Reasonable in Marriage

From all eternity, Almighty God has conceived of our salvation, and the image in His mind has been a heavenly wedding, the marriage feast of Christ the Bridegroom with His spouse, the Church. Thus He created us male and female, and in the fullness of time He made the stable and fruitful communion of man and woman into a sacrament of salvation.

Therefore, people love weddings. And not just for sentimentality’s sake. We love weddings because they show us an image of heaven. As the Fathers of Vatican II put it:

As God of old made Himself present to His people through a covenant of love and fidelity, so now the Savior of men and the Spouse of the Church comes into the lives of married Christians through the sacrament of matrimony. He abides with them thereafter so that just as He loved the Church and handed Himself over on her behalf, the spouses may love each other with perpetual fidelity. (Gaudium et Spes 48)

Beautiful. But we also have to confront the messier side of this business. If our First Parents had never fallen from grace—if sin had never entered the world—then no one would ever fornicate, or marry imprudently, or cheat, or divorce, or do any other destructive or unchaste thing. But…

Through the Dark Threshold

Anybody see a movie back in the late 90’s called “The Truman Show?” The true man of the movie had been the unwitting star of a reality show for his entire life. He had lived in a dome the size of a small city, which served as the set of the show. He was surrounded by hidden cameras all the time. His entire life was manipulated by the show’s producer. Everyone Truman knew was really an actor. The world loved Truman; his show was the most popular on television. The only person who didn’t know that Truman was a reality-t.v. star was…Truman himself.

In order to keep Truman from wanting to travel beyond the confines of the dome, the producer had managed to train him to fear the unknown and prefer the comforts of his day-to-day life.

But as Truman grew older, his desire to know more about the world became increasingly intense. He commandeered a boat on the shore of the staged ocean, and he sailed into the unknown. Truman managed to reach the outer wall of the concrete dome in which he had lived his whole life. The prow of the boat crashed into the cinder blocks that were painted to look like the horizon. Then Truman found a hidden emergency exit door in the wall that he had always thought was the sky. The producer got on a microphone, trying to convince Truman not to walk out the door. But Truman would not be stopped. He stepped through the dark threshold into the outside world that he had never known.

Missionaries

Here’s a question:

Did the name of the city of Athens come from the name of the goddess Athena?

Or did the goddess’ name come from the name of the city?

Plato reports that the goddess’ name is from the Greek for “God’s knowledge” (Cratylus 407b).

On the other hand, a number of ancient Greek cities worshiped the same goddess. The different cities called her by different names, and her name was always based on the name of the city. In Mycenae she was called Mykene, and in Thebes she was called Thebe…

October 18: WORLD MISSION SUNDAY

God came to earth on a mission. Jesus Christ was the first missionary.

There are lots of missions out there. The U.S. military is on a mission in Afghanistan. Gilbert Arenas is on a mission to get the Wizards back in the playoffs. A wife might send her husband on a mission to the grocery store to get some milk.

But of all the missions that people can have, there is only one that will bring about eternal results. That is the mission of Jesus Christ, the mission of His Church—our mission.

Today is World Mission Sunday. There are still places in this world where people have never even heard of Jesus Christ. The missionaries who are spreading the Good News rely on our generous contributions. So we have a second collection in order to send the foreign missions some money.

But let’s face it: Today what we really have is two collections for the missions. Every Sunday we have a missionary collection here. Our parish is a mission field. This neighborhood is a place where a lot of people still need to be ransomed.