Ordo Praedicatorum

Archbishop Augustine DiNoia, O.P., Secretary for the Congregation of Divine Worship, preached the following homily to the seminarians at the North American College in Rome on the mystery of marriage and the challenges to it in the modern world.

27 Sunday in Ordinary Time, 3 October 2009, North American College in Rome

My brothers and sisters in Christ. Thanks be to God for your presence here this evening, as well as for the warm welcome we have received from the faculty and seminarians of this wonderful Pontifical North American College.

God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep, and from his side God took a rib which He formed into Eve. “Adam’s sleep,” writes St. Augustine, “was a mystical foreshadowing of Christ’s death” (City of God 22.17, in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, OT I, 70). God allowed His only-begotten Son to fall into the deep sleep of death, and from His side flows the blood and water from which the Church is formed. But, not only is the creation of the Church foreshadowed here. For the woman who is formed from Adam’s rib becomes his spouse. Thus we read: “A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.” Here the union of Christ and His Church is also prefigured.

The common patristic reading of this passage is well expressed in the homily of the sixth century Syrian Mar Jacob of Sarug: “In his mysterious plans, the Father destined a bride for His only Son and presented her to Him under prophetic images…. [Genesis speaks] of man and woman in this way in order to foretell Christ and His Church…, Christ becoming one with the Church through the mystery of water [in baptism]…, bridegroom and bride…wholly united in a mystical manner.” Indeed, Mar Jacob concludes: “Wives are not united to their husbands as closely as the Church is to the Son of God” (Homilies, ACCS NT II, 135-6).

Little wonder that, in his letter to the Ephesians (5:32), St. Paul called this “a great mystery”-stirred to awe, we sense, at this amazing dispensation of divine love and grace. In the letter to the Hebrews today, we hear to what length this love would reach: “He ‘for a little while’ was made ‘lower than the angels’ that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone.”

“What husband but our Lord ever died for his wife,” asks Mar Jacob, “and what bride ever chose a crucified man as her husband? Who ever gave his blood as a gift to his wife except the one who died on the cross and sealed the marriage bond with his wounds?….Death separates wives from their husbands, but in this case it is death that unites the bride to her beloved.” (ibid.)

With exquisite delicacy, divine providence has woven these deep patterns of figuration and typology into the fabric of the Sacred Scriptures in order to excite in us a readiness to be taught that corresponds to God’s desire to teach. In a sermon on today’s Gospel, St. Augustine invites us to pray for this very grace: “O God, make us hungry to learn what your love makes you so ardent to teach” (Sermon 80, ACCS NT II, 134). The Church has understood that what God wants to teach us in these remarkable texts is that the entire economy of salvation unfolds when we ponder this sacrament.

Thus, our attention is drawn to a fundamental truth about human nature. As St. Ambrose wrote, because “God willed it that human nature be established as one”(Paradise 10.48, ACCS OT I, 68), He formed Eve out of Adam’s rib. Men and women share the same nature, just as Christ gives a participation in the divine nature to the members of His holy Church.

What is more, we learn that God implanted a powerful natural inclination in men and women that draws them together for intimacy and procreation. In a similar way, Christ shares with the members of the Church an intimate and profound communion with the Holy Trinity-thus “bringing many children to glory” and not unashamed to call them brothers and sisters, as Hebrews affirms.

As with the other sacraments-and perhaps even more so in matrimony-the natural signification underlying the sacramental reality is, as it were, permanently transformed by its being taken up into the sacramental economy. Having been employed in the sacraments, water, bread, wine and oil never seem quite the same to us: an aura attaches to them, suggesting their special place in the sacramental economy. All the more striking is the sacramental transformation of the natural significations embedded in the spousal union of man and woman-at least once we have grasped what God in His love desires to teach us.

Christ’s teaching on the indissolubility of marriage, as we heard in Mark’s gospel today, fits into a rich biblical faith about the sacrament of matrimony: husband and wife can no more be separated from one another than Christ can be separated from the Church. All the other arguments in support of this teaching-moral, canonical, psychological-must be framed with a view to this high sacramental vision of matrimony.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “Although the dignity of this institution is not transparent everywhere with the same clarity, some sense of the greatness of the matrimonial union exists in all cultures” (1603). But it will not be news to any of you that, in present circumstances, the Catholic teaching about marriage-derided as “socially conservative”-typically meets with indifference and even hostility.

The Church’s pastors have sought to face this challenge. Marriage was certainly one of the things on Pope Benedict’s mind when he said in Czech Republic last week: “Your country, like other nations, is experiencing cultural conditions that often present a radical challenge to faith and therefore also to hope” (IHT 28.IX.09, 3). It is hardly surprising that the sanctity of marriage turned out to perhaps the overarching pastoral concern of the entire teaching pontificate of his venerable predecessor, Pope John Paul II. Indeed, when they come to Rome for their ad limina visits, bishops from every corner of the globe, almost without exception, mention marriage and divorce as among the biggest challenges they face.

And the challenges are indeed formidable. In place of the demand for fidelity and commitment fundamental to the Catholic vision of matrimony, the ambient culture-with the strong support of the media and social advocacy elites-favors relationships that are thought of as in principle tentative and provisional. The sexual revolution encourages multiple temporary relationships. Somewhat unexpectedly, perhaps, the problem has become not so much the prevalence of divorce but the eclipse of marriage itself, in favor of partnerships of varying degrees of durability and commitment. “Sex in the city” doesn’t seem to have made people happier, however. On the contrary, with its empty promise of liberation and personal autonomy, it seems able to deliver only increased levels of loneliness and alienation.

This is not the place to analyze these conditions or to offer detailed strategies for addressing them. But recall that the Pharisees posed the issue to Christ as a test, and, as Origen remarks, “If our glorious Savior was tested in this way, should any of his disciples called to teach be annoyed when questioned by some who probe, not from the desire to know, but from the intent to trip up?” (Commentary on Matthew, 14.16, ACCS NT II, 134-5).

But our overall strategy must be to aim high-to frame the moral issues in terms of the mysteries of our faith. In the sacrament of matrimony, nothing less than the union of Christ with his Church is signified. This is a great mystery, as St. Paul reminds us, and perhaps only a childlike faith-always ready to embrace the wonders of God’s loving plan with amazement and love-will be prepared to grasp it.

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Tutti noi abbiamo ascoltato le parole consolanti del Signore Gesù al termine del brano evangelico appena cantato. Per essere fedeli discepoli di Cristo occorre ritornare ad essere bambini. Perché? Solo chi ritorna bambino può avere un cuore puro ed una fede ardente capace di corrispondere al grande amore con il quale il Padre ci ha amati, mandando il suo unico Figlio come Sposo della sua Chiesa. Che la nostra esistenza sia rivolta totalmente verso Dio onnipotente, Padre, Figlio e Spirito Santo. Amen.

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