21st Sunday in Ordinary Time - St. Paul wrote to the Ephesians: "So also husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself... For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church."
 
Here we have the fundamental meaning of the sacrament of marriage: the union of a man and a woman according to God’s plan. St. Paul said that this is a mystery. Let us not forget that a mystery is not anything unclear, dark or dim. The mystery is something so great that our mind cannot completely understand it. It is like the sun. With these eyes we cannot admire the sun directly because our eyes are not able to do it. The same happens with faith. A mystery is something we cannot completely understand. It is something bigger than us.
 
So, the marriage is a mystery. It is a mystery because, as St. Paul said, "I speak in reference to Christ and the church". Marriage has something divine, and to understand this divine aspect of the sacrament of marriage we need to understand God. We need to understand the Lord Jesus.
 
How well St. Peter understood who Jesus was! “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”
 
There is something we cannot forget when we come to mass every Sunday. This is God’s word. Meaning, God tells us something every time we pray, every time we come to mass. “The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.” This is much more than what we are now hearing or seeing. Something is happening in this church every day when we proclaim God’s word and we make Him come down to the altar.
 
So we have two options. We can be like the people in the Gospel: “This saying is hard; who can accept it?” They were listening to the Lord Jesus, like you are listening to me right now. Well, these people did not believe what they heard. Or, we can be like the people in the first reading: “Far be it from us to forsake the LORD for the service of other gods. For it was the LORD, our God, who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt, out of a state of slavery.  He performed those great miracles before our very eyes and protected us along our entire journey and among the peoples through whom we passed.  Therefore we also will serve the LORD, for he is our God.”
 
Here we can see this: these people knew very well who God was. They knew what he did. They were blessed by Him and they did not forget it.
 
One of my teachers in the seminary is a priest who is now 83 years old. He told us that when he was preparing to receive his first communion, the teacher said to all the kids, "the day of your first communion, God will come down from heaven to you. And if you want, he will come down to you every day". When he heard this, he thought, "to me? every day?  I will not forget that". After his first communion he never missed a mass. He went to mass every day. Then he became a seminarian and then a priest. He is now 83 years old and he has never missed a mass.
 
This Sunday, God invites us to consider this mystery of faith. It is a mystery to listen to Him through the Bible. It is a mystery to receive Him hidden in the bread and wine. Also, that the sacrament of marriage is a mystery. So, we have many mysteries. Faith is a mystery. It is a mystery that surpasses us. These mysteries are not to be understood, but to be lived.