Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (3)

This saying is hard

Christ doesn’t shy controversy

doesn’t water down like inquisitor brothers karamazov

Scripture

John 6:66. ‘This is a hard logos’

Matthew 7:14 “For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”

Matthew 10:38 “and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”

Comes marriage, always controversy

why

goes very core who we are

all sin, all falleness attacks our identity

lure to idea fulfilled in something against who we are

so if marriage goes to identity, luring there most violent

identity of the image of God is communitarian

So what is the hard saying

Marriage is until death do them part.

If find hard, good company

Matt 19:10. ‘yikes, better not to get married bro’

Even Pharisees allowed only if adultery and some at time even if burned dinner

Christ brings us back to Genesis

Call is radical, like most of Christian life

What Christ and Church teaches and doesnt

What does this mean and not mean

clear up misconception

doesnt mean have to always live together

extreme circumstances change this

serious abuse

does mean the marriage is for life whether live together not

no such thing as actual divorce

the two truly become one and what God brings no one sep

Not a light sacrament

In beginning God made, Trinity

made to live for the other

image God is family

Family model of God

God is love

not about feeling, tho Good

love is the pouring your life into other

making life about not yourself, but other

this one reason contraception (which all Christians opposed until 20th century) not allowed by Church

it is deliberate denying fundamental marriage other

One doesnt fall into or out love (thats just infatuation)

feelings lead us naturally to school of love

marriage is school of what real love is

not something changed by hormones or what we ate that day or who saw that day

For us

See marriage as holy as God does?

as fundamental image of Himself?

find our identity in the other?

Conclusion

not an easy saying

not here to condemn but to help on the short and narrow

Christianity not a religion of ease

but is a religion of ultimate fulfillment and happiness

Notes

Me

marriage generally

Matt 19:10. ‘yikes, better not to get married bro’

Commentators

Pitre

internal debate

only adultery

even if burn dinner

Deut 24:1

divorce if ‘shame’

[me: but no real command saying ok, just what to do when this happens]

CCC 2384

divorce bad

CCC 2386

nuance to divorce innocence and guilt

Second reading reminds importance of human nature which has body