Homily for Friday, 4th Week of Ordinary Time

Homily for Friday
4th Week of Ordinary Time

Feb. 7, 2020

Mark 6: 14-29
Ursulines, Willow Dr., New Rochelle, N.Y.

“John had said to Herod, ‘It isn’t lawful for you to have your brother’s wife’” (Mark 6: 18).

John the Baptist Preaching before Herod (Pieter de Grebber)

We’re all quite familiar with this gospel story.  It resonates thru the ages whenever and wherever the followers of Jesus preach the truths of God’s law, even when that law is self-evident, as Jefferson put it in our Declaration of Independence.

In our time, as you well know, truths about marriage are readily denied and defied thru divorce, cohabitation, and the legalization of same-sex unions.  It won’t be long before pressure builds—there have already been rumblings, and not only from fundamentalist Mormons—to recognize polygamous marriages because society’s standard has become personal freedom, not “the laws of nature and of nature’s God” (Jefferson again).

The same may be said of the truths of human sexuality.  Altho the secular media are quick to report glowingly what Pope Francis says about the environment or some possible opening to a married clergy, they totally ignore what he says about God’s gift of male and female sexuality as part of one’s fixed, personal, and immortal identity, not changeable at one’s own discretion or on the basis of “feelings.”

Our Christian teachings counter the tenor of the age on marriage and sexuality, as on much else connected with the natural law, including the human dignity which every person shares.  We certainly need the courage of fortitude of John the Baptist to preach truth “in season and out of season” (2 Tim 4:2).