Sunday 21 (B-2006): Sacraments of the Flesh

Eph. 5:21-32 & John 6: 60-69

Because of his teaching on the Eucharist (“eating flesh” and “drinking blood”), Jesus faced the hostility and departure of many of his followers.

They found it too “hard” to accept.

The Eucharist is indeed a “great mystery.” But it is a beautifully scandalous mystery!

It is the mystery of Christ’s burning desire to be one body with us and thus to make us his Bride, his Church.

It is to this great mystery of Christ’s union with his Church in and through the Eucharist that St. Paul refers in today’s second reading.

Except that he talks of it, not in terms of the Eucharist, but in terms of another “great mystery”, the sacrament of Holy Matrimony.

As was the case with the Eucharist, we might also say that the teaching of the faith as regards Matrimony is too hard for many to accept.

It too has caused hostility and the departure of many.

Indeed, the parallels between the Eucharist and Matrimony are many and profound, are themselves another “great mystery.”

Let’s try and look at some of these together in order to increase our wonder and awe at the immense beauty of both these sacraments “of the flesh.”

Jesus once said, “no greater love can someone have than to lay down his life for his friends.”

He himself did this by the extreme love he showed when he gave his body and spirit for our sakes on the Cross.

In anticipation of this surrender of his very self, and in order to explain its meaning, he instituted the Mass at the Last Supper.

By this ritual, he was telling his disciples that his sacrifice was not a dead end, but a life-giving event.

His body and blood were to be given for them and to them in the mystery of the bread and wine.

The aim of this gift was that the disciples would in turn give their whole selves to Jesus, consecrating even their bodies to him, so that the Father could fulfill his ancient plan of uniting all things, all people, in the risen Body of Christ.

The full and total union between God and his entire creation had already been symbolized in the total union between man and woman: woman was “taken” from man just as creation was “taken” from God.

The division introduced by original sin between humanity and God, between humanity and creation and among human beings themselves was not, in the end, to outwit or outdo the love of God.

By himself becoming flesh, the Son of God already ushers back in the union between God and creation through the flesh of man, the flesh of that man who is Jesus.

In the incarnation, out of pure and gratuitous love, God becomes one flesh with humanity. Yes, he marries humanity! This is the real marriage intended by God, of which the marriage of man and woman was to be the sign.

Through the incarnation God is united in a certain way with every human being.

Humanity as a whole becomes the Bride of God.

God is the original, faithful husband who simply will not give up the hope of having his wife back.

But in order to make it possible for her to abandon her infidelity, he takes upon himself her guilt and dies for her.

His death in his humanity purifies her humanity and reconciles her to himself. His resurrection makes it possible for her to hope again in a new life, a new marriage covenant, this time an indestructible and indissoluble bond, a “new and everlasting covenant.”

Christ’s death and resurrection are the consummation in his flesh of his new and eternal marriage to the Bride of mankind. It is a real consummation, yes, the real consummation, in the body and blood, soul and divinity of Christ, and each of us partakes of that consummation in the Eucharist.

In receiving the Eucharist we both consume and are consumed. We receive the whole divine and human reality of Jesus Christ and he receives the whole of our human reality. Consumption becomes consummation.

In this new Eucharistic dispensation, established by Jesus through his incarnation, death and resurrection, Jesus takes Matrimony and he renews and redeems it.

He makes it now, not just a mirror of God, but a living and efficacious sign of the love with which he brought mankind back to God. “Efficacious” means that the sign is not just an external symbol but a real participation in Christ’s unifying love.

That is why sacramental marriage is indissoluble! It is not because of some arbitrary rule of the Church, but because it participates in the indissoluble, the unbreakable covenant of eternal love between Christ and the Church.

In other words, the sacrament of Holy Matrimony is another version of the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. Both effect in the here and now Christ’s corporal and spiritual union with the Church, a union which is irrevocable and indissoluble.

Therefore, when a couple which has received the sacrament of marriage looks upon the altar, they look upon the meaning of their own marriage, the meaning of their love, of their sacrifices, of their fidelity, of their mutual forgiveness, of their self-surrender even unto death.

And as Christ’s death brought life to the world, so their marriage, which is itself the fruit of that life-giving death, brings new life to the world – the life of God!

It does so in so many ways: the life that they give one another by their love, the life they give to the Church and to society by their hope and joy and excitement, the life they give to other couples by their example and commitment, and, of course and above all, the new human life to which they give birth by the will of the Creator in the persons of their children.

The Eucharist is the true school of matrimony.

At the beginning and end of Mass we make the sign of the Cross: in matrimony, too, the Cross can never be far away since true love demands it and the separation of death will raise it high in the heart of the spouse left behind.

At Mass we recognize our sins and ask for mercy; in matrimony, too, the humble recognition and generous forgiving of faults preserves compassion, forgiveness, trust, hope and peace.

At Mass we listen to the Word of God with a view to obeying it; in matrimony, too, each must listen to, and therefore communicate with, the other, and both must listen eagerly, frequently, intelligently and lovingly to the Word of God and to the teaching of the Church. Submission to one another and to God must not be servile but motivated from the heart. Obedience is not servility but the free surrender of a passionate heart!

At Mass, we profess our faith as Church and pray for one another; in marriage, too, couples must put their faith in God from the heart of the Church, they must trust and pray for one another, together and alone.

At Mass, we bring our gifts to the altar; in matrimony, a couple must gladly bring all they are and have to one another and offer it together to God.

At Mass, the bread and wine become the sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ; in marriage, the total gift of each to the other, especially in marital relations, must be lived as a sacrificial consecration of one another to Christ. Only where Christ is present can the gift of one’s flesh reach its fullest self-giving, truth and beauty.

At Mass, we receive Holy Communion; in marriage, everything that is said and done, all that the couple has and is must aim at an ever deeper and holier communion of heart, mind, soul and body, of joys, sufferings, hopes and destiny.

At Mass, we go forth, blessed by the priest, to love and to serve the Lord; in marriage, a couple must see the blessings they receive from Christ as also a mission to go forth and do their part in serving and witnessing to Christ in the world.

While matrimony as a sacramental sign on this earth ends in death, the fruits it bears will live eternally in heaven.

Just so, the Eucharist itself will end at the end of time, but its fruit, the Holy Communion of humanity with God, of the real and only Bride with the real and only Bridegroom, will be celebrated for ever in the eternal Wedding Banquet of the Lamb of God.

Now I know you all listen to this and perhaps chide me, “Father, this is all very wonderful, but the reality is very different!”

Yes, I know it is very different. I hear it in the confessional and when I meet with couples in difficulty. I have seen it in the families of relatives and friends. I, too, read the newspapers, the blogs and the statistics.

But, I ask you, is all this not precisely why we need a higher vision? Are we to exalt broken marriages as the ideal? Do we say that the greatest athlete is the steroid junky? Are we to give in to the mediocrity of the one or the fatalism of the other, shrug our shoulders and say, “Forget it! We’re all trash”?

Does the author of Matrimony not know better than we what we are capable of, the heights to which we can reach, the craving for sublime fidelity written into the very roots of our truest humanity?

Does Jesus tease us in setting up impossible goals, and not rather speak tenderly and insistently to our hearts, “This is what I made you to be, come and receive my grace, my power, my strength so that together we can defy sin in all its tin glamour and poisoning subtlety”?

Why do we listen so willingly to the heralds of treachery and illusion and thus end up rubbishing the voice of the Redeemer?

Yes, I know I speak of high things and of deep things, and I will go on speaking of them, since it is they which can give real hope and integrity and joy to us in the midst of our fragmentedness.

A compassion which merely commiserates with those hurting and shows no path to healing is no compassion. Christ did not only die. He rose again. And so it must be for us, whatever our brokenness.

He calls the sinner not to keep sinning but to repent. He does not only come to weep at the grave of Lazarus, but to call him forth to see his face, to rejoice in his company, to find life in his love.

And so, may the vision of marriage I have haltingly tried to lay before you, rooted in the heart of the Creator and Redeemer, not be considered as idealistic and unrealistic because of the lack of vision of a society so often steeped in false freedoms, false loves and in hostility to Christ and his Church.

May it rather be seen, by God’s will and by our witness, as the only truly human and Christian road to fulfill God’s plan for his beautiful creation, and so to bring man and woman to the plenitude of life, love and joy at the Nuptial Feast of the Kingdom.

Msgr. Peter Magee

Sunday, August 27^th, 2006

Annunciation, DC: 5.30 pm Vigil & 7.00 am