Meeting the In-Laws

Seeing how Jesus loves us and dies for us

04/27/2024

Jn 14:1-6 Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be. Where I am going you know the way.” Thomas said to him, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

When you are dating someone, and thinking this might be the person I will marry, what is the biggest step you take on that romantic road? Is it the first time you hold hands? No. Is it the first time you kiss each other? No. Is it when you buy an engagement ring, get down on one knee, and ask her to marry you? No, not even that. The biggest step is when she takes you home to meet her parents. And by the way, that meeting your future in-laws is always more terrifying for the boy than for the girl.

It’s like that refrain from the Rodney Atkins song that goes: “She’s her daddy’s girl / Her momma’s world / She deserves respect / That’s what she’ll get, ain’t it son? / I’ll see you when you get back / Bet I’ll be up all night / Still cleaning this gun.” In other words, if you do anything to hurt or disrespect my daughter, I’ll “blow your head clean off” as Dirty Harry said. When you marry a boy or a girl, you marry their whole family. The hardest step on the road of every romantic relationship is meeting your future in-laws.

I think this meeting the in-laws can help us make more sense of today’s gospel from Jn 14. Jesus comforts his apostles saying: “I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be.” In other words, Jesus is proposing to marry us, his Church, his Bride. And like a good Groom he is building a heavenly home for his bride.

And naturally Jesus future bride wants to meet her future father-in-law, God the Father. And so Jesus answers when a little later Philip will ask “Show us the Father,” “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” So, the Bride, the Church, has met her future father-in-law, God, in Jesus.

But now what about Jesus, the Groom? Well, in a spiritual sense, because we are sinners, our sins have made us slaves of Satan, the Devil. And spiritually-speaking, the Devil is humanity’s father. Jesus said to the Jews in Jn 8:44 these startling words: “You belong to your father the devil and you willingly carry out your father’s desires.”

In other words, Jesus comes to earth to court humanity and make us fall in love with him and also to meet his Bride’s father, who, by the way, is a lot more threatening than Rodney Atkins who sang, “Bet I’ll be up all night cleaning this gun.” Why is the devil worse? Because he actually pulls the trigger of his gun to kill his daughter’s Beloved, Jesus, on the cross.

In fact, in the ancient biblical world the father-in-law was called “the circumciser” while the son-in-law was called “the circumcised one.” If a father met a future son-in-law who wasn’t circumcised, he would do the honors. When David wants to marry Saul’s daughter in 1 Sm 18, Saul demands he bring back 100 foreskins of the Philistines. David brings back 200, to prove his great love. What Saul asked of his future son-in-law was not unheard of, or outlandish, and David wasn’t scandalized. Saul was well within his rights as the father-in-law, the circumciser.

And I would suggest this is the correct lens to see Jesus’ crucifixion: that bloody death was the price our father, the devil, asked of our Beloved Jesus in order to have our hand in marriage. The cross was what it meant for Jesus to meet his father-in-law. The hardest part of any romantic relationship is meeting your future in-laws, especially for the boy.

Let me suggest two take-aways from this reflection, and forgive me is it sounds a little chauvinistic. First, all healthy young men feel the desire, even the need, to make a sacrifice to prove their love for their girlfriend. They want a challenge, like King David who brought back 200 Philistine foreskins.

That is why young men are drawn to programs like Exodus 90, that demand disciplines like cold showers, sleeping on the floor, and Holy Hours. Men are preparing themselves for the day they will meet their future father-in-law, who will “be up all night cleaning his gun.” For men to be men, we must sacrifice our bodies, not merely as an external norm, but as an internal necessity.

And second, this is why only men are called to the Catholic priesthood. Of course, women can run circles around men in virtually every aspect of priestly life and ministry. Women are better administrator, they are more compassionate, they are better preachers. And boy do women love to preach. But they cannot take the place of a boy who meets his future father-in-law, like Jesus met the Devil and died for his bride.

This death to self is the root and heart of all priestly identity and spirituality. St. Paul makes this connection between marriage and priesthood explicit in Ep 5:25, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church, and handed himself over for her.” And by the way, Jesus “handed himself over for her,” when he met his future father-in-law.

Praised be Jesus Christ!