Homily for August 12th,
2016: Matthew 19:3-12.
Once
again, we hear Jesus’ telling his friends that marriage is lifelong, and can be
ended only by death. What about Moses’ permission for divorce, Jesus’ hearers
ask? That was never part of God’s plan in creation, the Lord responds. It came
about because of your sinfulness. Shocked by the rigidity of Jesus’ teaching,
his hearers suggest that perhaps it is better, then, never to marry. No, Jesus
responds, the single life is not for all. It is reserved for those who freely
choose to forego marriage “for the sake of God’s reign.” For most people God’s
words in the second creation tale (Genesis 2) apply: “It is not good for the
man to be alone.”
We
tell engaged couples preparing for marriage that “it takes three to get
married.” I used to think that the reason for that was because the problems
which will arise when two grown up sinners, previously independent, decide to
embark on life in double harness, they will encounter difficulties which they
can overcome only with the help of the Lord God. That is true. But there is a
further and more important reason why it takes three to get married: because no
human relationship, no matter how intimate and filled with love, can ever fully satisfy the deepest desires of our
hearts. We are hard-wired for God.
That
is why there is so much loneliness in the world: because people, whether
married or single, fail to seek their deepest desires from the only one who can
fulfill our heart’s hungers – that is the Lord God. Mother Teresa use to call
loneliness “today’s greatest suffering.”
A
seminarian asked me recently: “Are priests lonely?” “Johnny,” I told him, “everyone
is lonely at times. Married people are lonely. Loneliness is part of the human
condition. Loneliness comes about because no human relationship can ever
completely satisfy the deepest longing of our hearts: not the perfect marriage,
not the ideal friendship – and how many people have found the perfect marriage
or the ideal friendship?”
Are we doomed, then, to be always
lonely? Not at all. There is One who can fill that empty place in our hearts.
He longs to do so. But he will never force himself on us. He waits for us to
open the door, to invite him in. An evangelical hymn says it best:
Turn your eyes upon Jesus
/ Look full in his wonderful face,
and the things of this
world will go strangely dim / in the light of his glory and grace.
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