13^th SUNDAY – ORDINARY (B)

NACFLM Conference
Saturday, June 27, 2009

BY THE MOST REVEREND JOHN C. NIENSTEDT

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 “There is a balm in Gilead
to make the wounded whole,
There is a balm in Gilead
to heal the sin sick soul.”

Our first reading from the Book of Wisdom reminds us that God made us to be happy with him forever.  It was only because of human sin that suffering and death have entered our world.

In today’s Gospel, the two women we meet are illustrative of this dual consequence of sin, that is to say, of suffering and death.  Did you notice that the hemorrhaging woman had suffered this affliction for 12 years?  While the young girl who died was 12 years old?  Their destinies, like all of our destinies, are locked in the natural cycle of sickness and death, yet they both provide an opportunity for Jesus to liberate them with his healing touch.  But such miracles call for a willingness to accept Jesus as the object of faith.

Jairus approaches Jesus in the hope that he might heal his daughter.  Neither Jairus nor anyone else imagined that Jesus could do anything for the girl once she was dead.  As it turned out, the miracle was not to be mere physical healing.  It was to be the restoration of life after death.

The woman with the flow of blood approaches Jesus in the hope that he might heal her even after many doctors had failed.  Her concept of Jesus’ power is almost magical: “If I but touch his garment, I will be cured.”  But his response goes deeper.  Jesus tells her “your faith has saved you.”  In other words, her confidence in Him provokes the healing hand of God. 

It is indeed an honor for me to welcome the National Association of Catholic Family Life Ministers into this Archdiocese.  Yours is a timely and important service to the Church and I am grateful for your commitment to marriage and the family, especially during these challenging times before us.  Thank you so much for all you do to bolster and encourage Catholic family life!

Three years ago, the Bishops of our country were told that we had to downsize our central administrative services.  We were asked to prioritize the issues we thought were most critical to the Church’s mission in this day and age.  The overwhelming concern on the Bishops’ minds and hearts was marriage and the family.  It proved to be the #1 priority for our proclamation of the Gospel in today’s social setting.

The Second Vatican Council’s Constitution, Gaudium et Spes, teaches that, “God is the author of marriage” (48.1).  Thus, the call of men and women to marriage is written in the very nature of who we are.

As we have heard repeatedly during the Easter season, “God is love.”  Notice that the statement is not, “God loves” or “God loves me.”  Rather, St. John proclaims, “God is love.”  And man and woman, made in the image and likeness of God, love with and in God’s love.

This means that God is the author of marriage; God makes the rules.  Married love, according to God’s plan, is defined as a life-long, permanent union between one man and one woman that is monogamous, procreative, and mutually enriching.  In the sacrament of matrimony, God has raised the natural relationship of marriage to be a reflection of Christ’s love for his Church.  As such, this sacrament becomes the opportunity for each spouse to call the other to salvation.  As I used to tell couples getting married, it is the Jesus in the wife who loves the Jesus in her husband, drawing them both into a deeper experience of his love.

But as you know, my friends, this Catholic notion of marriage, rooted in our firmly-held Judeo-Christian heritage, is under severe attack today.  The very definition of marriage is being recklessly challenged to accommodate relationships that are not based on the nature of the human body, nor are these relationships able to participate in the creation of new life as God intended from the beginning.

In addition, technologies have been advanced that would manipulate the act of transmitting the sacred gift of life in such a way that the process becomes one of manufacturing rather than of begetting life.

In that technological process, the human embryo is necessarily depersonalized, being treated as a “thing” rather than a person.  The result is that the precious gift of life becomes simply the “stuff” of scientific experimentation, after which it is discarded as “trash.”

My friends, science does not have to be at odds with religion, if it would only listen to reason.  When a man makes love with a woman, the only possible result is the creation of another human being.  What else could this gift be but a human person made in the image and likeness of God himself?  And it is science itself that can assist us to reach that very conclusion.

Years ago, there was a margarine commercial on television that had the slogan: “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.”  Yet, that is what I fear scientific experimentation has tried to do.  In the end, I fear we have fooled no one but ourselves.

The basic cell in any civilized society is that of the family.  In the Church, the family serves as the first school of the Gospel.  Parents, therefore, serve as the first educators of their children in the ways of faith.  When marriage and family life are strong, the Church will be strong.  Where marriage and family life suffer from neglect or divisiveness, then the Church’s faith is sure to be weak.  Strong homes are essential if the fundamental truths of our Catholic faith are to be securely guarded and passed on.  The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council said it well when they wrote in their Pastoral Constitution, Gaudium et Spes, that “the well-being of the individual person and of human and Christian society is intimately connected with the healthy state of the community of marriage and the family.” (no. 47)

To his last dying breath, the late, beloved Servant of God, Pope John Paul II, urged us,

“An unambiguous proclamation of the truth about the nature, dignity and vocation of the family must be considered an essential part of the Church’s witness to the Gospel.  From the first chapter of Genesis to the last pages of the Book of Revelation, the Scriptures evoke the marriage covenant as an expression of the faithful love which unites God with his people.  The “great mystery” of Christ’s redemptive love for the Church is manifested in a unique and irreplaceable way by married couples whose love is made fruitful in openness to life and in generous sacrifice on behalf of their children.  ‘As servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God’ (1 Cor. 4:1), we must not fail in our task of upholding the dignity and true nature of the marriage bond, and of proclaiming the moral demands of authentic conjugal love and family life.”

My dear friends, ensuring sound teaching about marriage and the family is an essential part of sharing with others the good news of Jesus Christ, who “though he was rich, for your sake became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”  We cannot remain silent out of a misguided concern that we might offend.  Rather we must work earnestly to assist married couples and their families in our parishes and neighborhoods to find concrete ways to deepen and live their vocation faithfully. 

Let us take courage from the Easter mysteries we have so recently celebrated in order to dedicate our time, efforts and prayers to the critical issues that threaten the well-being of marriage and family life today.  Like Jairus and the afflicted woman in today’s Gospel, let us ask Jesus to cure our society of its present affliction of not seeing the grace-filled reality of marriage as God intended it to be.  And let us long to hear the words of Jesus, say to our world, “. . . faith has saved you . . . be cured of your affliction.”

“There is a balm in Gilead
to make the wounded whole,
There is a balm in Gilead
to heal the sin sick soul.”