who will restore married life - 29th week tuesday

Today we continue to read and reflect on our first reading from the letter of Paul to the Romans.  Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all men, inasmuch as all sinned.  Today Paul leads our thoughts to our human reality, the human reality of sin.  We are all born in sin.  Sin entered the world through one man, Adam, and through him human nature, which you and I have, is reduced to that condition in which it must suffer the consequences of the sin of Adam.  We call this original sin.  And thus there is always in us an inclination towards evil.  Let me repeat that.  There is in all of us, without exemption, an inclination towards evil.  This is our human reality.  Amo ina ang rason kon ngaa si Pope Francis is so adamant when he says indi kita mang-husga kay kon lantawon mo ang imo kaugalingon the tendency to sin is also there.  Basi lain lang iya nga sala ang imo pero just the same there is in you a tendency to evil.  Siling sang isa ka desert fathers, “Do not judge those who fornicate because he who prohibits us to fornicate prohibits us also to judge others.  Because on the last day he who will condemn fornicators will also condemn people who are judgmental.”  We become judgmental when we are not conscious of this human reality in all of us, our tendency, our inclination to do evil.

Now if this is our human reality can we save ourselves from this.  No, St. Paul said.  One man brought this sin into our nature and thus only one man can lead us out of it.  One man brought evil to us and one man will restore grace once more.  Adam brought sin into our world.  Only one man Jesus can restore us back to grace.  Jesus alone can save us.  Mary and the saints have value only when they lead us to Jesus, when they lead us to a deeper appreciation of the Word and the Sacraments.  Because only Jesus can save us.

I have been tasked to reflect about the family in this triduum in honor of Pope St. John Paul II.  Let me start by saying that there is no ideal family so don’t ever feel envious that the families of this and that are better than your family.  If there is an ideal family, it is a “was” – it was the relationship of Adam and Eve before the fall, it was the relationship of Adam and Eve before sin entered the world, before they disobeyed God.  Before the fall Adam and Eve, husband and wife took themselves as equal partners, each of them took themselves as “a helper to the other which the other cannot do without.”  They look at each other as “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh,” acknowledging a deep and loyal friendship existing between them.  They left their mothers and fathers, their former families, so that they can become one flesh, establishing therefore a new priority in their love and service.  They were naked to each other, a symbol that each of them is conscious of their weaknesses and miseries and yet they never took advantage of each other but instead accepted the other for who and what he or she is.

This was marriage before sin entered the world, before selfishness and self-centeredness entered our lives, before mistrust and judgments marred our relationship, before partnership turned into competition, before loving dependency on each other becomes belligerence and antagonism. 

Can we restore that ideal of married life?  It can be restored, but not by us and not by our own efforts, but only in Jesus.  In everything, we always go back to Jesus, to the source of all grace – for only in Jesus can we love to the point of offering one’s life for one’s friends, only in Jesus can we sacrifice ourselves that others may live, only in Jesus can we learn forgiveness, mercy and compassion in a relationship such as married life that is always inclined to evil because of our wounded nature.  St. Paul says, only in Jesus.