-day actions.

I like how our translation says: “we have come to believe.” That reminds us that coming to the faith we need for a commitment is a process. It’s also good to remember that it’s very much the result of God’s grace. God shows us how to love and commit.

The Lord is asking us today to examine and renew our commitments—both to God and to our marriage partner. We’ve got to ask the Lord for the grace to always put them first and trust that God will take care of the rest.

May this be our prayer today.