08 June 2024 – 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B) (Sunset Mass)

by Archbishop Emeritus John Ha

My dear sisters and brothers in the Lord, marriage and the family were designed by God for humankind. If not for that design, we would not be here.

And so I would like to look at the Liturgy of the Word this evening, from the perspective of the family, from the perspective of marriage.

The First Reading takes us back to the book of Genesis. And before what is proclaimed in the First Reading, there is a story of God creating the human person from the dust of the earth. And that was man.

And God took from the rib of this man and formed that into a woman. And God brought the woman to the man and when the man saw the woman, the man said: Bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. And the man took the woman as his wife.

That was marriage. And that was union. And that was good relationship of love.

God put the man and the woman in paradise. And God told the man and the woman:
You can eat of the fruit of any of the trees in the garden except for the one in the middle of the garden, the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.

What does that mean?

God shared everything that He had, everything that He enjoyed with the man and the woman. But God told the man and the woman:
If you eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, you will die.

What is this fruit of the knowledge of good and evil? In the Hebrew mind, the Hebrew mentality, one way of expressing totality is to use opposites. So here we have good and evil. And that means that knowledge is total knowledge and that knowledge is God’s prerogative. The man and the woman could enjoy everything that God shared with them except that they should NOT strive to be God’s rivals. They should not strive to be gods. They were created beings. They could not be the creator. If they strove to be the Creator, they would self-destruct. That is the meaning of that.

So that is the context for the First Reading today. And what happened? What did you hear in the First Reading?

God came into the garden. The man hid himself. And God said: Why?

Because I heard you coming and I am naked. So I hid myself.

Did you eat of the fruit that I forbade you to eat? 

Now what was that nakedness about? It was not so much physical nakedness. It was a realisation that that man came from dust. He was nothing. And that was his nakedness but he tried to be God. So he was ashamed and guilty and he hid himself from God

And when God asked him: Did you eat of the fruit of the tree that I forbade you to eat?  The man did not say “Yes I did”. He blamed his failure on the woman. And more than on the woman, on God.

“You, God, you gave me that woman. If you did not give me that woman, I would be fine. And the woman gave me the fruit and I ate it.”

Where is my own responsibility? Nothing.

So the man blamed God. The man blamed the woman. There was no longer bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh, that union of love. No. Now you are an obstacle to me.

And when God took the woman to task, the woman blamed it on the serpent. So the blame game started.

The woman blamed it on the serpent and God took the serpent to task. And here we can hear, we can sense God’s love for this man and the woman that He had created. When He cursed the serpent, He said:
I will put an enmity between you and the woman. Between her seed and your seed. Her seed now will crush your head. You will bite his heel.

That was a promise of salvation. That was a promise of the Saviour and we know that that promise came to be fulfilled in the New Testament.

Mary was that woman referred to. Jesus was her seed. And Jesus came into our world to crush the head of Satan, the tempter. And we find that in today’s Gospel.

Today’s Gospel is taken from Mark’s Gospel. And there are three sections to today’s Gospel. 

The first has to do with the relatives of Jesus coming, I suppose to take Jesus away from the crowd. Why? Because Jesus was teaching and preaching and he was very busy, he had no time to eat and he was not eating. And people were saying, “He’s out of his mind. Come let us go and rescue him. He is out of his mind.”

That was an obstacle from the devil to stop Jesus from teaching. He is out of his mind.

And the second part of the Gospel has Jesus answering the Scribes and the Pharisees who has seen Jesus working miracles, even casting out devils and what did they say? He is doing all these by the power of Beelzebub, the prince of devils.

And Jesus answered them, “Look, is it logical for satan to drive out his own forces? If he does that, he will not stand. He will just collapse. His kingdom will collapse. He will not do that.”

Meaning to say, “I have done all these not by the power of Beelzebub but by the power of the Holy Spirit, by the power of God.”

Again, what was happening here?  Satan was trying to use the Scribes, the Chief Priests, the Elders, the Jewish Leadership, to stop Jesus continuing the mission that God the Father had given Him.

And what was the mission? To save fallen humankind.

Satan failed to stop God from carrying out His plan of salvation when a man and a woman failed. And Satan now wanted again to stop Jesus from carrying out God’s plan of salvation.

And the third section of the Gospel presents a very beautiful message. Restoration.

Jesus’ mother and brothers and sisters, they came, I suppose they must have heard from the relatives that people were saying that Jesus was out of his mind, that they were coming to see what was happening. And Jesus was told, “Your mother, your brothers and sisters are here looking for you.”

“Who are my mother, my brothers and my sisters? You.“ Those in front of him.

Those who do the will of God are my mother, my brothers and my sisters. Meaning to say those who do the will of God enjoy a family relationship, a very intimate family relationship with me. And that is salvation.

That means they belong to the family of God. 

Here Jesus was establishing a new family, based not on blood. Not on flesh and blood but on the will of God and on fidelity to God’s will.

Adam and Eve, the first man and the first woman, disobeyed God. They went against God’s will.

Jesus came to restore that. To bring about the possibility for all fallen humankind to be obedient to God’s will.

And so now, the family of God was established as long as the will of God was obeyed.

So Jesus was establishing a new family. Not just restoring the broken family of Adam and Eve, the natural family, but bringing this family to an infinitely higher level. The family of God.

And every disciple, every faithful disciple of Jesus is a child of God. And the family of every disciple of Jesus is a cell in the family of God. 

My dear sisters and brothers in the Lord, I see quite a lot of you with your families here. Your families are cells in God’s family. Your families belong to God as much as you belong to God but it is important to do God’s will.

And as we have this, the devil is still very active. The devil still wants to destroy God’s plan. The devil wants to destroy the family. We know. And especially you parents, you know it much better than I. You have a lot of struggles to bring up your family.

And if you can come to church this evening, it is because you are faithful to God’s will. It is because you want to be faithful to God’s will. It is because you want to tell Satan, “No, I will have no part with you.”

And that is why you are here. And we keep on, we keep on trying our best to be faithful to God’s will. Yes, there are a lot of challenges and the devil wants to exploit these challenges, to drag us away from God.

Don’t let that happen. Never allow it to happen in your life, in your family. Just build up that family.

Yes, we are weak, we fall sometimes.

God is a merciful God. He promised salvation to Adam and Eve although they disobeyed Him badly. He sent His son, Jesus into our world to fulfill that promise. He is in your family. He is with you. He wants to help you. He wants to accompany you in your struggles.

Always be aware of God’s presence in your family. However broken you may feel yourselves to be, God is there for you.

Keep on clinging to Him. Keep on trying your best to do His will.

And God bless all of you.

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