As we come to the end of another year in the cycle of life, the Church turns our attention to the end of the world, to the time when the Son of God will come again on the clouds with great power and glory. Jesus describes a time of true resolution, at the very end, when all evil will be wiped away and true justice will be seen on earth. The language used is eloquent. Angels will gather the chosen from the four winds. In earlier prophecy, as we heard in today’s first reading, Daniel uses words of great inspiration. Michael will stand up to guard us. God’s people will be spared. All those names are written in the Book will arise. We will rise to everlasting life. We will shine like bright stars. These powerful words and visions are proclaimed to inspire us now to keep faithful in all we do, to practice true hope in the Lord who goes before us and makes a place for us in His Father’s kingdom.

“Listen, Israel: the Lord our God is the one Lord…” Today’s reading instruct us to let these words be written on our hearts.

This short prayer was part of the daily prayer of Jesus, a faithful Jew, and so it immediately comes to His lips when He is asked which is the first of all commandments of the Law. The genius of Jesus is to link it straight away with the command from Leviticus, “You must love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus understood that to love God with all our heart and soul, mind and strength, it is not sufficiently merely be able to recite the formula from the scriptures, even less to touch or even to wear the box containing the words. Love for God has to be expressed in action towards those among whom we live. As Jesus himself is the living sign of God’s love for us, so we are called to be living signs revealing love for God in the mercy and compassion we have towards our neighbors. The scribe who questioned Jesus comments that this understanding of the Law is far more important than any holocaust or sacrifice. This links nicely with today’s 2nd reading from the letter to the Hebrews, where we are told that one perfect sacrifice of Jesus does what all the sacrifices of the old Law could do; that is to save us from our sins.

The sacrifice of Jesus is made effective for us through our sharing in the life of the Church and through our participation in the sacraments, which are our most precious souvenirs, our way to heaven. The first commandment of the Law is to love God with all our heart and soul, mind and strength, and the second is to share in the life of the Church, especially in the Eucharist.

Our modern ears can easily interpret the Genesis story as regarding women as subservient. From the perspective of the writer, over 2,500 years ago, the intention was precisely the opposite. Today’s Gospel faces us with a similar issue. We hear it through the prism of our particular questions about church teaching on marriage as a lifelong sacrament, the pain of marriage breakdown and the position of children in society. But to understand what Jesus was saying, we also need to appreciate his context and the questions he was addressing. In Jesus’ time, there were 2 main schools of thought that a man could divorce his wife only for a serious reason, such as adultery. The other school thought that it was a man’s right to divorce his wife for any reason whatsoever – even if she burnt the dinner. The Pharisees’ question was a test. They wanted Jesus to take sides, perhaps even to contradict the Law of God. Jesus refuses to buy into their assumption that a man has any right at all to exercise such power over his wife. By ruling out divorce completely, Jesus is saying: a man can’t treat a woman as an object; he can’t get rid of her for any reason, serious or trivial. Woman is a person with equal dignity and should be respected as such. Jesus’ outright ban on divorce is a rejection of male domination of women – He affirms marriage as a covenant of equal partners. When St. Mark recorded this teaching some years later, his Christian community lived in a very different context – Gentile rather than Jewish, in a culture that gave some women the right to divorce their husbands. So Mark applies Jesus’ teaching to his own community’s situation, balancing Jesus’ prohibition on men divorcing their wives with a equal ban on women divorcing their husbands. Jesus rejects the idea that people can be treated as disposable objects. In welcoming and blessing children, Jesus shows His respect for every human being made in the image of God – even those regarded as the least and most powerless.

Jesus’ teaching on marriage – and indeed His whole attitude and behavior towards women and children – only makes sense when seen in the context of His time and culture. It is a teaching about the essential dignity of every human being and about what that means for all relationships, especially marriage. His teaching is simply that we should treat people as human beings, not as objects for our personal gratification or comfort. It means respecting and upholding the dignity of every person. Domination and control have no place in marriage, in the home or in any relationship. Whether we are married or not, Jesus’ words challenge us to examine the quality of our relationships. Do I treat others as means to my ends, or do I respect their dignity and worth as human beings.

Today’s Gospel has at its heart issues of power. It begins with Jesus speaking about His impending passion, death and resurrection. The problem is that the disciples do not understand what He is saying. Today we are told plainly that they are too afraid to ask for an explanation. Instead of trying to get inside the meaning of Jesus’ words, the disciples argue about who is the greatest among them. They focus on themselves. Being around Jesus, witnessing His power and sharing in that authority themselves has turned their heads. They are followers of a miracle worker. Power flows from and through Him. So how human it is for them to start discussing who is closest to Jesus; who is most effective as a follower; who is most powerful. Hierarchy would have been important to people in the time of Jesus, just as it is today in many areas of our society. Jesus wants to make it clear that greatness or power or hierarchy are not to be focus for His followers. These are things that can turn His disciples in on themselves and make them an exclusive group. Belonging to the group and finding a rank within it is not what matters, but finding Jesus in the least likely places is what counts. Jesus takes a child, someone who is not respected because children had no status in the society of that day, someone who has no rights. Jesus says that true power comes in the ability to open one’s arms and receive a child as if he or she were Christ himself.

In church circles, there can be temptation to think that we are important when we are involved in various ministries, or are given impressive titles. Listening to St. James in second reading, we would do well to be reminded that the disordered desires fighting in ourselves can often be the source of a desire for power and glory. Prayer is surely the antidote. Closeness to Christ through regular prayer will help us to be shaped according to His will and to grow in the humility He so desires for all His followers. Prayer is our weapon of choice. True power comes when we allow ourselves to be filled by the Holy Spirit to be leaven in this world and a member of the body of Christ, clinging to Him in prayer.