As it was in the beginning

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Homily given at St. Patrick's Parish
By Rev. Ronnie P. Floyd

People often give the Church a hard time because we have so many rules about relationships and about the way men and woman live together. But the fact of the matter is that the Church really only has one rule: The rule of marriage—that Jesus points to today. And as Jesus points out, this is God's rule, that follows God's plan—and is given for our happiness!

So what is the rule of marriage? Its what we all want in our heart its the desire to be loved and to love another person totally.

It's the desire to spend our life learning about the mystery of ourself by exploring the mystery of another physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

All of us want to be loved, and we are, by our God, our parents, our siblings and family but at some point we all begin to desire a mutuality and intimacy with someone who is at once our equal and yet so very different from us.

While God gives us so many people in our lives to love and form friendships with, He gives us one person to know inside and out and He gives us only one person to love, because a person is a mystery that takes an eternity to explore. Sex, which really should be called the marital act, is good within the rule of marriage because it is a way of coming to know and to love another person.

The Churches many “rules” about the marital act all point back to the rule of marriage.

Its interesting, our Catholic faith, like natural science, is concerned about truth. And its my belief, like Einstien, that science is always backing up the reasonableness of our faith

A few years ago the Royal British Academy of Medicine released a study that showed that those who engage in the marital act whether married or not—become addicted to their partner. The act of physically intimacy they found releases chemicals in the brain that are as addictive as cocaine, How good God is that he gives us this chemical and physical bonding tool to help us to love and allow ourselves to be loved. But the scientists also found that this bonding effect wears off in 5 to 7 years, after that it seems we are on our own to keep our marriages a live. They also found that when we abuse the marital act using it outside of marriage with more than one partner we weaken its natural power to bind us together.

God made us, and knows better than we do what will make us happy and He gives us the law of marriage because He knows that we want that amazing love that can only come from a lifetime spent loving one other person.

When asked about divorce in the Gospel, Jesus declares, it was not so in the beginning. the beginning that Jesus is referring to is that time, before the fall, when man still followed God's plan, and when the world was at peace. This original state of marital love is the model, that the church has always held up as an example of what intimate relations between men and women are supposed to look like,

In the beginning God saw that it was not good for man to be alone in the world and realizing that the wild beasts could not provide us with the interpersonal relationships we need to grow as persons learning to love, God created a helper for man: woman.

This partnership was meant to be mutual; men and women were created different to help each other learn about the miracle of their differences, which any married couple can tell you are more than just skin deep.

In marriage we choose to love another forever and in choosing to love them we give ourselves to another allowing ourself to be loved in return. The fruits of marital love, then, is unity as we read in the book of Genesis and as Jesus reminds us today: the two become one flesh.

Not one soul, or one person, but one flesh which means that their bodily wellbeing depends now not just on their own body but on another's. And since our soul depend on our body our spiritual health now depends on our beloved.

Marriage is meant to give us a safe trusting relationship in which we can share our most intimate selves with someone else and believe it or not the marital act, which we vulgarly call sex, is just the first and most superficial level of this sharing.

By learning to love another, by risking our happiness on someone outside ourself—we learn to trust and love not just our husband or wife but God and other people more deeply.

Marriage is a school of love, that teaches us how to love like God loves.

Marriage teach us patients and kindness it teaches us self-sacrifice it teaches us to risk our own vulnerability for the sake of love, it teaches us that love is forever, a lifelong exploration of another person who is ultimately a mystery.

Finally, marriage teaches us that love is creative creating from two distinct creatures one flesh, with the potential of creating a family.

Marital love opens up our heart to see the potentials of love it opens us to the miracle of children, and it opens us up to divine providence to trusting our happiness to God's plan for us. All the Churches rules about intimcy come back to this prophetic vision of what will truly make us happy!

Marriage is so important because since the beginning of creation marriage is the natural way that men and woman grow in holiness. The church, like Jesus in the Gospel today, knows that holiness & happiness depends on the correct use of our sexuality. And it's because of this natural importance of marriage that Jesus chose marriage to be one of His seven signs of God's love for us.

Jesus infused marriage with the grace of His life when he connected marriage to the Eucharist at the wedding feast at Cana and when he connected love to the cross on Calvary.

If marriage is meant to teach man and woman to love and the Cross the ultimate sign of Love then the cross becomes the ultimate sign of marital love and marriage the ultimate school of the Cross. When we reject the rule of marriage we reject the possibility of true love by breaking down the bonds of trust and commitment that love requires.

As a culture we have separated the marital act from marriage because we have seen so many failed marriages. And so its not surprising that today its fashionable to think that we can take relationships on and off like a pair of socks that are warms and soft when they are newly out of the dryer but after stepping in a few puddles become dank and smelly.

Thats why people contracept—because they haven't learned to love and to trust their lover enough to want to have their children.

What a horrible thing to say to your beloved—I don't want to have your baby—because I'm not sure I want to spend my life with you but that is exactly what we say when we use contraceptives! And its this same mentality that underlies why a woman would consider killing her own baby—worry that she will be abandoned to care for a baby alone.

Spouses promise love for better or for worse, because, intimate relationships between men and women, marriage, can't be a school of love, when we give our spouse 10, 30, or even 90% of ourselves. If we hedge our bets, and don't give our beloved 100% we break down the bonds of trust that allow us to love, and learn to love more profoundly.

When two married people even consider the possibility of breaking their word to their spouse, they open up the option in their mind, and this option becomes more likely every time they think about it. Because if this option is on the table in your mind, how do you trust your spouse with your deepest secrets how can you risk allowing someone who you are willing to abandon and so who presumably is willing to leave you, to play with the strings of your heart?

Jesus wants us to be happy, and so he wants us to follow God's plan the rule of marriage, so that men and women can find fulfillment in teaching each other to love,

Pray today that young people listen to God's plan for their happiness and give it a chance.

God knows what your heart wants and your heart needs he should, he gave them to you, take a chance on God's plan and help build up a true culture of life.