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| Jesus and the Little Children |
Today's homily at Sunday Mass was especially noteworthy. First, the daily readings include the following:
Creation of Woman - Genesis 2:1-24
Blessings of Those Who Fear the Lord - Psalm 128
Jesus Calling Us Brothers - Hebrews 2:9-11
Marriage and Divorce - Mark 10:2-16
Father (the priest officiating) explained how in ancient Jewish custom a man could for no reason divorce his wife and throw her out of the home, and the pagans were worse: a wife who displeased her husband could be summarily executed with no trial, no appeal. But Jesus elevated marriage to a Sacrament. Since Eve was taken from Adam's rib, she was of his very own flesh, and thus Scripture says, "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." The woman and the man are one flesh, and no man has authority to cast his wife aside. Divorce is not an option.
Yes, there are instances of physical abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction, etc., which may make separation necessary for safety of spouse and children. But those are exceptions to the rule. Furthermore, those who have been through the carnage of divorce can best testify to the wisdom of Jesus' admonition on the indissolubility of the marital bond.
The bottom line is this: today's feminist culture that treats divorce as normal, even inevitable is as bad (if not worse) than the ancient Greco-Roman culture where divorce threw the wife away with no means provided for her support. Why? Because today's no fault divorce culture says a woman can contracept and abort her way from husband to husband to husband, dispensing her sexual wares with nary a guilty thought, nor any moral concern over her children. That denigrates and debases both women and children as they were debased and denigrated in the ancient cultures. It subjects them to an enslavement that the ancients could only imagine their their nightmares.
In fact, Father made specific mention of children in his homily because today's Gospel reading says the following right after Jesus forbade divorce: "And people were bringing children to him that he might touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this he became indignant and said to them, 'Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these...'" In ancient times children were regarded as mere chattel to be used as servants of production and without any worth intrinsic to themselves - how like today's contraceptive, abortive culture where pre-born babies are murdered in the womb because their presence is inconvenient to the happiness of the would-be parents, and their internal organs are harvested and sold at profit for scientific research. In ancient Roman new-born babies were left exposed on hilltops for wild animals to devout them, but today we play one-up-man-ship with that and assimilate their organs into our own bodies to extend our own miserable lives on this planet, and we call that science. We openly glorify contraception as the means of achieving personal happiness through irresponsible hedonistic sexual promiscuity. But Jesus taught something different: we must love our wives as our own flesh, and we must become like children if we are to inherit eternal life in the Kingdom of God. This is the means by which we can have any degree of happiness, joy and serenity in this life. Indeed Father was adamant in his homily: God proscribes contraception inasmuch as every use thereof will destroy a family by thwarting the openness to the new life that God wants to give us. Since when did God repeal His commandment to Adam and Eve, "Be fruitful and multiply?" (Genesis 1:28)
Yes, things are tough for the family in today's neo-pagan, post-modern society, and that's no different than how things were in Greco-Roman society. But what does Psalm 128 in today's Scripture reading say? I point that out because on Facebook I saw that the Pentecostal church of my youth was coincidentally going to have a sermon on that Psalm today (well, there are no coincidences in God's planning). While Father didn't speak directly about the Psalm reading, everything he said revolved around it. So here is the reading - note what makes for real blessing, real joy, real happiness - it's picking up our Cross and following Him:
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| Protestant Meme |
Blessed are all who fear the LORD,
and who walk in his ways.
2 What your hands provide you will enjoy;
you will be blessed and prosper:
3 Your wife will be like a fruitful vine
within your home,
Your children like young olive plants
around your table.
4 Just so will the man be blessed
who fears the LORD.
5 May the LORD bless you from Zion;
may you see Jerusalem’s prosperity
all the days of your life,
6 and live to see your children’s children.
Peace upon Israel!
What gives happiness, joy and prosperity? Not feminism, not gender equality, not the contraceptive, abortive sexual revolution. But rather:
Fear of the Lord
The fruit of one's own labor (personal responsibility)
One's wife
One's children, and
One's grand children
All those things we found exemplified in the reading from the Book of Job during the daily Divine Liturgy this last week . Never once did Job, persecuted and afflicted by Satan, retaliate against his wife when she told him in Job 2:9, "Are you still holding to your innocence? Curse God and die!" Indeed, the Sacred Text from Job 42, beginning at verse 10, tells the end of the story:
10 The LORD also restored the prosperity of Job, after he had prayed for his friends; the LORD even gave to Job twice as much as he had before.11 Then all his brothers and sisters came to him, and all his former acquaintances, and they dined with him in his house. They consoled and comforted him for all the evil the LORD had brought upon him, and each one gave him a piece of money and a gold ring.
12 Thus the LORD blessed the later days of Job more than his earlier ones. Now he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she-donkeys.13 He also had seven sons and three daughters:14 the first daughter he called Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch. 15 In all the land no other women were as beautiful as the daughters of Job; and their father gave them an inheritance among their brothers.
16 After this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; and he saw his children, his grandchildren, and even his great-grandchildren. 17 Then Job died, old and full of years
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