True Food and True Drink

What did Jesus mean when he said, “you must eat my flesh and drink my blood?”  Did he mean this in a super literal sense as in being cannibals?  That is what some of the audience who was listening to Jesus thought.  “As a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.”  They thought that Jesus was asking them to break the law, i.e. to become cannibals.  Jesus tries to explain himself one last time before some depart, “The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.”

So what is it that we actually receive in the Eucharist?  Do we receive true flesh and true blood or some spiritual aspect of that, or a symbol, or sign of Jesus rather than actual flesh and blood?  Here is what we do not receive.  When we celebrate Mass the actual earthly Jesus does not come down from heaven and place himself on the altar and then give us parts of himself to consume, that would be cannibalism and we would be breaking God’s law.  Rather, we receive Jesus through sacramental signs – the signs being bread and wine but in some spiritual way they become truly, fully, and completely the entire person of Jesus, so that when we do receive we truly receive the Lord and become one with him.  We receive in a supernatural or miraculous way.

We do not receive half of Jesus or some symbolic aspect of him; we truly receive him, just not in a cannibalistic fashion.  That being said, think of how awesome and wonderful that is, that we truly become one with our Lord in our receiving of the Eucharist.  Marriage language is a way of describing this wonderful reception.  In a marriage two people give themselves freely to one another.  They exchange vows and then later the marriage is brought to completion through consummation and in both instances the two truly become one flesh.  We also when approaching Jesus exchange vows, when the priest says, “The Body of Christ,” we respond and say, “Amen.”  In some way we are exchanging vows, promises, or saying yes to one another, Jesus to us, and we to him.  In our actual receiving him the act is consummated, the two become one as St. Paul says so beautifully, “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.”

Today’s 2^nd reading from St. Paul to the Ephesians also uses marriage language to describe our relationship to Christ, which is the entire Church to its head, our Lord and Savior.  Jesus even became obedient to us in and that he offered himself without resistance, so too then should we be ever so obedient to him, especially in receiving him in the Eucharist, for we become one with our Lord, he in us and we in him.

The beauty and magnificence of the Eucharist knows no equal, in all that we can do as Christians nothing compares to what we receive in Holy Communion.  Jesus himself said, “The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”  The words were that his flesh is true food and that his blood is true drink.  We are called to this and very soon.  As you approach today remember that you will exchange words with Jesus when you say, Amen, but you will also exchange your very lives as he gives himself to you and you to him.  God bless you, Fr. John

Origin Of Marriage

Origin of Marriage

One Origin via two sources: Divine Law and Natural Development

We can discern nature and its laws because God has given us the ability to reason, think, observe, learn and understand.  “. . . the Gentiles who do not have the law by nature observe the prescriptions of the law, they are a law for themselves even though they do not have the law.  They show that the demands of the law are written in their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even defend them . . .” (Romans 2:14-15)  One knows right or wrong even without the Ten Commandments, since God has given us a conscience but also to deduce what is right or wrong through observing nature – natural law.

What is natural law?

Natural Law is a philosophy of law that is determined by nature, and so is universal. Classically, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature — both social and personal — and deduce binding rules of moral behavior from it.

For instance when I observe nature working I can learn from it.  I can learn the difference between hot, cold, warm, etc.  But we can go further I can also observe things like virtue and vice, i.e. physical harm as opposed to assistance or lying as opposed to telling the truth.

I can also learn the nature of things, i.e. what is a chair and its purpose as well as if it is a good or a poor one, whether it is comfortable or not.  So we learn two things, one) the nature of things and also two) their moral significance should there be one.

The question then becomes can I deduce what marriage is through the natural law?  Of course you can and this takes us back to the beginning.  It is quite clear that marriage and its understanding have developed since the beginning of time.

Actually, marriage has been in a process of constant change (evolution). Since the Stone Age as a way of organizing and controlling sexual conduct and providing a stable structure for child-rearing and the tasks of daily life marriage was more functional then anything else.  Marriage has taken many forms across different cultures and throughout the centuries. "Whenever people talk about traditional marriage or traditional families, historians throw up their hands," said Steven Mintz, a history professor at Columbia University. "We say, 'When and where?'" The ancient Hebrews, for instance, engaged in polygamy — according to the Bible, King Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines — and men have taken multiple wives in cultures throughout the world . . .

The first recorded evidence of marriage contracts and ceremonies dates to 4,000 years ago, in Mesopotamia. In the ancient world, marriage served primarily as a means of preserving power, with kings and other members of the ruling class marrying off daughters to forge alliances, acquire land, and produce legitimate heirs. Even in the lower classes, women had little say over whom they married. The purpose of marriage was the production of heirs, as implied by the Latin word matrimonium, which is derived from mater (mother).

You can see that people are developing themselves, societies are being built, political structures, people are discerning their purpose, their value, what is good, what is useful, what makes them happy.  I would not use the word evolution as does this author but more like, “maturing,” growing up.  Even though cultures and societies in the ancient world varied in their practice of marriage, some things always remain the same, i.e. procreation and unity (within that unity was the desire to become stronger in one’s tribe, village, to make alliances and I would not rule out that love had no part in it)  Some authors believe that marriage in ancient times and for quite a while was simply functional, but this would mean that people had no feelings, we were just like workers bees, which is not true, true marriage may have looked different because its focal points varied due to time, place, and circumstance, but I still believe it was what it always was in its nature it just took time for us to mature and discern the fullness of its meaning, no different than humans discerning the value of law, right and wrong.

Regardless of the actual historical development one constant remains be it 10,000 BC or 2015 AD people by nature are social animals and have always sought unions, be they marriage unions, tribes forming, all the way to Empires being forged, man’s desire is to be with others, and marriage is one of the foundational aspects of building community and family, please remember that.

In Divine Law

What is Divine Law, God’s Law (Word) revealed to us through Sacred Scripture.

The LORD God said: It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suited to him.  So the LORD God formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of the air, and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them; whatever the man called each living creature was then its name.  The man gave names to all the tame animals, all the birds of the air, and all the wild animals; but none proved to be a helper suited to the man.  So the LORD God cast a deep sleep on the man, and while he was asleep, he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.  The LORD God then built the rib that he had taken from the man into a woman. When he brought her to the man, the man said:  “This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; This one shall be called ‘woman,’ for out of man this one has been taken.”  That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body.  The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame.  Genesis 2:18-25

And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there. And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” ... (Mt. 19:2-9)

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” Eph 5:31

Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. ... 1 Cor 7:1-40

Questions for consideration

1.    Has the institution of marriage changed – evolved throughout human history or has it always been the same but that it took time for us to grasp its meaning or did God allow the differences for a while, for whatever reasons but in recent times as Paul argues with the Athenians, “God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but now he demands that all people everywhere repent.” Acts 17:30

2.    What is the purpose of marriage?

3.    The Church believes that marriage is for unity\happiness and for procreation

4.    Two rallying cries for same sex marriage, i.e. “love is love and live and let live.” 

5.     Can homosexual couples fulfill the criteria of marriage and if so, then how?

6.    Does the Church recognize Civil marriage?

Sin begins with a Lie, Virtue begins with Truth

In today’s 2nd reading from St. Paul to Ephesians he exhorts us to, “not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were sealed for the day of redemption.  All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling must be removed from you, along with all malice.   And be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.  So be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma.”

Often times we are bitter, furious, and angry with one another and in some circumstances even malicious.  Why are we like this sometimes?  As I have said before, all sin begins with a lie.  We lie to ourselves.  This goes for all sin, not just bitterness, fury or malice, but greed, drunkenness, lust, gluttony, jealousy, envy, laziness, pride . . . did I get all 7 deadly sins, anyway you get the point, it does not matter the sin, they all begin with a lie.

Let’s take for example the very first sin, the sin of Adam and Eve.  We know that God had only asked Adam and Eve to follow one rule, one command, besides that they were entirely free.  In the story, which is a marvelous one, the serpent approaches Eve and says, “Did God really say, ‘You shall not eat from any of the trees in the garden’?”  The woman answered the snake: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; it is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, or else you will die.’”  But the snake said to the woman: “You certainly will not die!  God knows well that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, who know good and evil.”  Eve then takes from the tree and so too does Adam, they believed they could be like God, yes, one could argue they were tricked, but they allowed the lie to develop inside of them.  The first lie was when Eve said, “or even touch it,” God never said they could not touch the tree, they just could not eat of it, the next lie was that they would become like gods, they were already like God, yet they wanted to be their own gods.  They fell to the sin of pride, which began with a lie.

We do this as well.  We can take malice or gossip for example.  When we speak ill of another we do not realize that we are sinning, far from it, we actually think we are doing something good, we justify ourselves by believing that we are speaking truth.  The person whom we are gossiping about or even destroying their character we have come to believe a lie in our hearts, the lie is that I am justified in doing so because the other person is a, b, or c.  Therefore I can speak ill of them.  This is a lie, since Jesus always asks that we look for the good in a person first, and that we also look at the log in our own eye before we look at the splinter in the eye of another.

Another reason why we sometimes overly criticize or gossip is because we are actually deflecting our own weaknesses.  In order to deflect my responsibility by examining my conscience I focus on the faults of others and place impossible expectations on them in order not to deal with my own faults which we sometimes suppress and only concentrate on everyone else’s faults.  This is not the way of the Christian; we are always to judge ourselves first and to offer compassion to others.  I think all of us have been guilty of this at least once.

Good, holy or virtuous acts are the opposite, they all begin with truth.  Every time I humble myself, offer forgiveness, kindness, generosity, patience, perseverance, discipline, it begins with truth, the truth which points away from self and points towards God and neighbor, and their good and happiness.  The truth contains outward movements and is connected to goodness, unity, happiness, selflessness, where as lies are connected to evil, darkness, fear, selfishness, sadness, anger.

St. Paul pleads with us, “be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma.”  Jesus hands himself over to us in the Eucharist which we will receive soon, in doing that He demands then that what hand ourselves over to each other in love, if not then we receive in vain.  We must pray for each other that we cling to Truth and never to lies