Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

Sunday October 6 2024

27rd Sunday During the Year – Year B

1st reading: Genesis 2,18-24

Psalm: 127 (128), 1, 2,3-4, 6-XNUMX

2rd reading: Hebrews 2,9-11

Gospel: Mark 10,2-16

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The Lord lets us hear the good news of marriage. Deep in the heart of every man, whether man or woman, there is this desire that the love experienced may last. And the good news of marriage that the Lord reveals to us is that this is precisely God's plan, and that this is precisely what Jesus came to make us capable of.

We heard it in the second chapter of the Book of Genesis, the older of the two creation stories: God creates human beings.

(“Adam” in Hebrew is the undifferentiated human being; we made it a masculine first name in French, it is a mistake. Adam is the man taken from “Adamah”, the “earthy” taken from “earth” will translate Chouraqui.)

This human being is alone in the midst of creation, there is nothing that corresponds to him, none of the other creatures corresponds to man. And from this first human being, God draws two different human beings, the male human being, the female human being, with this wonder of man before woman: "This time, here is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!" A cry of admiration, a cry of wonder that is light years away from misogyny, light years away from what is commonly called machismo. Chapter 3 will show us how the distortion of the relationship between man and woman is a consequence of sin. There are simply two different beings, each created in the image and likeness of God, neither of them exhausting the image and likeness. And here is Scripture revealing to us that this distinction between man and woman is in view of the definitive union of a man and a woman, a husband and a wife: "For this reason - because of this distinction between the two sexes - a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one." I regret that we do not translate literally what the Greek did to the Hebrew; in both languages, the expression is very beautiful, it says: they will be two towards one flesh (ἔσονται οἱ δύο εἰς σάρκα μίαν). And when Jesus takes up this word in the Gospel that we have heard, we take up exactly this way of saying: they will be two to one flesh. I insist on this translation because this word designates an incessant movement: the grace that God gives is to make ONE, but this grace needs to be lived in the present; it must be lived, put into practice without ceasing. Marriage is not an acquired unity that must be preserved, it is a given unity that must be built. Marriage is an incessant movement from one towards the other, an incessant construction of this unity, which is at the same time given in this initial act that creates this unity through the exchange of consents, and at the same time, is a permanent construction.

The difficulty that the Gospel raises is that we see clearly that this relationship, this construction of unity, is difficult; and we see clearly a certain number of cases where it seems to become impossible to the point that the spouses separate. Is it permissible for a husband to send away his wife? Jesus asks about Moses' prescription, and Jesus makes a clear distinction between what God wanted and what Moses allowed. Moses, Jesus recognizes, allowed repudiation on condition that an act of repudiation be established, that is to say that there is a formalization of this. But he adds: it is because of the hardness of your hearts. The hard heart, the heart of stone, is a heart that has become incapable of loving to the end of love. The good news of the Gospel is that Jesus came precisely so that we can be filled with the Holy Spirit who transforms our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh. This is the last of the 7 readings of the Easter Vigil, in chapter 36 of Ezekiel: I will take away the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh; I will put my spirit within you, and you will live.. If Jesus can return to the beginning of Creation by denouncing hardness of heart, it is because through his death, his resurrection, his ascension and the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, he will make us capable of going to the end of love.

But the Gospel continues with this story of the little children: "Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it." It is about building the unity of conjugal love, but it is first of all about welcoming a gift, welcoming the Kingdom and welcoming it in the manner of a child. In the light of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, if we meditate a little on childhood, we see clearly that the child is the one who does not have all the capacities, he is the one who trusts absolutely in his parents and who receives from his parents what he needs. The child of God trusts absolutely in God. We know well how trust and love, inscribed in the stained glass windows of our basilica, are the last two words of Therese's last manuscript, manuscript C. Trust and love towards God, trust and love towards Jesus first, trust and love to welcome the grace of living the Kingdom. It is about receiving the grace of loving. But what are we talking about when we talk about love? Spontaneously, for many decades, we have thought that love is the only beating of the heart that marvels at the sight of the loved one. And the problem is that the loved one is a poor sinner who is fallible. The problem is that I myself am a poor sinner who is fallible. And when two poor sinners try to love each other, it is inevitable that they hurt each other… It is inevitable that they hurt each other. The commitment in marriage, as in any friendship, is to consent in advance to this wound, deciding that we will find the means to heal these wounds, to overcome these wounds, finally to live in mercy. Thérèse of the Child Jesus experiences much worse than marriage, because in many cases, the spouses live a little apart from each other, at least in our societies with professional work: we meet in the evening, on weekends, that's it... But the Carmelites in their little hectare, it's twenty-four hours a day. There are certainly times of prayer, but we pray together. And we know how exasperated Thérèse is by a noise from the Carmelite next to her. There are times of solitude, but there are also many times when we are together. How does Thérèse manage to love her sisters? She describes it very well. I am rereading to you some familiar passages, but it is good to hear them again each time… When she contemplates the king and the queen, Christ and the Church, she sees that she is like a little child and this little child cannot do much, except to throw flowers before the throne of Jesus. And she writes—this is on folio 4 of manuscript A:

Yes, my Beloved, this is how my life will be consumed... I have no other way to prove my love to you than to throw flowers, that is to say, to not let any small sacrifice, any look, any word escape, to take advantage of all the smallest things and to do them out of love...

And if we think within the framework of marriage about what this means, we see that there are ten thousand opportunities to manifest this love to Jesus and to one's spouse, as Therese expresses this love to Jesus and to her sisters.

And she continues:

I want to suffer for love and even enjoy for love, so I will throw flowers before your throne; I will not meet one without to strip it for you… then throwing my flowers, I will sing, (could one cry while doing such a joyful action?) I will sing, even when I have to pick my flowers among the thorns and my song will be all the more melodious as the thorns are long and prickly.

Jesus, what use will my flowers and my songs be to you?... Ah! I know it well, this fragrant rain, these fragile and worthless petals, these songs of love from the smallest of hearts will charm you, yes, these nothings will please you, they will make the Church Triumphant smile, she will gather my stripped flowers by love and passing them through your Divine Hands, O Jesus, this Church of Heaven, wanting to play with her little child, will also throw away these flowers having acquired by your divine touch an infinite value, she will throw them on the suffering Church in order to extinguish its flames, she will throw them on the fighting Church in order to make it win the victory!…

What Thérèse understands is that these very small acts of daily life, carried out out of love for Jesus, receive from Jesus to whom they are given an infinite power for the salvation of the world. And she knows that through these little nothings, Jesus gives his power to him, to these little nothings; not Thérèse's power. And if we want to expand a little, further on in her manuscript, on Folio 74, Thérèse talks about the efforts she makes to love her sisters, to change herself, to work, she who is like each of us a poor sinner. She says:

I also made great efforts not to apologize, which seemed very difficult to me […]. Because of my lack of virtue, these little practices cost me a lot and I needed to think that at the last judgment everything would be revealed, because I made this remark: when one does one's duty, never apologizing, no one knows it, on the contrary, the imperfections appear immediately…

Like a dirty window, we say it is dirty... once it is clean, we say nothing...

I applied myself especially to practicing small virtues, not having the facility to practice great ones, so I liked to fold the coats forgotten by the sisters and to render them all the small services that I could.

Marital love is a great and beautiful thing. But love is not first of all about feeling a surge: love is put into actions. Love is put into self-denial and self-giving, to serve one's neighbor concretely. And the joy of love is found precisely there. None of the good acts that we perform, none of the gestures of love that we perform, are ignored by Jesus.

And if those around us, including our spouse, do not see, do not know how to thank, do not know how to encourage, the Lord, he sees. Not only the Lord Jesus, but our Father in Heaven: Your Father sees what you do in secret, and he will reward you. (Mt 6,6:XNUMX). Jesus gives us here the secret of his life and the secret of his love: he tells us how he himself lives under the gaze of the Father.

Let us ask Saint Therese to inspire us, day after day, moment after moment, how we can very concretely, in the inevitable suffering of love, find our joy in making ourselves servants of our brothers, because first of all we are servants of Christ.

Amen

Father Emmanuel Schwab, Rector of the Shrine