Sunday Readings: Genesis 2.18-24; Hebrews 2.9-11; Mark 10.2-4, 6-9, 12
Some Pharisees came up to Jesus and asked him a question as a test. “Tell us, does the Law allow a husband to divorce his wife?” Jesus said to them, “What law did Moses give you?” The Pharisees replied, “Moses gave permission for a husband to write a divorce notice and send his wife away.”
But Jesus said to them, “At the beginning of creation God made humans male and female. For this reason men and women leave their fathers and mothers and the two become one. They are no longer two but one. Let no one separate what God has joined” (Mark 10.2-12).
Marriage is a life work, a promise and a process couples live out over time. With the gift of life comes the capacity to develop into full human beings. With Genesis 1 asserts that the Creator makes humankind in the divine image and gifts them with sexuality, “male and female God created them” (1.26-27). The creation story in Genesis 2 describes men and women made of the same bone and made for becoming one. “Therefore a man leaves his father and mother’s thinking about what married couples face today.
Where legalists draw sharp unyielding lines, Pope Francis speaks pastorally about making room for grace and respecting people’s consciences. The Church that is a field hospital doesn’t cut off divorced and remarried couples from communion and the companionship of parish life.
When a wife and husband don’t treat one another as equals with mutual respect, then the generosity of one can sour into destructive self-sacrifice. Marriage requires learning, listening, forgiving one another, reconciling. Our society and Church depend on families and the circles of relationships marriages generate as the building blocks of wider communities.
- How has marriage widened your circle?
- Whose marriages inspire you? Why?