TWENTY SEVENTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR - B

TWENTY SEVENTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR – B: (Gen 2:18-24; Heb 2:9-11; Mark 10:2-16) Theme: We are the visible signs of God’s love in the world Reflection: God is the Fountain of Love - Today the church asks us to continue the message of the last Sunday. Last Sunday we have reflected on the creation of the community by embracing and including all. Today, through the readings we are given a teaching radically profound. We need to be the visible signs and effective means of God’s love in the world and for the world. Love is the word often named and utilized in this contemporary world. Man thinks that he can intepret the significance of love in the fruitful manner with his sociological, philosophical and theological terminology. Love, though seems to be very easy to comprehend and to live, is very much demanding and challenging. Love is nothing but participating in the divinity of life. - No human logic can explain the true love: Human logic succeeds to solve many of the human situations and complex conditions of everyday life. However, when it comes to the authentic love, it has its short comings. It fails us to enter into the true significance of love. As a consequence, man falls into frustration and selfishness and finally form and reforms love as he wants. The final result will be that love looses its flavor of divinity. Love is not a human creation but has entered into human life. This is divine plan. Therefore, when we talk of love, our starting point should never be a man or the world but God. - God is the fountain of love: love has its origin and its content and its destiny only in God. He is the form of love and he is love. Scriptures reveal to us this truth. “God is love and he who loves God is in him and he is in God” (1 John 4:8). Even prior to the creation of man there is present the sphere of love. Therefore, we cannot start from our mind set the topic of love. We need to go to the roots. We need to sit at the fountain. We need to stand on the basement. The root, the fountain and the basement of love is none other than God. God is love and love is God. Love cannot be single. It is in the sharing. God himself is not alone and not single. He is the community: community of love. - Trinity – The Only Author of Love: Our God, Christian God is not a single God. If he is single then there is no place for love. Love cannot exist in itself. It exists for others and in others and in the reciprocal donation between the persons. If God has to be love, he has to be more than one person. Only then love can make its natural passage from one to the other. Christian God, by revealing himself as love, reveals that he is the community of three persons: the Father, the Son and the Spirit. He exists as the Trinity and thus as the community of love. He lives in love and love is the substance of his community life. Other than this, it is difficult to comprehend love. Love of the Father flows to the Son in the total self-donation because he does not retain for himself anything but gives everything to the Son. Love of the Son is revealed in his ultimate obedience and union to the Father in the act of total surrender and self-offering as Christ and as Jesus. The reciprocal flow of love between the Father and the Son happens and takes place in the Spirit. With this mysterious sharing of unconditional self-donation of each other persons of the Trinity, the true love is manifested. Triune God becomes the content and container of love. Thus, he is the author of love. No other love which does not connect it to this love can exist as true love. - Divine love in the human vessel: The Triune God has willed to share his love not only within himself but with reality outside himself. He created for himself a companion, human companion, an image and likeness of himself. With this act of creation, already the essence of divine love has flown into the human sphere. God did not keep for himself the nature of love. He wanted to extend his community of love. He extended it through the creation of the world and in particular with the creation of man and woman, the first ever human community of love. Readings: God has a project of love for humanity - God has created man and woman in the image of love (first reading): God is Trinity and thus a community of love. When such God created man, he has created him in his image and likeness, that means, he created him in love and for love. Thus, the first thought of God in the creation of man is that of giving man a concrete possibility for loving. The Book of Genesis emphasizes this truth. God is a community of three persons in love. Man cannot be single if he is created in love and for love. In this context God thought of creating already a human community. We can note it well in the account of first reading: “it is not good for man to be alone … I will create for him a helper who can be always for him” as the words expressed in the Gen 2:18. God has created for him a mate, a soul mate, a companion who can give him utmost love. Man could not find a partner in any of the creatures. But when he saw the woman, he is immediately connected to her. It is the nature of love. Man with the highest degree of joy exclaims: “she is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” and they do not exist anymore as two but become one flesh and one spirit. That is the nature of love. In love one finds his soul companion as in God himself three persons live as the soul companions. Already in the creation, by creating man and woman, God has a project of love for humanity. Man finds the woman but woman is not created by him. It is the plan and design of God who is love. God created two, man and woman, with the different features and with the different characters but they are always united in the essence of love. It is same as the Trinity: three persons are different but are united very intimately with the bond of love. It reveals that love is never man’s creation but God’s plan. In spite of the physical and mental differences, God knotted as one flesh and one spirit both man and woman. It is the work of love. - Jesus affirms that God never wants division and divorce but life of love (Gospel): God has inserted his project of love into humanity in the creation. It is God who unites both of them. They are similar but not equal. If they consider their essence and existence in their human logic they can never stay together because of the various differences. But it is God who unites them. He has already united them in the bond of His Love, not their love. His love can surpass all the logical explanation of man. Jesus explains this truth in his confrontation with the Pharisees. First of all, he understand that they have come, not in order to know God’s plan for man and woman, but to trap him with the law. Jesus answers them with the same law telling that Moses has allowed for the divorce between the married couple only because of their hardheartedness. Jesus goes little ahead, in fact, he goes to the origins and to the roots of this marital love. He recalls the project of God, not as the imposition of the law but as the commitment of love. He says that God’s plan from the beginning is not to separate man and woman and their love but to perfect them in their mutual donation of the self. They are never two after their matrimonial bond but they become one. The man and woman are inserted from the beginning into the project of love. The love between the community of Triune God has generated the humanity. So also, the love between man and woman has to generate another creature. In love and only in love, man and woman can become authentic collaborators of God and they partake in the power of creation. - Love between man and woman is the archetype and highest example: it is manifested in the creation of God and also in the proclamation of Jesus that love bond between man and woman is the primary fruit of the Trinitarian love. It is this truth that makes the matrimony and family life as the archetype of love and model for all other types of love. Love is expressed in different ways: love for the country, love for the profession, love for work, love between the friends, between the parents and children, among the children and among the relatives, love for the neighbor and love for God (Benedict XVI, Encyclical Deus Caritas est, 2). In all this multiplicity of meanings, the love between man and woman, in the matrimonial bond, emerges as the love par excellence. After the love between the persons of Godhead, the next possible true love is that of between man and woman because it is the intention and act of God himself. God is the creator and man and woman in love become the co-creators with God. This truth should never be underestimated and overlooked. - Beauty of love is present only the matrimonial bond between man and woman: love is holy and love is sacred. It passes though the human body when man and woman commit themselves for the authentic act of love. Love reveals the beauty of human relationship. It makes possible the discovery of the other in the joy of shared love. In the egoism the doors are closed for the others and walls are build to hinder the relationship. But in love, closed doors are broken, hearts are opened and mutual self-giving is made possible. Love is the only answer for the egoistic attitude. Love gives itself. Love is not possessive and obsessive but it the gift of total self. It is in this love that the other person appears as the image of God and as the fruit of God’s love. When this divine love is found and embraced the human relationships become beautiful and even human life becomes beautiful. For all this, the fountain is the love of the matrimony and family. It is from this that the holiness of love flows to the society and to the world in large. Conclusion: We are the visible and effective signs of God’s love - The church admonishes about the reality of marriage and family: the designs of God’s love is revealed to the humanity in the mystery of Jesus Christ, the Only Son of God descended into the world. In His immense love God has united himself to the humanity. Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, has assumed the human form and human flesh in the mystery of Incarnation. In other words, God has entered into the bond of love with the humanity. God has taken to himself and for himself humanity in the person and action of Christ. Jesus takes the human body from the consummation of divine-human love between Mary and the Spirit. This is the highest form of marital relationship. In the mystery of passion, death and resurrection, Jesus takes for himself the humanity/world as his bride. Eternal wedding of love has taken place between Jesus and the humanity in the pouring out of his blood for his bride on the cross. Jesus made his bride purified and sanctified so that she becomes worthy of his eternal and unconditional love. The same bond of love now takes place between the Church and the world. Church is concerned of the world and its return to its creator. The church’s mission and responsibility is to announce to the world what she has believed: the love of God for the humanity which comes down only in the bond of marriage and family. The church believes that bond of marriage and family is founded by the creator and is stablized in the divine love (Gaudium et Spes, 48; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1603). - Our need to be attentive to the teaching of the Church: some times we consider church and her teachings as out-dated and not reaching to the levels of modern morality. But church cannot decieve herself by preaching her nature. Church is always faithful to her Master and Lord, Jesus Christ, and his teaching. She never goes against the prophetic and loving message of her Spouse, Jesus. Though the world misunderstands and insults her of her ever affirming message, she never stops her mission of spreading the truth. Her teaching on the marriage and family is also part of her mission of evangelization. Her strength and her power is always from the presence of Jesus in the form of Eucharist and in the sanctification of the Holy Spirit. Though the morality is changing and its values are deteriorting in the technological world, the church remains always faithful to her teaching. She is not afraid of proclaiming the kingdom of God with its presence and with its sacraments. We need to attentively listen to what the Church says though at times her teaching is hard for the ears. - Humanity is the capacity for mutual love: being created human means being created in love. Therefore, man is capable of loving. In fact, only in loving he can be truly human. If he neglects this truth he becomes inhuman. If he fails to understand this he becomes like any other animal which lives by instinct. Man is man only in and for love. Outside love and without love man cannot exist in his natural manner of humanness. It is love that makes man human. We have to learn this human attitude: to love and to be loved. Love is the donation of the totality of being. It is the capacity to give and receive everything in gift. It is not pretending or possessing the other for oneself, instead, it is loving the other even to the extent of giving one’s life for the other. Jesus has done the same. He has totally donated his life for his spouse, the Church (Eph 5:25ff). Each man and woman has personal vocation and as the couple has the common and special mission of sowing the seeds of love and thus creating the human family. Only in this way we can be the visible signs of God’s love in and for the world.