A Lectio Divina Approach to the Sunday Liturgy
BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD (Series 4, n. 46)
27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B – October 8, 2006
“Two in One Flesh”
BIBLE READINGS
Gen 2:18-24 // Heb 2:9-11 // Mk 10:2-16
N.B. This new series of BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD: A LECTIO DIVINA APPROACH TO THE SUNDAY LITURGY presents a biblico-liturgical study of the First Reading of each Sunday Mass to serve as background for a better understanding of the Gospel proclaimed in the liturgy. For a biblico-liturgical study of the Gospel for each Sunday, please go to the PDDM Web Archives: WWW.PDDM.US.
I. BIBLICO-LITURGICAL REFLECTIONS
It was our joy last September to celebrate with Tomas and Lourdes Banaga their 50th wedding anniversary. This remarkable couple regularly comes to our Fresno chapel for the weekday Mass. Tomas, with his splendid voice, has greatly helped us in our music ministry. Lourdes, a staunch “prayer warrior” and a devoted adorer of the Blessed Sacrament, has collaborated wonderfully in our Eucharistic apostolate. Tomas became seriously ill last December and fell into coma. Lourdes ardently prayed for his healing through the intercession of Blesses James Alberione. Lourdes made a vow that if Tomas recovered, they would enter the Holy Family Institute, founded by Blessed Alberione. On the third day of his coma, Tomas woke up and was restored to health. Tomas and Lourdes made good their promise. On the golden anniversary of their marriage, they were admitted to the Novitiate in the Holy Family Institute, which seeks to promote the holiness of married life.
The Old Testament reading (Tobit 8:4b-8) used at the Eucharistic Celebration of the renewal of their marriage vows was intensely appropriate. Tomas and Lourdes felt that the following prayer made by Tobit and Sarah on their wedding night was their very own:
Blessed are you, O God of our fathers; praised be your name forever and ever. Let the heavens and all your creation praise you forever. You made Adam and you gave him his wife Eve to be his help and support; and from these two the human race descended. You said, “it is not good for the man to be alone; let us make him a partner like himself.” Now, Lord, you know that I take this wife of mine not because of lust, but for a noble purpose. Call down your mercy on me and on her, and allow us to live together to a happy old age.
This Sunday’s Old Testament reading (Gen 2:18-24) contains the Yahwist account of the creation of man and woman in the Book of Genesis and offers a foundation for the theology of marriage as a sacrament of unity. This narrative underlines the vocation to human intimacy and communion of man and woman and reinforces the equality and dignity of both of them as perfectly matched partners. According to the biblical scholar Lawrence Boadt: “Being alone is not good for humans. God creates animals and allows man to name them and thereby enter into a living relationship with them, which includes stewardship over them. But none is fit for him. He needs a true partner, and to get one God initiates yet another act of creation. By putting the man into a deep sleep God assures the same autonomy to woman as to man – she depends directly on God for her being. The actual story may derive from an old folk tale that plays on the rib and the nearness to the heart. The heart is the source of both intellect and will in ancient thought and so God makes Eve as fully human as Adam. The description also plays on the attraction of love, which draws men and women to each other from the heart. The fitting identity of the two human creatures is made complete by the little poem in v. 23 – they are the same because he is ’ish and she is ’ishah, a pun in Hebrew that is like saying man and wo-man in English.”
The Yahwist narrative of human creation presents a very lofty and noble vision of human sexuality. The authors of the Days of the Lord, vol. 5, comment: “It is the search for communion that drives man and woman toward union, and not the impulse of a carnal, uncontrollable, and blind instinct … It is a masculine-feminine world, and not a uniquely masculine world that God has created. From the beginning, he has placed woman at the man’s side, like to him, of the same nature, from the same flesh, as the Bible says in a more concrete and expressive manner. To break this unity, to harm this complementarity, to upset this dynamic and fecund balance introduces into God’s work a grave disorder, because it generates endless conflicts, painful competition for supremacy, perturbations of all kinds.”
In the Gospel reading (Mk 10:2-16), the Pharisees litigiously confronted Jesus with the divisive issue of divorce and its legitimacy. Jesus wisely responded to the baited question by appealing to God’s plan of complete unity and equality in drawing men and women together in marriage. Citing the Book of Genesis, Jesus affirmed that husband and wife are united so intimately that they actually become one and indivisible. In light of the coming messianic times, people must go back resolutely to the primordial purity of marriage and its sacred character as divine institution.
Indeed, in Jesus’ teaching on marriage, the emphasis is on its holiness and covenant fidelity and not on the illegitimacy of divorce. The Dominican exegete Wilfrid Harrington explains: “Almost all contemporary exegetes and theologians perceive that Jesus seeks to restore marriage to the original form God intends it to have. Husband and wife are two in one flesh, implying a covenant bond between persons far transcending physical union. Love, seeking only the good of the beloved, is the true marriage bond; love is, or should be, the call impelling a man to leave his father and his mother to cleave in life-long union to his wife. Jesus prohibited divorce under the assumption that the marriage involved is a real marriage. Implicitly, then, the current trend is centered not so much on divorce as on marriage, and what marriage should ideally be. The measure of this is the perfect spousal love that is taught in Ephesians 5. This love is but one vital aspect of the entire one commandment of love, which Jesus has given to us. For those who are believers the solution to marriage difficulties is not desertion but forgiveness and a rekindling of love. The fact remains that Christians, no less than others, are human and frail. The entire question of divorce seems to call for a great realism in looking at individual persons and at the concrete situations in which they find themselves. It calls for an awareness of the greatest realism of all, a reality surpassing the ideal of irrevocable unity in marriage. And this is the real love which Jesus himself has for each of us.”
Wilfrid Harrington then underlines that the union of “two in one flesh” is made possible in the love of Jesus Christ: “He understands of humanness, for we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning, and he desires to give us the freedom in which he shares his love. He is the truth who sets us free: in him rests the ultimate union of two in one flesh.”
Another biblical scholar, Eugene Maly shows the connection of Jesus’ teaching on marriage with his words that God’s kingdom belongs to those like little children. He remarks: “The Church today declares many marriages invalid because of some impediment present at the time of the marriage. In these cases civil divorce is permitted and remarriage possible. Nevertheless, the principle enunciated by Jesus remains the norm. The covenant sealed by the two parties is not to be broken. In the light of Jesus’ general stance on Kingdom morality, it would seem far better to foster means of preserving the marriage union than to seek reasons for exceptions to the norm. The Christian must bear a special kind of witness to a world where marriage is a convenience, not a sacrament. We might wonder why the Church has included the passage on the little children in this reading. It must be for some deeper reason than that the children are the expected fruit of happy marriages. More likely it is that to accept Jesus’ teaching on marriage requires the openness of children and a sense of dependence on God’s strength matching the child’s sense of dependence on parents. Whether or not that is the reason for the passage’s inclusion, no one can doubt that such trust in God’s help is necessary. With it the impossible can become possible.”
PERSONAL REFLECTION
By Sr. Mary Alba PDDM
Fresno, CA– U.S.A.
Through the readings of the Mass during the liturgical year we have realized the great love of God for his creation. On this Sunday we are invited to keep in mind married life. In the Gospel we see Jesus the Teacher in a discussion with the Pharisees who questioned him: “Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?” Jesus retorted, “What did Moses command you?” They replied that Moses permitted a husband to write a bill of divorce and dismiss the wife. Jesus then tried to enlighten their minds with the richness of his love and life, “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.”
When love is authentic, strong, sincere and firm, energy springs up, which brings vision, joy and creativity to the people’s endeavor to live the holiness of married life. When married couples let Christ be at the center of their project, they experience deeply the peace outpoured by God – a peace that flows forth to their children and grandchildren. Today we are called to take a keen look at our understanding of the sacrament of matrimony. Notwithstanding the great strides in scientific development and technological progress, people ought to reflect on the reality of Jesus’ words: “Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”
II. POINTS FOR THE EXAMINATION OF THE HEART
A. How does the Yahwist account of the creation of man and woman in the Book of Genesis help us appreciate the dignity and equality of the man-woman relationship and the nobility of human sexuality? What are some of our concrete experiences of the beauty and holiness of Christian marriage?
B. What are some of the weaknesses and painful situations that afflict marriages? Can these marriages be saved and the brokenness in the husband-wife relationship be healed?
C. How do we welcome the sanctifying role of Jesus Christ in human marriage? Do we trust that in Jesus is the ultimate union of “two in one flesh”? Are we ready to accept the Divine Master’s teaching on marriage with the openness to children? Do we rely on God’s strength to make the nuptial relationship whole and fruitful?
III. PRAYING WITH THE WORD
(By D. Rimaud, cf. Days of the Lord, vol. 5, p. 255)
Truly it is good that the trust and joy of a wedding
flow back from us toward you,
Father of all covenants.
For the life you give to everyone
and the body whose keepers we are,
for every communion possible in this world and every hope of happiness …
we want to give you thanks and acknowledge that we come from you
through Jesus, the Christ, our Lord.
It is in him, the eternal Son of your tenderness
that you have concluded with humanity the Covenant of your first love.
It is through him, Son of Man born in the flesh, that you save human loves
by making them flow back into their source.
It is in him, faithful spouse of your Church,
that you change our hearts of stone
and enable them to love as you love.
IV. INTERIORIZATION OF THE WORD
The following is the bread of the living Word that will nourish us throughout the week. Please memorize it.
“That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one flesh.” (Gen 2:24)
V. TOWARDS LIFE TRANSFORMATION
A. ACTION PLAN: Pray for the holiness and sanctity of human and Christian marriage. Endeavor to promote the integrity and holiness of the sacrament of matrimony in any way you can. Offer special assistance to distressed husbands and/or wives having marital problems.
B. ACTION PLAN: To help us contemplate more deeply the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, the foundation of the ultimate union of “two in one flesh”, make an effort to spend an hour in Eucharistic Adoration. Visit the PDDM WEB site (www.pddm.us) for the EUCHARISTIC ADORATION THROUGH THE LITURGICAL YEAR (Vol. 2, n. 46): A Weekly Pastoral Tool.
Prepared by Sr. Mary Margaret Tapang PDDM
PIAE DISCIPULAE DIVINI MAGISTRI
SISTER DISCIPLES OF THE DIVINE MASTER
60 Sunset Ave., Staten Island, NY 10314
Tel. (718) 494-8597 // (718) 761-2323
Website: WWW.PDDM.US