Joined as One

"Brothers and sisters: Live in Love, as Christ loved us. . . He who loves his wife, loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of His body. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. " - [ Ephesians 5: 2A, 25-32].


 When my husband and I were married, we were in our late twenties.We were so young and innocent! I thought marriage was eating dinner together every night; dividing up who would wash the dishes and who would dry and put away; negotiating which side of the bed to sleep on; sharing that last bite of cake or pastry.

Nothing quite prepared me for the challenges of being united "Till death do us part."

Okay, it wasn't so hard to put myself aside if my husband had a cold and wanted to stay home and cocoon, but I was planning a fun night out together. I felt honored to stay home with him and bring him hot tea and an extra blanket.

What was much harder was navigating the lifelong vow that we were now "one person."

My family reacted viscerally and angrily that I was marrying a Catholic. First they tried to talk me out of the marriage.

When they could see that my fiancé and I were adamant, they took another tactic - they began shutting my husband out.

I was invited to a family get-away, but he, pointedly, was not.  When my husband lay sick in a hospital bed on Christmas Day, with a potentially dire diagnosis, there was no sympathy visit from my family. My parents went on with their holiday travel, saying, 'You don't need us.'

Here is where I confronted the true meaning of leaving one's father and mother, and joining one's spouse, and becoming one flesh.

I had to explain to my family that when they cut my husband out of family trips, they were doing that to ME. When they left my husband in a hospital bed with a life threatening diagnosis, they were abandoning ME.

And so, I had to make the tough choices. I had to firmly reject their invitations. I could not go away with my family, alone. There was no longer any "alone". My husband and I are ONE.  The cost of this was that I had to leave my father and mother, and much of my allegiance to them, behind. I would still respect them and take care of them when they were old and ill. But I could not allow them to divide my marriage.

This heartfelt example of a husband and a wife joined together forever, in one body, is a fitting metaphor for us AS Church. When we proclaim we are Christian, we are joined in one Body.

The implications of this are staggering!

For, if we are one body, there can be no ostracizing or marginalization of any one group. One cannot say, You are a woman . .  a person of color. . . a foreigner, a poor person . . . a prisoner . . . an addict . . and say, 'You do not belong.'

If anyone does demean or shut out a particular group, that hatred is an act that demeans ALL of us.

And as one body, if there is scandal, or Sin, or corruption within, then these affect us ALL.

We are witnessing this with the abuse scandals within the Catholic Church, but there are many examples of abuse within Protestant churches as well.

Scandals whiplash church communities. Pastors who were there today are suddenly gone tomorrow. There is a real gap in ministry. Who will celebrate marriages and funerals? Parishioners no longer trust any priests or pastors fully. Priests are spat upon when out in public, because it is assumed that all priests are either abusers or enablers.

There have been calls for Pope Francis' resignation over the latest abuse scandals, because it is said that he knew all about it, but did nothing.  When tickets were allocated for Pope Francis' trip to Ireland, silent protesters reserved big blocks of tickets that they never intended to use, so that turnout would be low.

In my parish this Sunday, a second collection was supposed to be taken. This is often for mission work in Africa or Asia, for support of school tuition, or programs supporting immigration aid. This second collection was not taken. Some organization that does valuable work is, therefore, not reaching the budget it needs.

Some Catholics are still attending Mass, but are refusing to donate anything to weekly collections until they see justice done for the abuse survivors.

A pastor told me that it will take a generation or more for the Church to recover from these scandals. With increased secularization, I wonder, do we have that kind of time?

As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, " In a real sense, all life is inter-related. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way God's universe is made."

Or, as Mother Teresa once said, "We forget that we belong to one another."

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