Oct. 7, 2012: 27th Sunday in Ordinary B

Many of us shop at big grocery stores for our meat and fish. We trust that what’s on display is as fresh as what the sticker claims. How many of us, however, had an experience of purchasing meat or fish that was dated fresh, but when we brought it home, it wasn’t fresh at all? Perhaps someone left that meat on a shelf somewhere while shopping instead of bringing it back to the meat rack. After such an experience we say to ourselves, “I’m not shopping for meat there again! I don’t trust them.”

Trust is a peculiar thing. For the most part, trust is freely given, but once it is lost, regaining it can be costly both emotionally and physically. Rebuilding trust in a relationship is not easy for the person who was harmed or for the one who violated the trust. As we all know, trust is what holds any relationship together. You can imagine or may have already experienced what happens, then, when trust between a husband and a wife is lost. With the loss of trust come anger, resentment, disappointment, frustration, and hurt that ultimately lead to separation and even divorce.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is confronted with the question, "Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?" Jesus explained that Moses had made provision for a divorced wife on account of the hard-heartedness that led men to dissolve their marriage. The word Jesus used, hardness of heart, is literally in Greek sclerosis of the heart or a stubborn refusal to yield to God and his ways. It is willful blindness to truth. Then Jesus points out that in the beginning God did not intend this at all; in the beginning of creation, God intended male and female to be no longer two but one flesh, and God himself joined them together.

How do we reconcile the two--God’s intentions for marriage to be permanent, faithful, and fruitful with the tendency in man and woman’s hearts to be hard-hearted, refusing to yield to God? It is not an accident that at a Catholic wedding, the bride and groom kneel most of the time throughout the wedding mass. The bride and groom kneel in humility, like children, trusting that God himself will make their marriage work. They know that they themselves are weak, and they humbly beg God for His patience, kindness, and compassion to be the cornerstone of their marriage. It is as if they are coming to Jesus, like the little children did in the Gospel today, and being embraced by Jesus and blessed by Jesus. To be a child before God is to recognize our nothingness, to expect everything from his father. To be a child is to not to become discouraged over one’s faults, for children fail often, but they are too little to hurt themselves very much.

How do you rebuild trust once trust is lost? It is by becoming childlike before God, entrusting the outcome to Him and striving for patience and compassion. Much like rebuilding a physical structure after damage has been done, building trust takes a lot of work on both sides. The person who was hurt must be willing to forgive while the one who caused the loss of trust must be willing to be accountable and ask for forgiveness. But most of all, building trust involves allowing ourselves to be embraced by Jesus in the warmth of his healing love, like a little child who spends much time in the arms of his mother after he’s been hurt.