mbmg 2012 convention: 27th sunday B 2012
I would surmise that whoever chose the date for this convention did not
consider our readings today, because if they did, they would have moved this
convention a week earlier or a week later.
Since I presume that they didn’t know, I am now forced to talk this
early about a naked man and a naked woman roaming around a garden, I am going
to discuss adultery in a convention hall full of women, and I am going to speak
about sex before some of us have even drunk our first cup of coffee. And believe it or not, all these I would do
over the microphone.
Well, what can we do, these are our readings and I believe we have to
stick to them even if they seem at first glance irrelevant to the
occasion. This way, by sticking to our
readings we can be sure that it is not just the message I want to convey, or the message selected and attuned to what we want to hear, but it is really God’s
word interpreted to us, God’s word reflected by all of us.
Our first reading in reality does not yet talk about sex. Not yet, at least. The command to procreate, the command to fill
the earth and subdue it, is still 2 chapters away. So don’t get in a hurry. This chapter rather speaks about something
else, something deeper, something more basic, something we call relationship. And this relationship as portrayed in the
second chapter of Genesis is unique because it is a relationship between man
and woman, it is a relationship before sin entered and wrought havoc to it, and
it is how God intended relationships to be from the very beginning.
Man and woman are naked - nakedness is a symbol of a relationship that
does not have tension, there is nothing to hide. I am naked and yet I am not afraid that you
will take advantage of me, and you can be assured that I will never take
advantage of you. Thus, both can be “naked”
to each other.
Both are made of the same stuff - bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh -
there is commonality, there is cohesion, they share a common purpose and a
common concern. That is why the woman is
declared by God the suitable partner for man, for woman would provide the help
that man cannot do without.
I would like to propose that we look at our apostolate this way - not
as work or function but as a “relationship,” a relationship with God, a
relationship with the church. It is not
something superfluous but something that is necessary; not from different
perspectives but from a common vision; not as master to servant or servant to
master, but as partners and collaborators.
Imagine if your apostolate is just work. We will tire easily; we will get bored more
often, we will get easily discouraged at any hint of hardships. Then without this relationship with God and
the church, personalities will begin to matter rather than purpose, and we will
begin to be selective as to whom we will serve, as to who deserves our
help. We will even begin to be loyal to
one and not to the other, we will begin to prefer this person over the other.
Imagine too if the other thinks himself master and the other a servant,
imagine the latent antagonism that would be created, the back-biting perhaps
that would ensue.
But imagine instead working together as equals, as partners, and as fellow
collaborators - fellow MBMG, MBMG and
parish priest, MBMG and the seminary ... working together as equals, as
partners, as collaborators, with one and the other believing that they cannot
do without each other.
In the same first reading we find God evaluating the situation saying,
it is not good for man, and then God moved on by proclaiming what he was about
to do to rectify, to correct the situation, to set things right.
This action is reflected in Jesus.
It was the hardness of heart, he said, that led to the law of Moses on
divorce, but, and this is very important, from the beginning this was never the
intention of God. Jesus had recourse not
to the law but to the divine intention, the divine purpose, to the heart of
God. Jesus was familiar with what was in God’s heart.
It is good to note that when Jesus said all these he has already set
his eyes to Jerusalem, he was resolved to face his death, a death even his
disciples could not yet understand.
This is where he rectifies things, this is where he corrects our
hardness of heart, for through his cross he has shown us that commitment and
love are to be unconditional. This is my second proposition - that there are
commitments in my priesthood, there are commitments in your married life, there
are commitments in our service in the Church that should remain
unconditional. And unconditional
commitments can only happen when we consider these not as functions but as
relationships. Anything short, in the
eyes of the Lord who is privy to the heart of God, is adulterous.
See, just as I thought.
Nakedness is not just about sex.
Adultery is not just about marriage.
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