Created to be Perfect for the Marriage of Divine Love
A Reflection on the Readings for the 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Year B
By Fr. Maximilian Buonocore, OSB
Readings:
Genesis 2:18-24
Hebrews 2:9-11
Mark 10:2-16
When the author of the Letter to the Hebrews (2:9-11) declares that Jesus was made perfect through suffering, he was not talking about Jesus being made perfect in his nature - which, of course was already perfect - nor was he talking about Jesus being made perfect in grace - in which he was likewise also already perfect. When it says that Jesus was made perfect through suffering, it means that Jesus was made perfect for identifying with and deeply empathizing with human beings in their suffering, and he was made perfect for offering that suffering to our common Father as the suffering of God. Here is a little story to illustrate this point.
A man put up a sign in front of his house that read: “Puppies for Sale.” Soon after, a young boy came in to inquire. “Please, Mister,” he said, “I’d like to buy one of your puppies.” “Well, son,” the man replied, “they’re $25.” The boy looked crushed. “I’ve only got two dollars and five cents. Could I see them anyway?” “Of course. Maybe we can work something out,” said the man. The lad’s eyes danced at the sight of those five little balls of fur. “I can offer you this one here for $2.00. She has a defect in her leg.” said the man. “Oh yes,” replied the boy excitedly, “she would be perfect for me.” “Well, you know,” warned the man, “that dog will be crippled for life.” “That’s definitely the puppy I want.” The man said again, “But she’ll always have a limp.” Smiling, the boy pulled up one pant leg, revealing a brace supporting his leg due to a congenital defect. “I don’t walk good either.” Then, looking at the puppy sympathetically, he continued, “I guess she’ll need a lot of love and help. I sure did. It’s not so easy being crippled.” “Here, take her,” said the man. “I know you’ll give her a good home. Forget the money.” In this story we see a young boy who has been made perfect to be the ideal caregiver of the crippled puppy through what he suffered, namely his personal handicap. Because he has experienced lameness, he is now in the best position to understand and help the lame puppy. In the same way, Christ, by embracing the human condition and experiencing the hardships, weaknesses and temptations of human life, became the perfect candidate to help us along the way of salvation. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). The statement that Jesus was made perfect through suffering does not make sense if we apply to it the philosophical meaning of being made perfect. From a philosophical perspective “to be perfect” means to be ideal in every respect, to be altogether excellent, to be absolutely free from any flaw or defect. The Hebrew understanding of perfection, which is more likely the sense of the word that is used in this passage from the Letter to the Hebrews, has a nuance. In the Hebrew understanding of the text, “to be perfect” most likely means “to be ideally suited for a particular purpose” Here perfection can be understood as being relative to an end, rather than as something absolute. Thus, it would be better to understand the statement that Jesus was made perfect through suffering as saying that, on account of what he suffered, Jesus became ideally suited for the purpose for which he came, namely, to be “the pioneer of our salvation” (verse 10). And he became ideally suited to our salvation by becoming perfect in the deep empathic regard for those who suffer that is in someone who himself has suffered as the other has. Today the Church deliberately connects this passage with passages from the Old and New Testaments on marriage. I think that it is because this is what marriage is about: being made perfect for empathic regard - for love - for the perfect activation of the image and likeness of God in us.
Created to be suitable for the marriage of divine love
In the first reading, we hear Adam, as he gazes upon his new partner, Eve, declare, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” Adam was not just declaring Eve to be of the same nature as he, but was identifying with her with the deepest empathic regard. This is how God the Father regards each of the beings that he creates in his own image and likeness. He so identifies with them that he sees their needs as his own needs, and their sufferings as his own sufferings. That what he intended to be imitated through the beings that he created in his image and likeness: that each regards the other with the deepest empathic regard, identifying with the other so that he or she sees the other’s needs as his or her own, and the other’s sufferings as his or her own. To prove to humankind that he so identified with us that he regards our needs as his own needs and our sufferings as his own, he becomes incarnate in the second person of the Trinity, the Son who is one with the Father and with whom the Father perfectly identifies with. When Son takes on human flesh, it thereby becomes for the Father “Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” not in the sense that God, who is pure Spirit, has flesh and bones, but that the bones and flesh of humanity, is connected, not only to the image and likeness of God in the human individual, but now becomes connected into the Body of the very Son of God, and now becomes perfectly identified as the Father’s own bones and flesh, connected as they are in the Body of Christ to the divine nature. The heavenly Father gazes with an infinite and eternal love at this Body of human beings and says, like Adam, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” It is thus that God became incarnate in Christ Jesus as a Bridegroom to be wedded to humanity, the collective of human beings becoming “bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh” in the Body of Christ. He weds humanity with infinite and eternal faithful loving mercy, with a complete gift of self, giving his very self in sacrifice to be consumed sacramentally by us, consuming the flesh of the Son of Man so that we may become “bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh” in divine spiritual communion. The Father, who creates many children in Christ his Beloved Son, through this divine marital bond, also brings “many children to glory.” (Hebrews 2:10) And the principal human agency of this divine marital bond is the marriage bond between man and woman. Through the incarnation and self-sacrificial giving of the Son to humanity as Bridegroom, God elevated marriage to a sacramental status - a divine status. It is now a sacramental bond which makes present the eternal self-giving act of the Son of God, emptying himself, and becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:7-8) to manifest his faithful loving mercy by his total gift of self to the other.
God wants to declare to every one of us: “At last bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”
God made known through Jesus that he desires the marital bond between two human beings to be the imitation of the love bond between the Father and the Son, through which he begets the Son in eternity, and begets children in creation, with that same infinite and eternal faithful loving mercy. God wants the marital relationship to be the sacramental by which children first encounter God’s faithful loving mercy. It is the bond by which human beings participate in the creative loving mercy of God, and the bond through which human beings receive the grace of birth and rebirth in the Lord. This is why Jesus insists that, even though the Lord previously allowed for a divorce “of convenience” because of the hardheartedness of men, which allowed a spouse, if he or she was not well disposed to great personal sacrifice, to avoid significant self-sacrifice in a marriage by getting out of it, this “divorce of convenience” is no longer tolerable to the Lord, because he now wants total gift of self by each partner in marriage in imitation of his own total gift of self to humankind. Marriage is now to be the primary vehicle for the bonding of humans in the one Body in which humanity becomes for God “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” God wants each one of us so bonded in the the Body of his Son that he can gaze upon each of us with the same infinite and eternal loving gaze with which he gazes upon his Son and say to each of us both individually and collectively, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” Although marriage is a major sacramental bond for activating the channel of divine love in us - that is, the image and likeness of God in us - the channel of divine love in us can be activated in other states of life as well, including religious life, whether in a religious order like we are, or in parish or other forms of community life where one is able to make a full gift of self in loving service. The channel of divine love in us - that is, the divine image and likeness in us - is only fully activated in us when we make a total gift of self. Let us pray that the Lord will continue to give each of us the grace to make that total gift of self in the service of love so that the Lord may say to us with delight, “At last, bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”
All for Jesus,
Fr. Max
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