27th Sunday OT B: Signs of the Kingdom
Dear brothers and sisters: Marriage, family, and children are ordinary things. We can take them for that – ordinary. Today, however, the scriptures address us concerning these ordinary things – pointing to their deep meanings. Marriage, family, and children – when held on to with fidelity are signs of the kingdom of God. In the first reading, we heard the Lord God say: “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Gen 1:18). We can note two things here. First, God says that the man (Adam) is alone, yet God has already created so many other creatures besides the man (Adam) and sees them as good. Second, “the man is alone” is the first time that God says something is not good about his creation. We must think about this. Adam is not alone because there are no other creatures; he is alone because there is no other human being. Although there were all kinds of creatures with him, Adam continued to be alone and in isolation. He could not take any of the other creatures for a companion. Thus, he experiences isolation, although he is surrounded by all kinds of beautiful creatures.
Pope Benedict XVI wrote about isolation as a form of poverty: “One of the deepest forms of poverty a person can experience is isolation. If we look closely at other kinds of poverty, including material forms, we can see that they are born from isolation, from not being loved or from difficulties in being able to love” (Caritas in Veritate, no. 53).
Alone, Adam is poor until God gives him Eve. When God makes Eve, there is double rejoicing. God rejoices and so does Adam. At last, Adam exclaims, this one is “bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.” He was not able to say this about any of the other wonderful creatures of God. With Eve, Adam can form a bond, a loving relationship, in which the two fulfill one another. “This 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).
The lesson is that in being with one another as human beings, we know ourselves and find our greatest joys.
But there are difficulties as well. In the Gospel reading, Jesus hints at how the difficulties arise. Jesus points to the heart. He says, “Because of the hardness of your hearts he (Moses) wrote you this commandment.”
Our relationships are as beautiful or as ugly as our hearts. Our family and community life are as beautiful or as ugly as our hearts. When our hearts are tender, receptive, and generous we find peace. When they are hardened, life becomes very hard, and companionship and community fail. The medicine is forgiveness and reconciliation. During his visit to the United States in Sept. 2015, Pope Francis said as follows in Philadelphia:
"There is no perfect family. We have no perfect parents, we are not perfect, do not get married to a perfect person, neither do we have perfect children. We have complaints about each other. We are disappointed by one another. Therefore, there is no healthy marriage or healthy family without the exercise of forgiveness. Forgiveness is vital to our emotional health and spiritual survival. Without forgiveness, the family becomes a theater of conflict and a bastion of grievances. Without forgiveness the family becomes sick. Forgiveness is the purification of the soul, cleansing the mind, and the liberation of the heart. Anyone who does not forgive has no peace of soul and communion with God. Pain is a poison that intoxicates and kills. Maintaining a wound of the heart is a self-destructive action. It is an autophagy. He who does not forgive sickens physically, emotionally, and spiritually. That is why the family must be a place of life and not of death; an enclave of cure not of disease; a stage of forgiveness and not of guilt. Forgiveness brings joy where sorrow produced pain; and healing, where pain caused disease."
If that is the case, and it is, family life is the first arena for practicing kingdom living. Love and forgiveness maintain that arena and keep the game of human life going. Without them, there is mutual destruction. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Jesus says that the kingdom of God belongs to those who are like children. Children fight often and quickly make up with one another as frequently. In this way, they show us the way to kingdom living. This week, guided by the word of God, let us pray about how our families and communities can become more luminous signs of the ways of the kingdom of God.