Twenty-seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time/B
Massimo Palombella
In today’s Gospel (Mk 10, 2-16) Jesus speaks about marriage.
If we strive to understand in depth and beyond any ideology, Jesus’ affirmation “let no man divide what God has joined together” implies a life where a reason precedes the choices, and this ratio is not an easy conquest, it is the fruit of “discernment”. In fact, understanding the point, the existential situation where God unifies our life is the real question of life itself. Without this, our life is not “history” but just a bit of random and disordered “geography”, which only exhausts and tires us. To understand where God “welds” our life is to enter into a process in which everything slowly finds its place, where every variable (including suffering, separation) is attracted and ordered by a magnetic point capable of structuring our whole existence into unity. But discerning is not easy, and many times we make mistakes due to inexperience, due to our inadequacy in life, an inadequacy for which we are often not entirely responsible. There are so many burdens to bear, and despite the conquered “ratio”, it can happen that these burdens crush us and make us lose our way, leading us to break and lose the most precious things in our lives. In essence, it can happen that our weakness becomes the only criterion of our life. This also happened to Peter who betrayed Jesus and went back to being a fisherman, to the small life he had before he met Jesus.
Whatever happens in our lives, our God is in essence love and mercy, and through our weakness, our falls, our failures, our inexperience and immaturity, which have caused us so much error and suffering, through all this he mysteriously leads us to “life in abundance”, to the stability of our lives, to “unify” our existence where he has always been waiting for us with infinite and disarming love.
The Gradual of today’s celebration is taken from Psalm 89 (Ps 89, 1. 2) with the following text:
“Domine, refugium factus es nobis, a generatione et progenie.
Priusquam montes fierent, aut formaretur terra et orbis:
a saeculo, et usque in saeculum tu es Deus.”
(O Lord, you have been for us a refuge from age to age.
Before the mountains were created, and before the land and the world were formed,
from everlasting to everlasting, you are God).
The music track can be found on YouTube where there is no indication of interpretation.
A blessed Sunday and heartfelt greetings.
