Mass Readings Audio
https://bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/2021-10-03-usccb-daily-mass-readings
Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time – October 3, 2021
Welcome to the one hundred and eighty-fourth episode of By Your Life. I’m Lisa Huetteman and I know that you have one hundred different things you could be doing right now so I thank you for choosing By Your Life. If you haven’t already, please subscribe via your favorite podcast host, or on the right side of the page so I can send you notifications when each new episode is posted. And please forward to a friend you think would benefit from By Your Life.
My goal is to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular, business world. It is my desire to help you live our Catholic faith in the marketplace and to trust that it is good for business. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.
In this edition, we will reflect on the readings for the Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time. (Year B) The first reading from the Book of Genesis (Gn 2:18-24) and Mark’s Gospel (Mk 10:2-16) share the familiar message about men and women and marriage and teaching about divorce. When speaking of marriage, Jesus quotes Genesis when he says, “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one flesh.” (Mk 10:7-8 and Gn 2:24). But “The Pharisees approached and asked, ‘Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?’ They were testing him.” (Mk 10:2) They told Jesus that “Moses permitted him to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her.” But Jesus told them, “Because of the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this commandment.” (Mk 10:4-5)
Uncommitted
Since Adam and Eve committed the Original Sin, men and women have failed to live up to God’s perfect design for our lives. By the time of Moses, divorce was taken for granted and tolerated as an existing custom whose potential evils Moses’ law sought to lessen. Today, divorce continues to tear apart families and there is another trend that defies God’s plan for us that has become culturally acceptable. According to a 2019 Pew Research Study, the percent of U.S. adults over the age of 18 that are married is down 5 percentage points from 1995. (53% in 2019 vs 58% in 1995.) Over the same period, the share of Americans who are cohabiting has risen from 3% to 7%.
Under-Commitment Has Become Acceptable
As it might be expected, of the “adults who are religiously unaffiliated, 90% say it’s acceptable for an unmarried couple to live together even if they don’t plan to get married..” Unfortunately, “roughly three-quarters of Catholics (74%) say the same.” But this is not God’s plan, and it’s not good for relationships or the children of those relationships and our society is suffering the effects of the hardness of our hearts.
Cohabitation and divorce and all their side effects are a function of under-commitment. God’s design is that husband and wife are “no longer two but one flesh” (Mk 10:8) fully giving of themselves to the other. God’s design is for us to be fully committed in marriage to our spouses.
While marriage and family are the first communities, this concept is easily extended to our lives at work. Our places of work are also suffering the side-effects of under-commitment.
Seeking Commitment
In their book, The Collaborative Way, authors Lloyd Fickett and Jason Fickett share a simple model to help people work together more effectively. This business parable offers advice for any group of people who share a vision or mission and want to work together to achieve their common goal. Practicing the five commitments of The Collaborative Way® results in extraordinary teamwork and an enriching and satisfying work environment.
One of the five core practices of The Collaborative Way® is “Honoring Commitments.” As Fickett and Fickett describe, honoring commitments is more than just doing what you say you will do, although that is important. Honoring commitments means:
- Only making commitments that you believe you can keep and that forward the company’s vision, mission, strategic intent, or a goal.
- Being responsible for your commitments.
- Holding others accountable for their commitments and supporting others in fulfilling their commitments.
- Not using current circumstances to invalidate someone or their commitment.
Don’t Overcommit
The first point, “only making commitments you can keep and those that forward the company’s mission,” is critical. Otherwise, you suffer the side-effect of over-commitment. Overpromising, overextending, overestimating, and overdoing do not help. Yet, we all do it on occasion and we all regret it afterward. Selecting your commitments carefully is one of the most important skills to master. It is okay to say “no.” In fact, it is 100 times better to say “no” than saying “I’ll try” when you’re not sure. Saying “no” respectfully serves everyone better than saying “yes” or “I’ll try” and letting people down in the end.
Honoring Your Commitments
The second point, “being responsible for your commitments,” may seem obvious, but is often neglected. I find this to be true at work and in ministry. In a recent project I volunteered for, one of our team members agreed to take on an area of responsibility. A week went by between our team meetings and this team member hadn’t accomplished anything. As the rest of us shared the status of our commitments, he was silent. Then he said, “I’m too busy with work. Can someone else take care of this?”
Being responsible for your commitments doesn’t mean you have to do everything yourself, but it does mean that you are responsible to make sure that it gets done. So, asking if someone else can take care of it is a viable option. In this case, however, the rest of us were also working and no one had the bandwidth to take on his tasks too. He needed to go outside of our immediate team and recruit volunteers to get the job done. He made the commitment and he needed to be responsible.
Honoring Others’ Commitments
Which brings me to the third point: Holding others accountable for their commitments and supporting others in fulfilling their commitments. Fickett and Fickett make a key point when talking about holding people accountable and supporting others, that is, if you accept someone’s commitment, you are responsible for making sure they can keep it. You have a responsibility to their commitment. This means you don’t accept a commitment from someone you know or think is unable to keep it. You don’t set people up to fail.
The second part, supporting others in fulfilling their commitments, is how you fulfill your responsibility to others. In the case of our team member who had over-committed when he accepted his area of responsibility and wanted to back out, our team didn’t let him pass his tasks back to us. Instead, we offered suggestions for how he could easily fit the tasks into his work schedule, we recommended volunteers who might help him, and we gave him ideas for finding others to take on some of his tasks. I told him that he shouldn’t allow another week to go by without making progress or our project would suffer, so if he continued to have trouble, he should let us know. I also asked a couple of people I knew who would be able to help and I passed their names and contact information along. In the end, he and his volunteers were able to complete all their tasks.
Developing Others to Be Committed
But there is something more important here than the tasks, there is the person. Our team member was able to fulfill his commitment. He didn’t let the team down. He learned new ways to get things done and learned how to keep his commitments. In short, he was a better team member and felt good about his contribution.
I am always telling my clients that their #1 job as a leader is to develop their people. German writer and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, “Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be.” Just think how much more productive your team would be if each person became the person they are capable of becoming. Think about how morale, teamwork, and goal achievement are enhanced by each person helping the other become the-best-version-of-themselves. Helping a person keep his commitments is just one way of supporting him in becoming as he can and should be.
The Most Important Commitment
Which brings me back to the most important of all teams, the family. Perhaps fewer marriages would end in divorce if people only made commitments that they planned to keep. Perhaps there would be fewer failed marriages if husbands and wives made a daily re-commitment to honor their vows by reaffirming the shared vision and values that brought them together. Perhaps fewer families would be torn apart if both parties involved are more focused on what they are giving to the relationship than what they are getting out of it. And, just maybe more marriages would be thriving, instead of just surviving, if husbands and wives were helping each other become the best-version-of-themselves, the people they can and should be.
Employers, employees, husbands, wives, we are all people, created in the image and likeness of God, to serve God and each other. In the second reading, the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews said, “He who consecrates and those who are being consecrated all have one origin.” (Heb 2:11) Imagine the difference if we considered this same one Origin when we dealt with each other at home and at work. Let’s ask God to help us.
Lord God, you created us for each other because you saw that it was not good for us to be alone. Yet we forget that we are all children of the same Father. Send forth your Spirit to remove the hardness of our hearts. Help us to help each other become what you created us to be, the very best-versions-of-ourselves, so that in all that we do, we may glorify you by our lives.
And May God bless you abundantly, as you glorify the Lord by carefully making commitments, honoring those you have made, and helping others to do the same.
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