Saturday 1st August 2020, 17th Week in Ordinary Time

St Alphonsus Liguori (1696 – 1787). Founder of the Redemptorists.

There are no unfaithful loves! (About marriage)

There are times in life when we second-guess ourselves: what if I had done things differently, made other choices? Often, too, we are haunted by regret or are not at peace because of something that we have said or done.

When people around us engage in unlawful behaviour, we must raise a prophetic voice in defense of truth. Jeremiah and John the Baptist are presented to us today as models of courageous witness to truth.  Praise and worship of God consist in challenging the ways of this world by standing for truth, defending those who are treated unjustly, and refraining from acting like Herod who, in order to please other people, condemned an innocent man to death. Persecution should not stop us from standing for the values of God. Our faith in God’s help and protection must be strong, as we sing with psalmist, “Rescue me from sinking in the mud; from those who hate me, deliver me.”

Jesus’ public ministry seems to have triggered off this guilt in King Herod. Powerful and wealthy as he was, he lacked nothing except a clear conscience and peace with God. Herod had respected and feared John the Baptist as God’s prophet. John, outspoken and committed to the truth, openly rebuked Herod for his adulterous relationship with his brother’s wife. The outcome was the imprisonment and beheading of John.

Today, we see the Baptist when he is beheaded for defending truth about marriage. Today also, the legislative abuses —that tag as “marriage” multifaceted affective experiences— disfigure the face of conjugal love, to the point that many cannot even recognize it. Human life is not an experiment, nor a lease contract! Only a really unadulterated fidelity is the suitable scope for the dignity of marital connivance and the education of our sons.

God instituted marriage is the place for total love between man and woman. The genuine measure of their love is “totality”. All the rest is just “trade” (where there are no “life-binding” contracts nor demands of “exclusivity”). Only giving myself over completely, neither reluctant nor aspiring to a reconsideration/ termination, can fully respond to human dignity.

—Jesus, Mary and Joseph: do enlighten mankind to preserve true love, because to get married with the “parachute” of divorce, is not getting married; it simply is to deceive yourself.

St. Alphonsus de Liguori, the saint we honour today, was the founder of the ‘Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer’ popularly known as the Redemptorists. Great his contributions to the Church in Moral Theology, Dogma, and Ascetical works . Patron Saint of the Moral Theologians.