The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today resonate with our experience of intimacy with God and with people in our lives.
Our intimate relationships
The reading from the Prophet Ezekiel is a parable of infidelity and God’s faithless bride.
* [16:4–5] In this chapter, Ezekiel represents Jerusalem and Samaria as unwanted, abandoned sisters whom the Lord rescues and cares for. Here the prophet depicts Jerusalem as a newborn female, abandoned and left to die, an accepted practice in antiquity for females, who were considered financial liabilities by their families. That the infant has no one, not even her mother, to tie off her umbilical cord, wash her clean, and wrap her in swaddling clothes emphasizes Jerusalem’s death-like isolation and accentuates the Lord’s gracious action in her behalf. The practice of rubbing the skin of newborns with salt is an attested Palestinian custom that survived into the twentieth century.1
The Prophet Isaiah declares that surely God is his salvation.
* [12:1–6] Israel’s thanksgiving to the Lord, expressed in language like that of the Psalms.2
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus teaches on marriage and divorce.
* [19:9] Moses’ concession to human sinfulness (the hardness of your hearts, Mt 19:8) is repudiated by Jesus, and the original will of the Creator is reaffirmed against that concession. (Unless the marriage is unlawful): see note on Mt 5:31–32. There is some evidence suggesting that Jesus’ absolute prohibition of divorce was paralleled in the Qumran community (see 11QTemple 57:17–19; CD 4:12b–5:14). Matthew removes Mark’s setting of this verse as spoken to the disciples alone “in the house” (Mk 10:10) and also his extension of the divorce prohibition to the case of a woman’s divorcing her husband (Mk 10:12), probably because in Palestine, unlike the places where Roman and Greek law prevailed, the woman was not allowed to initiate the divorce.3
Eileen Burke-Sullivan comments that the texts today invite us to consider the world we are living in, the culture with its graces and disgraces and the various demands on our gratitude and generosity that daily life places upon us.
The life of loving married persons witnesses to the goodness of human love and to the relationship between God and God’s people. What we may not realize, of course, is that divorce under the ancient Jewish law, was only legal for the husband to declare, and that a woman without a husband or son to give her identity in that culture would be defenseless. Divorce was not only a personal violation of a covenantal bond; it was a grave social injustice that endangered further the lives of vulnerable women and their children. Today we recognize that the real freedom of men and women to make lifetime commitments may be lacking, and we also see that women can often stand on their own feet. But neither of these conditions erases the need for solid, healthy marriages, built on love and trust. When divorce is necessary it is because of human sin, Jesus points out, not God’s desire.4
Don Schwager quotes “Don't separate what God has joined together,” by John Chrysostom (347-407 AD).
"Then he showed that it is a fearful thing to tamper with this law. When establishing this law, he did not say, 'Therefore, do not sever or separate' but 'What God has joined together, let man not separate.' If you quote Moses, I will quote the God of Moses, and with him I am always strong. For God from the beginning made them male and female. This law is very old, even if it appears human beings have recently discovered it. It is firmly fixed. And God did not simply bring the woman to her husband but ordered her also to leave her father and mother. And he not only ordered the man to go to the woman but also to cling to her, showing by his way of speaking that they could not be separated. And not even with this was God satisfied, but he sought also for another greater union: 'for the two shall be one flesh.'" (excerpt from THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW, HOMILY 62.1)5
The Word Among Us Meditation on Ezekiel 16:1-15, 60, 63 comments Ezekiel’s prophecy compares Israel to a beautiful woman who has betrayed the one who rescued and saved her. What a stark and painful reminder to the Israelites of just how far they had strayed from God!
God is always faithful—that’s just who he is. He calls us to faithfulness as well because he knows that it provides the stability and constancy we need for our relationships to flourish. When we know that we can trust someone no matter what, we are more willing to be vulnerable with that person and open our hearts to him or her. And that’s how love and intimacy grow: through deeper knowledge of one another.6
Friar Jude Winkler describes the faithfulness of God shown in the text from Ezekiel. Marriage of close blood relatives was a problem requiring divorce in Jesus time. Friar Jude reminds us of how unusual it was for Jesus to be an unmarried rabbi.
A post by Franciscan Media about Saint Maximilian Mary Kolbe, Saint of the Day for August 14, notes that he was ordained at 24 and Maximilian saw religious indifference as the deadliest poison of the day. His mission was to combat it. He had already founded the Militia of the Immaculata, whose aim was to fight evil with the witness of the good life, prayer, work, and suffering. He dreamed of and then founded Knight of the Immaculata, a religious magazine under Mary’s protection to preach the Good News to all nations. For the work of publication he established a “City of the Immaculata”—Niepokalanow—which housed 700 of his Franciscan brothers. He later founded another one in Nagasaki, Japan. Both the Militia and the magazine ultimately reached the one-million mark in members and subscribers. His love of God was daily filtered through devotion to Mary. In 1941, Fr. Kolbe was arrested again. The Nazis’ purpose was to liquidate the select ones, the leaders. The end came quickly, three months later in Auschwitz, after terrible beatings and humiliations. As they were being marched away to the starvation bunkers, Fr. Kolbe, number 16670 dared to step from the line. “I would like to take that man’s place. He has a wife and children.
Father Kolbe’s death was not a sudden, last-minute act of heroism. His whole life had been a preparation. His holiness was a limitless, passionate desire to convert the whole world to God. And his beloved Immaculata was his inspiration.7
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, comments that most worldviews have encouraged the perspective of feeling innocent and safe. The United States, is a “first half of life culture,” largely concerned about surviving successfully. Probably most cultures and individuals across history have been situated in the first half or “Order” stage, because it is all they had time for. We try to do what seems like the task that life first hands us: establishing an identity, a home, relationships, friends, community, security, and building a proper platform for our only life.
The ego believes that disorder or change is always to be avoided, so we hunker down and pretend that our Order is entirely good, should be good for everybody, and is always “true” and even the only truth. The new is always by definition unfamiliar and untested, so God, life, destiny, suffering have to give us a push—usually a big one—or we will not go. Even many Christians do not like anything that looks like “carrying the cross,” no matter how piously they use the phrase.8
Our challenge to be in loving relationships often includes stepping out of the order and security our ego has provided for us.
References
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