Transcript

Blessed is our God at all times, both now and ever, and under the ages of ages.

Amen.

Amen.

And make us worthy, O master, to dare with inner confidence and without condemnation to call upon thee, the Heavenly God, as upon a father and to say: Our Father-

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, both now and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

Amen.

Amen.

Thank you, Father Joseph.

You're quite welcome.

Well, how are you all doing this evening?

Great.

Good.

Thank you for coming out.

I know that, uh, in the springtime like this, the grass is growing and there are many things to do, so I do appreciate, uh, you coming out and your attendance, and your dedication to your education.

Um, our talk tonight on marriage, I think I'm sure I have a couple of announcements.

I usually do.

Uh, we have a handout, uh, which I'm not going to refer to tonight.

It's just for your own benefit.

But you need to know something about the handout, and that is that y- your information, the point that you want to be reading starts at the bottom of your page in that bold paragraph, which is a quotation from Matthew Chapter 5 regarding what is known as the porneia clause, uh, in, known only in the Gospel of Matthew, that Jesus forbids divorce except in cases of, in Greek, porneia.

And there's great debate about what that means.

Um, and, uh, so I have this here for you.

This is a commentary written by my brother, which means it's mostly unintelligible.

Because he's smart.

Sometimes too smart.

He's a biblical scholar.

He has his PhD in Sacred Scripture, and he wrote this little, little commentary for his seminary students.

Um, in fact, he wrote a commentary on the entire New Testament, but this is the section on the use of this word pornuea and what it means, uh, from a Catholic perspective.

Of course, the proper perspective.

Uh, so you can read that on your own.

It's a fascinating, uh, question, but it's not one that I'm gonna have time to get into in our time together.

The last time I gave this presentation was, um, well, not this presentation, but spoke on marriage was for, uh, Theology On Tap in Alexandria for the Diocese of Arlington, for the young adults.

And, uh, the next day after I gave the talk, I was walking through the chancery office in Arlington and this girl came out of the elevator and she saw me.

She says, Well, you know, thank you so much for your presentation last night.

It was, it was very insightful and, and afterwards, my boyfriend and I, who, and my boyfriend was there at the talk, and, afterwards we went out in the car and we talked for two hours about what you said, and, uh, and we broke off our relationship.

So, I hope I don't destroy any relationships tonight.

Um, I'll share with you the quotation that I shared on Sunday.

How many of you were at Alice von Hilderbrand's talk, uh, on Sunday?

A few of you.

So, um, excuse me for quoting it again, but I think it, it bears repeating.

Uh, Father Steven Freeman is an Orthodox priest.

He's a convert from Anglicanism, and he, uh, he writes a little blog.

It's excellent.

It's called, uh, Glory To God For All Things.

And he says this: No issues in the modern world seem to be pressing the church with as much force as those surrounding sex and marriage.

The so-called sexual revolution has, for the most part, succeeded in radically changing how our culture understands both matters.

Drawing from a highly selective and sometimes contradictory set of political, sociological, and scientific arguments, opponents of the Christian tradition are pressing the case for radical reform with an abandon that bears all the hallmarks of revolution, and they have moved into the ascendancy.

Those manning the barricades describe themselves as defending marriage.

That is a deep inaccuracy.

Marriage as an institution was surrendered quite some time ago.

Today's battles are not about marriage, but about simply dividing the spoils of its destruction.

'It is too late to defend marriage,' Father Freeman says.

'Rather than being defended, marriage needs to be taught and lived, and the church needs to be willing to become the place where that teaching occurs, as well as a place that can sustain couples in the struggle required to live it.

Fortunately, the spiritual inheritance of the church has gifted it with the tools necessary for the task.

It lacks only people who are willing to take up the struggle.' End quote.

There can be no doubt that marriage as a social institution is in crisis, and what was once a critical foundation stone of society is crumbling.

76% of Catholics believe that divorce is acceptable.

Since 1972, Catholic marriages in the United States have dropped by 60%.23% of adult Catholics are or have been divorced.

Just over 70% of Catholics are married to a Catholic spouse with an average of two children per marriage.

You know what that means, that Catholics are contracepting themselves to death.

Hmm.

Among women who are currently at risk, well, at risk I'm not sure is the right word, but it's what the study says, of an unintended pregnancy, 88% overall and 87% of Catholics are using contraceptive methods, not natural family planning.

The American divorce rate has nearly doubled since 1960.

Current estimates suggest that 40 to 50% of recent marriages will end in separation.

I don't think I need to go on.

The disaster is quite clear.

And the fact that we're standing in a Catholic church, and a topic which otherwise I would be interested in at the institute sees something very unusual, and that is empty chairs.

The crisis in the Catholic Church over marriage is deep and it is real, and it comes home right here in Leesburg.

But our goal over the next two weeks together is not to lament the sad state of marriage, but rather to take Father Freeman's direction and lead.

Rather than being defended, marriage needs to be taught and lived, and the church needs to be willing to be the place where that teaching occurs as well as the place that can sustain couples in the struggle to live it.

At the heart of a correct understanding of marriage And I'm gonna, uh, err on the side of reading my notes over the next minute or so, because, uh, what I have to say, uh, which I wrote down, I want to say very clearly and accurately.

At the heart of a correct understanding of marriage is, of course, the Christian notion of love, love which is the giving of one's life to the beloved.

But notice something here.

Christian love is at the heart, is at its heart relational, and as such binds the lover and the beloved in a relation of dependency.

By the way, I didn't m- make a, a note of it, but you do have, uh, paper here.

There are binders in the back.

If anyone wants to take notes or write down things just to keep your focus, feel free to do so.

It might help, uh, as we're wading through some of, some heady terms, I think.

Christian love is at its heart relational, and as such binds the lover and the beloved in a relation of dependency.

The life of the lover becomes the source of life of the beloved.

The one loved becomes dependent in a fundamental way on the one who loves.

And of course, love is a mutual gift.

The lover is also the one loved.

And while in this room we may be shaking our heads in agreement about what I just said about this beautiful understanding of Christian marriage, I need to give a warning here at the beginning.

We live in a society which sees dependency as something to be rejected, which sees dependency as something opposed to freedom.

Dependency is seen ultimately as a form of oppression.

In our current situation, independence has become the greatest of all human rights, and freedom has been redefined as license, the right to do whatever I want.

This corruption of authentic freedom, which is at root a rejection of dependency, is fundamentally opposed to marriage.

The two cannot exist.

The two cannot co-exist.

And thus, we see in our society today not so much of a debate about principles, but a full-blown war which seeks to destroy the fundamental notions of marriage which have sustained Christian society from the beginning.

And as I said earlier, the foundation of Christian marriage is the authentic Christian notion of love.

Love, as Pope Benedict says in his book, Spirit of the Liturgy, is seen as dependency and it is rejected.

In its place comes autonomy, existing for oneself, existing from and in oneself, being a god of one's own making.

My brothers and sisters, I cannot express to you how fundamentally important this is.

We are surrounded by an atmosphere in our society which is at fundamental odds with Christianity, and we are constantly breathing this air.

We are literally surrounded by an anti-Christian atmosphere, and how hard it is to filter out all of it, how easy it is for a Christian to over time begin to think like those around us.

Coughs.

Christianity is painted with a broad stroke of insensitivity and authoritarian oppression, and Christians slowly, almost imperceptibly begin to accept these claims as true.As we consider the Scriptures and God's teaching about marriage over the next two weeks, we will learn a different view of creation, a view which sees dependency as a blessing, and authentic freedom as choosing what is right and good for man.

We will learn of a Biblical view of marriage which re- requires sacrificial love, obedience, and submission, notions which are utterly abhorrent to radical feminism and the homosexual lobby.

How hard this is for us moderns who are surrounded by this anti-Christian atmosphere, but how beautiful God's way is if we open ourselves to its possibility.

And so, let us begin by looking at marriage as it is revealed to us in sacred Scripture.

I wanna t- begin by asking you to open your Bible to probably not the spot you would ex- expect me to- to ask you to open to, but to- to the Book of Romans, the Epistle to the Romans in the New Testament.

Romans is right after Acts of the Apostles.

And if you didn't bring your Bibles with you to a talk titled Marriage in Sacred Scripture All right.

Should I tell the story again?

When I was on the Sea of Galilee on a boat and the tour guide pulled out his cellphone to read the story of Jesus on the Sea of Galilee and his cellphone died.

And I was one out of 50 Catholics that actually brought my Bible to the Holy Land.

The cellphone is a cellphone.

The Bible is literally a book.

So- bring your Bibles.

All right.

Romans chapter one, verse 16.

Verse 16.

For I am not ashamed of the Gospel.

Pat, can you hear me in the back?

'Cause we're talking about how bad the sound is in here.

Can you hear me okay?

Is this It doesn't feel turned up much.

My voice is usually plenty, but okay.

Verse 16, yes.

Chapter one, verse 16.

That's better.

For I am not ashamed of the Gospel.

It is the power of God for salvation to everyone, to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith.

As it is written, he who through faith is righteous shall live.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth.

I think you guys can bring that down just a little bit.

Yeah.

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.

Ever since the creation of the world, His invisible nature, namely His eternal power and deity has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.

So they are without excuse, for although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking.

And their senseless minds were darkened.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles.

Therefore, God gave them up in the lust of their heart to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever.

Amen.

For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions.

Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passions for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to impro- improper conduct.

They were filled with all manner of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignancy.

They all They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

Though they know God's decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them but approve those who practice them.

Now, I know it's easy today to focus on the later, the- the second part of that, of that teaching.

There is a reason why there's a connection between this licentious behavior, which we're seeing today, and what Saint Paul is talking about as idolatry.

Because when man turns his eye away from the one in whose image and likeness he is made, he begins to turn his eye downward toward the things of creation, and raises them and himself up to be gods.

I wanna focus on two points of what Saint Paul is saying.

First of all, that creation is meant to be revelatory.

That's where we began in the quote there if you look at- tw- verse 20.

Ever since the creation of the world, His invisible nature, nameless, eternal power and deity has been clearly perceived in the things that He has made.

In other words, the fingerprint of the Creator is found among the things of this world, and man is meant to see the things of creation and be drawn up to a deep understanding of who and what God is.

Creation is meant to be revelatory.

And the second thing I wanna focus your attention on, which will be really our launching point into what we need to speak about today, is verse 22 and 23.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles.

We can add to that exchange of the glory of God Saint Irenaeus's famous statement that The glory of God is man fully alive.

The glory of God is man fully alive.

They exchanged their own identity to be the revelation of the glory of God on earth for animals.

And if we can say with Saint Paul that creation is supposed to reveal the glory of God and with Saint Irenaeus that man fully alive is the glory of God, we can also, taking Saint Paul's lead, begin to see marriage in a similar context.

Marriage is meant to be revelatory of the fullness of God's glory.

It is meant to be the incarnation of God's love and to reveal the true meaning and depth and breadth of that love.

I want you to turn quickly, or just for a moment, to Ephesians chapter five, Ephesians chapter five.

We're gonna have plenty of time next week to focus on Ephesians chapter five.

But I wanna just, without you getting upset, read Saint Paul's words.

And I wanna focus our attention not on what usually makes the hair stand up on the ladies , but on what Saint Paul is really saying.

Let's look at chapter five verse 22.

I wanted to focus on Not 22, I'm sorry, uh, 23, 23 and 25.

Chapter five verse 23, For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church's body and is himself its Savior.

This is usually when people just turn Saint Paul off.

Because if you think about what he's saying, he's making a comparison of Jesus, who is God and the Savior of the Church, to the man, who then by extension is the point of salvation of the wife.

But let's lay that aside for a moment.

As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives be subject in everything to your husbands.

Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.

And what I wanna focus your attention on here is not the nitty-gritty of who's got power and who's subject to who.

We'll talk about that tomorrow.

Not tomorrow, next week.

But I want you to learn something from Saint Paul, and that is, for Saint Paul, for him to explain what marriage is, he says look at Christ and the Church.

Look at God and His people.

Because marriage, the relationship between a husband and wife, is meant to be an extension, a reflection.

It is made in the image and likeness of the divine Bridegroom and the divine Bride, His Church.

In other words, to understand marriage we need to look at God's salvific work with His people.

And further, to understand God's salvific work, we simply need to look at the incarnation of that work which God has placed in front of us in every single married couple.

The married couple is the incarnate revelation of God's love for His people.

It's a beautiful, beautiful comparison and a beautiful relationship.

Can you say that again?

I don't think so.

What did I say?

I don't know.

The married couple is the incarnate revelation of God's love for His people.

You guys are paying attention, nice.

Yeah.

That by looking, let me It, it's two ways, it's two ways.

By looking at marriage we can come to know God's love because the marriage between a husband and a wife is meant to reveal that love.

To understand what Christ has done for us we simply need to look at His revelation of that gift in the eyes of every married couple.

Okay?And it can go both ways.

By looking first at the husband and wife, we can understand, come to understand that gift and vice versa.

Does that make sense?

Okay.

How important our topic is then.

It touches upon the very foundation of Christianity and the truth about who God is.

And so I wanna spend a few minutes on that question.

We talked about this point last time I spoke in this hall when we had our talk on the, on the new evangelization but I do believe that it, it bears repeating.

Ultimately, if we can answer that question of who God is, we will come to a very clear answer about the sacred mystery of holy marriage.

I ask you to turn to Genesis chapter 1 then to answer that question.

Some of you will be able to just tell me what I'm gonna say in the next sentence because you've heard me say it a number of times.

Genesis chapter 1. What do we know about God in Genesis chapter 1? What do we know about God in Genesis chapter 1? Who is He?

He's the creator.

Good.

He's the creator.

Someone said to me, He's Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

I said, No, that's what your catechism says.

But in Genesis chapter 1, God is revealed to us in a specific way, and the reason He's revealed to us in a specific way is because at the end of chapter 1, at the culmination of the creation account, we're gonna learn that there is one who is made in His image and likeness.

And it's only by knowing who He is in Genesis chapter 1 that we will come to understand who we are as created in His image and likeness.

Yes, God is revealed to us as the Creator.

But not just as the Creator.

Peppered through all of your, uh, of Genesis chapter 1 is one phrase which is repeated, almost like a litany.

It's almost like a litany that is sung in the church.

Over and over and over again we hear something about God and His relationship to His creation.

What kind of Creator is He?

How does He see His creation?

What is that phrase we hear?

And God saw that it was good.

And God saw that it was good.

And God saw that it was good.

He is not a Creator who is distant from us, who is the over, uh, the all-consuming will as the Muslims would have us believe.

No.

He is a Creator who sees His creation as good.

And to see something as good is to see it as desirable.

It is the most fundamental movement of the will.

You saw that the wine was good, you went over to it and took some and consumed it.

The most fundamental desire of the will.

And when that movement of the will is oriented at the most important things, when it's oriented at persons, we call that movement of the will, that desire, we call it love.

Love is, if we can define it, simply the giving of one's life to another, the desire to share life in common with the beloved.

No greater love hath any man than to lay down his life for his friend.

When someone gives their life to another, there's nothing more that can be given.

They've given their whole self.

And as Saint John tells us in his epistle, God is love.

From all eternity God has lived a life of loving communion, pouring out His life into the Son, in the Holy Spirit.

And now, in the story of creation, God, who is love, reveals Himself as love, the One who desires to share His life with creation.

What does this have to do with marriage?

Everything.

Man is made in the image and likeness of that God.

Man, fully alive, is meant, according to Saint Paul, to reveal the truth about God.

Man, male and female, He created us to reveal Him and to reveal His love.

As the crown jewel of God's creation, we are meant to be that which most perfectly reveals God to the world.

I'll share with you a quotation from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

It's paragraph 1604 if you wanted to write it down.

It's a very beautiful paragraph on marriage.

And the catechism says, God, who created man out of love also calls him to love, the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being, for man is created in the image and likeness of God who is Himself love.

Since God created him man and woman, their mutual love becomes an image of the absolute and unfailing love with which God loves man.

It is good, very good, that you exist.

I've shared with you a principle before, a philosophical principle that that which is last in execution is always Come on .

first in intention.

And, and the fathers of the church are very clear about this, that man being the final act of God's creation is the culmination, the, the crowning of all of creation.

In fact, the fathers tell us that all of creation was made for man.

But as the Catechism says, God created everything for man, but man in turn was created to serve and love God.

In other words, we are not an end in ourselves.

We look forward to a further perfection.

We are meant to live out our image and likeness through love, love of the creator and in the image and likeness of that creator, love of creation, and ultimately, the love of the crowning jewel of creation, love of one another.

I wanna take a moment and step away from our discussion of marriage to just talk for a moment about what we're looking at in our Bible.

Because we have in front of us two creation stories, and many people get hung up, Why does w- why is this repeated in two different ways, and how are we to understand it?

I think it'll, if we get this right, we can, we can have a insight, a better insight into the creation of man and woman, and ultimately the marriage covenant.

The first story of creation is given to us almost in, almost in h- in historical terms.

One thing happens after another for six and then seven days.

But then begins in chapter two, a retelling of that story, which isn't so much a disinterested historical, um, uh, telling, but a telling which is involved and, and personal.

You can see this very clearly in the creation of man.

If you look at chapter one, verse 26, verse 26, Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image and e- and after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds ' And so forth.

We know the story.

If you turn your page Well, I have to turn my page in my Bible to chapter two, verse seven.

Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.

Notice the difference in the, in the way the story is told In- t- t- told to us.

Why?

There is a, a hinge which takes place, a hinge which holds these two accounts together, which helps us understand why Moses, who is historically the, uh, told to us is the author of this text, why he would have repeated the account twice in two different ways.

And the hinge of these two accounts is Genesis chapter two, verse one through three.

The hinge of the two accounts is the seventh day.

The seventh day changes Moses' perspective on creation.

This is important because if we can bring together Genesis chapter one and Genesis chapter two, we will begin to understand both of them much better and more deeply.

We'll say more about that in a moment.

But I wanna talk with you for a moment about the importance of this hinge and how it changes our perspective.

First of all, why did God create in a seven-day structure?

The number seven for the Hebrew people is a symbol of the covenant.

In fact, the word for the number seven shares a common root with the word for oath or covenant.

And so the number seven in the Scriptures oftentimes represents a covenant union between parties, and oftentimes a covenant union between God and man.

You can see this very clearly if you flip your Bible very quickly.

Leave your hand here in Genesis chapter one, and turn to Genesis chapter 21.

22, 21.

21.

21 verse 22.

This is the story of Abraham and a man named Abimelech.

Abimelech was one of the, the chieftains of the area of the, of the Promised Land that Abraham was now living in.

And it says, At that time, Abimelech and f- and Phicol, the commander of his army, said to Abraham, 'God is with you in all that you do.

Now, therefore, swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me or with my offspring or with my posterity, but as I have dealt loyally with you, you will deal with me and the land where you have sojourned.' And Abraham said, 'I swear it.' When Abraham complained to Abimelech about the well of water, which Abimelech's servants had seized, Abimelech said, 'I do not know who has done this thing.

You did not tell me, and I have not heard it until today.' So Abraham took the sheep and oxen and gave them to Abimelech, and the two men made a covenant with each other.

Abraham set seven ewe lambs of the flock apart.

And Abimelech said to Abraham, 'What is the meaning of these seven ewe lambs which you have set apart?' What are the- what is the meaning of these seven days, God, in which you have created the world?

And he said, 'These seven ewe lambs you will take from my hand, that you will be a witness for me that I dug this well.' And therefore that place was called Beer-sheba.

Literally, the well of swearing or the, the well of oath taking.Okay?

He set the seven ewe lambs as a symbol of the covenant, and we see this same thing now back in Genesis chapter one.

God creates within a seven-day structure not because He couldn't have created in less time or more time.

This is not the point of the text.

This is not the point of the text.

The point of the text is to tell us who God is and what He wants with His creation.

What is a covenant?

You guys tell me.

What is a covenant?

How can you describe a covenant?

So it's a rich and a deep, uh, term.

What is a covenant?

Making it into family.

What's that?

Making it into family.

A making it into family.

That is an excellent, excellent answer.

Oftentimes I ask that question, I hear, uh, An agreement, or a, um, what?

Pact.

A pact or something.

It's, it's, it's much deeper and richer than that, and I love Bob's answer.

It's the making it into a, into a family.

It makes the two parties come together as one mind and one will regarding the thing that the covenant is being made about.

Regarding this well, Abimelech and Abraham will be one, and if you were to ask one of them about the well, they will say the same thing that the other says.

They have made a covenant union that the two will be one in regards to this thing.

Sound familiar?

The two will become one.

Covenant is like a marriage, or we might just say marriage is a covenant.

Now look at what God does on the seventh day.

Take a look at chapter two, verse one, or verse two.

Verse two.

Chapter two, verse two.

And on the seventh day, God finished His work which He had done and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.

So He blessed the seventh day and He hallowed it, because on it, God rested from all His work which He had done in creation.

God blessed the seventh day and made it a place for the blessing of all of creation.

And when a thing is blessed, I've sh- I've said this to you before, when a thing is blessed, it becomes, it becomes holy.

Holiness is an attribute of God alone.

When a thing is blessed it becomes a sharer in the divine life.

When a priest takes bread in his hands and blesses it, it becomes the place of communication of God's life.

When you bless your children, you share with them the gift of God's life which you have received with them.

On the seventh day, the day of covenant, God blessed His creation, and in blessing His creation, He shared His life with it, and the two became one flesh.

David Chilton, a biblical scholar, in his, in his work, Days of Vengeance, says, God's relationship with Israel was always defined in terms of the covenant, the marriage bond by which He joined her to Himself as His special people.

If you wanna go do a little research, we'll probably be looking at this at the beginning next week, but you can write down these, these, uh, these texts.

Uh, Jeremiah chapter 31, verse 31, you could take a look at that.

Jeremiah 31:31.

You don't have to turn there right now.

Hosea, the prophet Hosea, chapter two, verse 14 through 20.

And there's a whole host of texts in the New Testament that we're gonna look at next week.

Scott Hahn, in his book A Father Who Keeps His Promises, says, From the beginning of human existence, the orders of nature and grace were meant to be married, but in our day they have been divorced.

The wedding occurred at the dawn of history with creation, as Genesis reveals.

The seventh day, the Holy Sabbath, was the sign of this nuptial covenant, marking the union of heaven and earth, God and man, male and female.

And now our talk begins to expand, because the question of the nature of marriage is not only about male and female, but it is also about God and His people.

You can see the importance and understanding of the Jewish concept of marriage in their practice of celebrating marriages for seven days.

You can see that, if you wanted to write it down, in Tobit, chapter 11, verse 19.

Tobit 11:19 and Judges 14:10.

Judges 14:10.

There's also a beautiful text in the New Testament that we'll look at a little later.

It is here in the context of the seventh day that we find man's most profound vocation of love, and love of God, the giving of our life, is what we call worship.

And we need to spend a moment here on this point, because it helps us understand the true nature of marriage.

How is a man to relate to his wife and a wife to respond to her husband?

In the exact same pattern in which God shares His life of love with us and we offer our love back to Him in our worship.

And I'll share with you a, a f- a fairly lengthy quotation from Pope Benedict's work on, in, in, uh, Spirit of the Liturgy.He says, The Sabbath is the sign of the covenant between God and man.

Creation exists to be a place for the covenant.

The goal of creation is the covenant, which is the love story of God and man.

The covenant is a relationship, God's gift of Himself to man, but also man's response to God.

Man's response to the God who is good to him is love, and loving God means worshiping Him.

Thus begins the spiritual creation.

But everything Pope Benedict says, Everything is bound up with freedom.

The creature's free act of the, the Creator's free act of creation is ordered to man's response.

The creature accepts creation from God as his offer of love, and thus ensues a dialogue of love that wholly new kind of unity that love alone can create.

The being of the other is not absorbed or abolished, but rather in giving itself, it becomes fully itself.

Why?

Because we were made in the image and likeness of God who gives His life to us and has lived a life of self-gift from all eternity.

We then, made in the image and likeness of that God only come home to ourselves when we begin to live the life of gift, of giving our life away.

But he says, Everything is bound up with freedom, and the creature has the freedom to turn the positive gift of creation around, as it were, to rupture it in the fall.

This is the refusal to be dependent.

Love is seen as dependency and it is rejected.

Keeping this in mind, we can now turn to the creation of Eve and the fall of mankind, and begin to see the problem in terms of refusal to fulfill their vocation of covenantal love.

We need to return to the relationship for a moment between the first and second accounts so to, as to take a closer look at the creation of Eve and the fall.

By seeing them together, as I said before, we can see a more full picture of God's story of creation, which hinges upon that seventh day.

Once Moses sees the revelation of the seventh day, the profound gift of God's l- covenantal love, he then can write the story of creation in terms of that covenantal love, which prior had been seen from a distance is now very much up close and personal.

If we see the two accounts side-by-side, something begins to come out about the fall.

And Scott Hahn mentions this in his book, um, A Father Who Keeps His Promises.

I'll read you the text.

Man is created on the sixth day.

Adam is created on the sixth day, and when he finds that there's nothing in creation which can fully be his helpmate, God casts a s- deep sleep upon him.

And there in his deep sleep, removes a rib and forms Eve.

I'll share with you what Scott Hahn says about this.

Reading the two texts together, There is no reason to suppose that Adam lived a long time as a bachelor, having been created on the sixth day.

In terms of narrative time, the second day began when he woke up from his deep sleep, which also happened to be the seventh day, the Sabbath day, the day of covenant.

So Adam's first full day may have been both a day of Sabbath rest and of betrothal for Eve and himself as marriage covenant partners.

From a narrative perspective, the Sabbath may be seen as the sign of two closely-related covenants between God and creation and Adam and Eve.

Let's turn our Bibles to Genesis Chapter 2, verse 18.

Chapter 2, verse 18, Then the Lord God said, 'It is not good that man should be alone.

I will make him a helper fit for him.' So out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.

And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.

The man gave names to all the cattle and the birds of the air and every beast of the field.

But for man, there was not found a helper fit for him.

So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.

And the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man, He made into a woman and brought her to the man.

Then the man said, 'This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.' Saint Ephrem, in his commentary on Genesis, has a beautiful insight into this story.

He says that, Man, that man awake, anointed with splendor and who did not yet know sleep, fell on the earth naked and slept.

It was likely that Adam saw in his dream what was done to him as if he were awake.

After Adam's rib had been taken out in the twinkling of an eye, God closed up the flesh in its place in the blink of an eyelash.

He goes on to ask the question, how is it that Adam looked upon Eve and said, Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.

If he had not seen through a vision granted to him by God of what had taken place to him.

In fact, we see this in Scripture all the time.

The sleep which man enters into in the presence of God is not a forgetting or going out of understanding, but a coming into the fullness of understanding.

This is what happened on Mount Tabor.

Modern Biblical scholars read the account of mou- of the transfiguration, where it says that the apostles of Christ fell to the ground asleep.

And they say, I've read commentaries pretty, I mean, that they became so tired because of the hike up the hill.

Huh?

Now, standing in front of God, transfigured in, before you, I don't think that's the moment you're gonna come, be so tired you can't stay awake.

No, no, no.

They entered into the divine presence and experienced the resting in God, the resting in God which God gave to us on the seventh day.

Adam, likewise, entered into the rest and the sleep of God, and then beheld what had taken place.

We need to keep in front of us at all times that we are made in the image and likeness of God.

One flesh.

We read in verse 24, Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh, and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

We are made in the image and likeness of God who has shared His life within the Holy Trinity from all eternity.

Three persons, one God.

And here, those that are made in the image and likeness of God are created in such a way that those which are two are not, now brought together in the image and likeness of the one God.

Remember that Eve is taken from the side of Adam, and now the Scriptures tell us that these two parts, originally one in Adam, divided at creation, through the marriage covenant, are joined back together again.

This is why Saint Paul can say, as we read earlier in Ephesians 5, that the husband is the head and the wife is the body.

The woman was literally taken from the body of Adam, and in the covenant of marriage, she is joined back together again.

We can see this clearly in Leviticus Chapter 18.

You can turn there.

I've shared this text with you before regarding, uh, Noah and the so- and then the sin of his son.

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus Chapter 18.

Leviticus Chapter 18, verse 6. Verse 6, None of you shall approach anyone near of kin to him to uncover nakedness.

I am the Lord.

You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, which is the nakedness of your mother.

Which is the nakedness of your mother.

What part of you do you clothe?

Do you clothe your head?

If you're a nun.

There's a reason for that, by the way.

Maybe we can talk about in question and answer.

We clothe our bodies.

To behold your father's nakedness, the one who has been joined in holy matrimony with his wife, to see his nakedness is to see, in Biblical terms, to behold the nakedness of his body, which is his wife.

Does that make sense?

And to see, again, in Biblical terms, is not to see at a distance.

It's to experience.

It's a Biblical way of c- of talking about carnal knowledge.

The two become one flesh.

They're beautifully bound together.

Without the woman, the man cannot live.

Without the man, the woman is lost.

As Pope John Paul II beautifully said, The husband is the head and the wife is the heart, pumping the lifeblood of God to her husband.

This union, which is a revelation of God, is what the devil wants to destroy.

He wants to break apart this union of love, which so perfectly reveals God on earth.

And it is here that we need to rid our minds of the modern notions of radical sexual egalitarianism that would attempt to wipe out difference, that would rid us of dependency .

that would replace it with a false notion of equality.

I want you to notice in Genesis chapter 2, and we're almost, we're almost out of time, I believe.

Genesis chapter 2. Come back to Genesis chapter 2 with me.

Genesis chapter 2, verse 24.

I committed Biblical suicide reading this text to you just a moment ago.

There's something you need to remember always when you're reading your Bible and that is never stop at the chapter break.

The chapter break is a later addition to your Bible, and if you stop there, 99% of the time you're gonna break your story apart.

So look at chapter 3, verse 24 with me again.

Sorry, chapter 2, verse 24.

Chapter 2, verse 24.

Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh, and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Now the serpent was more subtle than any other wild creature that the Lord God had made.

He said to the woman, 'Did God say you shall not eat of any tree of the garden?

Notice that the devil does not come as a, this is not a full-blown attack, is it?

He tries to begin to whittle his way in with little lies, making God to be the one who doesn't give life, but tries to starve them to death.

Does God say you can't eat of any of the trees?

No, Eve says.

At the very moment when in the Bible we should have read about the union of Adam and Eve in one flesh in a marital embrace, at that very moment, the serpent steps in and begins speaking with the woman and the woman begins speaking with the serpent.

To speak with each other in Biblical terms is not like we do today, walking along the street, Hey, how you doing?

So for- no.

You remember the story of the Samaritan woman.

When Jesus began speaking with the Samaritan woman, the apostles were horrified because to speak with another is to enter into a relationship with the other.

It is to share what you have in your heart with them.

And at this moment when we should've expected Adam and Eve to share the most intimate things together, we find the serpent begins speaking with the woman, and the woman begins speaking with the serpent.

Saint John Chrysostom said, What are you doing speaking with the serpent in the first place?

You should have been speaking with the person for whose sake you were made and came into being, with whom you share everything on equal terms, and whose helpmate you have been made.

Joseph Pieper, in his really wonderful work on love, says, It is God who, in the act of creation, anticipated all conceivable human love and said, 'I will you to be.

It is good, very good that you exist.' Human love, therefore, is by its nature and must inevitably be always an imitation and kind of repetition of this perfected and, in the exact sense of the word, creative love of God.

But if all goes happily, as it should, then in human love something more takes place than a mere echo, a mere repetition and imitation.

What takes place is a continuation, and in a certain sense, even a perfecting of that which was begun in the course of creation.

Instead of procreation in Genesis chapter 3 first 1, verse 1, we have what I call the first divorce.

We find Eve communicating with the one for whom she was not made, and in that communication, covenanted herself with the devil.

And I know ladies, you say, Yeah, but what about Adam?

What about Adam?

When the serpent speaks to Eve in Genesis chapter 3, he speaks in the plural, addressing not her, but them.

I do believe that Adam, having beheld one of the most beautiful women ever to be created on this earth, would not have wandered far away from his new bride.

No.

I believe he was standing right there, and when the serpent approached, he did not speak with the one who was made to guard paradise, but passed him over and directly addressed the woman who should've been speaking with her husband.

The catechism of the Catholic Church says that man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart.

He let his trust in his Creator die in his heart.

The devil, as we know, can oftentimes present himself to people in various forms, forms which are on the one hand enticing to some and the other times revolting and scary to others.

In fact, in the Book of Revelation chapter 12, we hear that the serpent is revealed as a great and terrible dragon.And there is an intertestamental text that the Jews wrote that says It's called The Apocalypse of Abraham.

It says, My eyes ran to the side of the Garden of Eden, and I saw a man very great in height, entwined with a woman.

And behind the tree was standing something like a dragon in form.

Instead of defending his bride, instead of confronting the devil and telling him to get out, the one who is the head of the relationship, the one who has the mouth to speak, remained silent.

And Eve, who is the body, begins to speak.

Notice the reversal, the turning on its head, of God's established order.

Saint Ephrem says, If God gave you the woman, oh Adam, he gave her to you to help you, not to cause you harm, and as one to be instructed, not one to give instruction.

And ladies, please, don't shoot the messenger.

Don't buy into the feminist agenda.

Eve received her life from Adam.

He was to provide for her, as Leviticus states, As her head, as her guide, and as her guardian.

She in turn was to receive his life and like creation in relationship to the Father, she was to return that gift of love.

She was literally to be the pumping heart of Adam's life, and he was to be her guide to salvation.

Saint Ephrem says in his commentary on Genesis, At this moment, she went after that which her eyes desired, and being enticed by the divinity that the serpent had promised her, stole away from her husband and ate.

Afterwards, she gave some to her husband and he ate with her.

Because she believed the serpent, she ate first.

If you read the text it's very clear, in Genesis.

Thinking that she would be clothed with divinity in the presence of that one from whom she, as woman, had been separated, she hastened to eat before her husband that she might become head over her head, and that she might become the one to give command to that one by whom she was to be commanded, and that she might become older in divinity than the one who was older than she in humanity.

In Biblical terms, the Fall is the story of Satan planting his corrupted seed in the heart of Eve, on the very soil where the seed of the sons of God should've been planted.

And with this divorce between Adam and Eve comes an even greater disaster: the divorce and separation between God and man, separating God from His people, separating God from His church.

The text tells us that Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed before the Fall.

But once the Fall took place, they realized their nakedness.

The Fathers tell us that yes, while bodily they were, they were naked in terms of the clothing we wear, they were not incapable of shame, but rather that they had been clothed in the grace of God, that Adam and Eve who were the king and queen of creation were clothed in the Father's robe.

Like you remember the story of the prodigal son whose father casts his garment over him?

This is why at baptism a new, white garment is given, and our old clothes are taken off.

In the old tradition those clothes that a child came to baptism with were never to be worn again.

They were to be burned and thrown away, the symbol of fallen humanity, and once again they were to be clothed in the grace of God, the robe of immortality.

This will become very important when we talk next week about Christ and His church and Christian marriage, because the baptismal font, according to the Fathers, was always called the nuptial bath, the bath of marriage where the Savior reunites Himself to His bride.

The restoration will be the reversal of what we have just seen take place.

But, but in this post-Fallen state something has changed.

If freedom was the atmosphere for authentic love in the Garden of Eden, now in this post-Fallen state the foundation of freedom must be forgiveness.

Forgiveness will become critical to authentic Christian marriage.I'll leave you with this.

I'm gonna have you turn to John chapter 1. Jesus has come for one reason, friends, a very simple reason, to restore to us the original plan of God.

Jesus has come to save us from what we just read about, and to begin to reverse what the devil has turned on its head.

Jesus has come to restore His relationship with His bride and then by extension, the relationship of a man and a woman who are to reveal on this earth the authentic, sacrificial, obediential love of God.

John chapter 1 concludes in chapter 2 verse 1 with what story?

Cana.

The wedding at Cana.

And notice in John chapter 1, John begins with the words, In the beginning.

You remember the first thing that God created in the story of Genesis chapter 1 on the first day was what?

Light.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

All things were made through Him, and without Him, nothing was made.

In Him was life, and the life was the light of man, and the light shined in the darkness, and the darkness could not comprehend it.

John begins his story of the recreation of the world with day number one of Genesis chapter 1, and then continues the story.

Notice chapter 1 verse 29.

We had the first day, the creation of light.

Verse 29, the next day.

Chapter thirty f- I'm sorry.

Verse 35, the next day.

Chapter f- No.

Verse 43, the next day.

Chapter 2 verse 1, on the third day.

John begins the story of the recreation of the world with the pattern of seven days and on that seventh day, Jesus, the bridegroom of the church, walks into a marriage feast which is in crisis, and He provides what the bridegroom had failed to provide.

We'll pick up the story there.

Next week, we're gonna talk very much about the failure of Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter 3 in terms of what Saint Paul says about marriage in the New Testament.

A text without a context is no text at all, and every single time that Saint Paul talks about marriage in the New Testament, he quotes Genesis chapter 2. Every single time.

And it's only within that context then that we can begin to understand the difficult teachings, and they are difficult for our modern ears, to begin to understand the difficult teachings which Saint Paul presents to us.

Thank you very much for your attention.

Um, yes.

I wanted you to reiterate for us, um, you, you gave us a lot of information and it sounds to me like the basis of what you're telling us is, um, Adam and Eve in terms of, um, the current, um, the current generation has some very liberal attitudes about, um, sex and other matters prior to marriage.

And that it seems to me, uh, there are no young people here that are in the 20 to 30 generation, which, you know, maybe a lot of this would be beneficial for, but that the basis of that, that belief in the Catholic Church comes from what you were saying about Adam and Eve and the, um, flesh bec- becomes flesh and that, uh, the rib, uh, is taken from Adam.

In terms of the basis of the Catholic theology regarding, uh, premarital sex, sexuality and marriage, and, um, I would say, uh, uh, the, uh, procreation.

And so if you could just crystallize that, what would you say as a basic belief of yours?

Okay.

I'm not sure I understood the question exactly, but I would, it's, I would simply make this point that what I'm saying is not so much based upon Adam and Eve as based upon who God is, number one.

Okay?

And we understand the relationship between Adam and Eve in terms of the revelation of who God is throughout all of scripture, but primarily here in terms of Genesis chapters 1 and 2. And if we can understand Adam and Eve and marriage in those terms, then we can understand all of the aspects of the church's moral teachings.

Everything which the church teaches is based upon the revelation of God who is love.

Everything.

Whether it's contraception, whether it's divorce, whether it's marriage.

Whatever it is, it's based upon that one fe- fundamental revelation that God is love.

And if you begin there, you can begin to understand the beauty of the church's teachings in all- of these areas, all of our moral acts are oriented toward being in the image and likeness of God, who is love.

And if love is the sharing of one's life with the other, if love is the continuance of the creative act of God, as Joseph Pieper was saying, then everything in my moral life must be about giving life.

And anything which deters that, anything which is contrary to that, is outside of the life of God.

Okay?

And so I- I don't want to wade into all the church's moral teachings that are under attack today, but if you bring them all back to that one point, it's all about that fundamental revelation of who God is.

In Genesis 2:18, we talked about, It's not good for man to be alone.

Yes.

It's right before that where God gives the command not to eat of the other trees.

Okay.

I wonder if you could say two words to the, how the woman came to that knowledge or that interrelation

How she came to that knowledge of-

Yeah, of the commandment.

it's not-

There's nothing about the communication between them.

Right.

It's- it's- it's not clear.

Look, when we're talking about narrative development, we're The- the Hebrew people were not interested in simple historical recitation.

This is not the point of Genesis chapters one and two.

I'm not saying it's not a historical account or these things didn't happen, but the way they were writing was to reveal to us something much deeper and broader than that.

So we don't wanna be get- get caught up like, Well, there's no time in between the creation of Eve and the time she speaks to the serpent, so how is she gonna understand these things?

This is not the point of the text.

But if we take a look at it, in Genesis chapter two, Genesis chapter well, three, right?

Are you saying th- chapter three, verse one?

Two.

In 2:18.

In 2:18.

Then God said, 'It is not good that man should be alone, and I will make him a helper fit for him.' But your question is how does she come to knowledge of what to eat, right?

Which is chapter three, verse one.

2:16 is where He gives the command.

Ah.

That's where He gives the commandment to Adam, but not where He gives the commandment to Eve, right?

I know We're getting at it, right?

And it's in 3:1 where- where she says, Now the serpent was more subtle than any other creature that the Lord God had made.

He said to the woman, 'Did God say you shall not eat of any tree of the garden?' And the woman said to the serpent, 'We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden.' And then she adds, 'Neither shall you touch it.' And this was not part of the original command of God in chapter two, verse 16.

Okay?

Now the fathers take a split decision on this one, where some of them say that, uh, that this was a, just a further revelation of what God had told Adam.

Okay?

And others will say that Eve was beginning to crumble under the pressure of the serpent, who was making God out to be really a dictator who was attempting to starve His creation rather than give them life.

Right?

And so she- she s- she hears the words of the serpent and she begins to crumble and says, Well, God said we can't only not eat it, but we also can't- can't even touch it.

So begins to make God into this one who will not give it to them.

Um, how she came to that knowledge, obviously, in the narrative text, Adam would've told her, right?

And this is, this is fundamentally important to the relationship.

Adam is placed in her life to be the one who shares the life of God which he has received.

And we'll talk about this more next week, but in- in many ways, Adam, prior to the creation of Eve, or even after the creation of Eve, I should say, is in a passive, in a sense, receptive not passive, but receptive feminine relationship to God Himself.

God is his head and husband.

He, being a representative of the church, is the bride of God.

Okay?

And this is why the church is called the bride, in relationship to her husband, but then the church turns and becomes the head and authority and father figure, if you will, of her children.

Okay?

So there's this- there's this dual relationship going- going back and forth.

It becomes really important when we're looking at Saint Paul, and Saint Paul recognizes the role of Adam and the role of the husband.

It's an extremely profound thing to say that he's going to be, in relationship to his wife, like Jesus is in relationship to the church.

I mean, that's crazy talk.

That's crazy.

We're gonna look at that next week.

I can't go any further.

Did I answer your question?

Yeah.

Kind of in a roundabout way.

Okay.

Do you see a- a- say, the onset of a clash of worldviews here between Adam and Eve, and the devil and God, insofar In the- it's chapter three, for example, at the beginning.

Uh, the devil is contradicting everything that God is and- and told Adam and Eve.

Uh, God said, You're gonna die if you Well, I don't know if that God said that you die if you eat the fruit.

The devil said, No, you're not gonna die, and they didn't die.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, he said, uh, the devil said, You're gonna learn to know what good and evil is, and they did.

Uh, they disregarded, totally, God's point of view and took a secular point of view, if you will.

Uh, and do you see that as a- a- probably the, uh, uh, reason for the difficulties we're having in getting the, uh, word of God out, uh, to the world?

You know, the onset of that-

Yeah.

I- I- I mean, uh, yes, but I'm not sure about the application, but I would, I would say, first of all, that they did die.

Uh, the death of a- of a person is a separation from their source of life.

Adam and Eve did die that day.Sure, they lived on in their bodies, but their life was a mere shadow of what it had been.

A mere shadow of what had been.

God gives us the time in our bodies to, a time for repentance.

That time is extended out for Adam to live in his body, even though his soul has, in some sense, died.

His spirit has died.

His relationship with God has died.

God gives him that time in his body as a time of repentance in mercy.

But that revelation of his death will certainly come to pass eventually.

Uh, and, uh, regarding a clash of world views in this battle, the entire story is about that.

Adam and Eve are given dominion over creation, those who are under the dominion of the king of all, who are under God's dominion.

But when they reject God's dominion and His kingship, they don't simply free themselves to do whatever they want, they enter under the dominion and domination of the devil.

They become not children of the Father, but slaves of the serpent, if you will.

That was poetic.

Nice.

But, uh, but this, i- in reality, this is the fundamental problem, and this is what Jesus is coming to do.

This is why this, this, this, these talks on marriage are so important to the fundamentals of Christianity itself.

Jesus is coming to reclaim His creation as king of creation and to give us back that which we lost, and we lost it right here.

You wanna know why marriage is under attack today?

You wanna know why everything about life is under attack?

Because the devil is fighting and waging a war against God, and mankind is the battlefield of that war.

Um, you mentioned, um, the clothing of the body versus the head and in relation to women religious.

Mm-hmm.

What is that relationship?

The w- uh, the relationship

Of clothing the body versus the head and women religious clothing their heads.

Yeah, we can talk about that more next week maybe, okay?

But, uh, I always punt the ball when you a- you always ask me these questions.

Um, this, the relationship of a, of a, um, of a nun is always seen by the church as the bride of Christ, that she has taken Christ as her husband, uh, and it is the body which is clothed.

The woman, in a gift of herself to her husband, enters back into this relationship of body and head, and it is the body which is clothed.

Women have traditionally clothed their heads to show that they have entered back into a union with their husband.

They themselves no longer, apart from them, their husband, have a head, if you will.

He is their head, and she is the heart.

Though a nun veils her head, as the monk does, by the way.

A male monk, taking that relationship to Christ as his bride, also veils his head.

Anyways, you're enticing me to go into next week's talk.

And I don't wanna go any further, so.

Yeah.

You guys let me off easy tonight.

I get to go home and be with my wife and my five kids.

That's great.

So, thank you for coming this evening.