27th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B Gospel Reading
Lectionary reading
First reading: Genesis ii:xviii-24
Responsorial Psalm: 127(128)
Second reading: Hebrews two:ix-11
Gospel: Marking 10:two-xvi.
Link to readings.
Commentary
The issue of marriage and divorce, which is the common theme between the Outset Reading and the Gospel today, appears rather intrusively at this betoken in Mark's Gospel.
Jesus has been instructing his disciples concerning his coming passion. The side by side issue will be that of the detachment discipleship will crave in the matter of wealth. It may be that St. Mark has placed these two issues – radical fidelity in married life and radical detachment in the affair of wealth – one subsequently the other at this bespeak as concrete illustrations of the demands of discipleship. That is, both have to practice with areas where the following of Jesus takes on a path that runs strongly counter to prevailing customs and standards – something as valid, of grade, in our own day as in the time of Jesus
That said, whatever pastor would be aware that no Sunday Gospel read out through the year that will require more than sensitive handling than this ane. Whatsoever congregation today volition include a considerable number of people in 2d marriages or people with family unit members in that situation. In many, if not most cases, the situation will have come near through circumstances beyond their control or from which they cannot now responsibly free themselves. To simply read out the rulings of Jesus in the Gospel without comment or nuance would be to plough Gospel into Law and just add together to a burden of guilt that may already be oppressive.
It does seem articulate from the New Testament record that Jesus did rule out divorce and remarriage. This was something that set up his customs's standards in the affair conspicuously autonomously from what prevailed in the Judaism of his 24-hour interval and in the wider Greco-Roman world. That said, we must take into business relationship that life expectancy in the ancient world was less than half that prevailing in developed Western societies today. Moreover, Jesus and the early on community lived in the expectation that the world as presently constituted was soon – maybe in the very same generation – going to pass away (cf. Mark ix:1).
Contemplation of a second matrimony in such a state of affairs would have been a very unlike proposition from what it is in societies where people live much longer and where the sense that the nowadays shape of the world is going to be around indefinitely prevails. Already the "exceptive clause" in the version of Jesus' rulings on divorce in Matthew's Gospel (v:32; xix:9) shows some accommodation to new situations in which believers found themselves. Moreover, the reality is that people make mistakes and relationships fail – something which longer life span and the high premium currently placed upon personal freedom and development make more prevalent. The Church has to find a way to aid people grow through failure and find in it an experience of grace and deepened cognition of God.
Jesus' restoration of lifelong fidelity in wedlock reclaims the original design of God expressed in the creation story of Genesis two-3. The First Reading, Gen 2:xviii-24 offers an excerpt from this to which Jesus makes appeal in the Gospel. What we have in the text is non "history" simply an "aetiological narrative": a story bandage dorsum in the time of origins to business relationship for what is or what ought to be in the present—here the social establishment of matrimony. Making no mention of procreation, the text displays a remarkable sense of the companionship, friendship and mutual recognition in honey that should surround sexual union. The love expressed in the union of ii in one flesh should simply be the almost intimate physical expression of a delivery in companionship and intimacy, embracing the totality of life.
The Mosaic police force did not "permit" divorce. It merely recognised it every bit a reality in human life and sought, on "harm minimisation process", to reduce the harsh effects it could have on women. The bill of divorce certified that she was free from any suspicion of having simply abased her husband (Deut 24:1-4). Jesus in the Gospel, Mark 10:2-12 (13-16), insists that this provision, which he sees equally introduced by Moses considering of human "hardness of heart," must yield before the initial design of the Creator revealed in the creation story standing at the head of the Bible. The Kingdom of God, the onset of which is the background to all his teaching, seeks to reclaim this original design of the Creator or, improve, to bring it to realisation for the first time. The community of disciples, as the "beachhead" of the Kingdom in the world, are called to alive out and prove to this original ideal.
In the Second Reading, from Heb 2:9-11, the idea of God "making perfect through suffering" may demand some nuance; biblical idea does non clearly distinguish consequence (operative here) from intention.
Brendan Byrne, SJ, FAHA, taught New Testament at Jesuit Theological College, Parkville, Vic., for about forty years. He is now Emeritus Professor at the University of Divinity (Melbourne). His commentaries on the Gospels tin can be found at Pauline Books and Media
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Source: https://www.australiancatholics.com.au/article/homily-notes--27th-sunday-in-ordinary-time-year-b--3-october-2021
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