Twenty Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time: To be or not to be?

Today’s Gospel message—that divorce is not part of God’s plan for sacramental marriage—is a difficult one to hear for many good people. And while no words that I will offer today or any day will eliminate the "difficulties" many people have with this teaching of Jesus—we need to look at Jesus’ stance on divorce from the perspective of the first and second readings rather than from our own personal situations. The first reading tells us why God created us as male and female—that is, complimentary be-ings—one adding to the whole of the other; and, in the second reading we must come to know who we truly are—individuals made in the image and likeness of God or as the Letter the He-brews states "brothers and sisters" of Christ, adopted sons and daughters of God—thus our origin in unified and our future is assured. Now that we know "why" we are and "who" we are, we can now understand how are called to live.

The Gospel of Mark this weekend tells us that Jesus noted that Moses allowed for divorce not because it was part of God’s origi-nal plan but rather because of the "hardness of our [human] hearts" [editor’s emphasis]. Sometimes the human heart is just unwilling to allow for forgiveness or to allow for change in a given situation. Now before I go further or before anyone gets upset with me or the readings…we need to understand that the Church does allow for divorce and does provide for annulment so that sacramental remarriage is indeed possible. And to those who say, "It cost thousands of dollars to ‘buy’ an annulment or that you have to be a ‘Kennedy’ to get one"—let me say those are two of the most often quoted myths and distortions I have ever heard. I have only been a priest for 9 years and have worked on 4 or 5 annulments and all of them have been approved by the Church, and the costs (associated with court fees and lay therapist fees) are somewhere between $200 and $400, if that much. Let’s at least begin with busting those myths.

So the Church does indeed recognize that not every marriage is a happy one or that each one will last—but the point of the teaching is that we can and should still hold out hope for the ex-cellence of marriage as created by God. And that the "hardness of the human heart" does not trump the desire of God—that indeed we must work to allow for forgiveness of a spouse or even the possibility for change or a different outcome of what we thought married life would be. Of course, other issues come into play also: one must consider if a marriage was truly a covenant and sacramental on the day it happened or did one or more of the par-ties have doubt? Were the parties involved capable of making a mature decision so as to enter into marriage? Did they understand their vows, and truly take them to heart…"for better, for worse, in sickness and in health, until death do us part…or was it more of "for as long as it works or for as long as you are who I want you to be?" Back to Jesus’ message: the first reading tells us that God planned and created man and woman as complimentary beings—a mutually beneficial relationship that unties the two orders of hu-manity into one. In C.S. Lewis’ Four Loves, the third love— Eros—binds man and woman together in a physical love only truly comes to be when it is based upon Storage (affection) and Phila (friendship) loves (his first two loves) and eventually lead-ing to Agape –unconditional love (his final and complete love). Agape is that love that God has for us, a love that will not change, a love that will not divorce us, a love that will solidly unite us as one even though we are not perfect, even though we may stray; a love that will take us back and make us whole. In the second reading today from the Letter to the Hebrews we hear that Christ was made "lower than the angels" for us and that "by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone" so that all might be saved (so that all are offered the gift of salvation)— and that it is up to us to accept His gift. The reading goes on to tell us that we—and all things—were made for and through Christ; we exist for and because of Him, and His intention is to bring us—all of us, you and me—to glory. It is through His suf-fering—and indeed in our shared sufferings (read: crosses) that we are made like Him. This is because all of us—rich or poor, male or female—have ONE origin: God Himself, and because of this, Chris is "not ashamed to call them us His ‘brothers’ (and ’sisters’)" and so we are called adopted sons and daughters of God. Now that we know who we are, we also must come to know what we are called to be.
In our modern world though, divorce is an ever-present reality in many families, if not all. And while it is sadly a fact of modern life, we must not stop from seeking the "excellence of marriage" which is a lasting union between one man and one woman for the procreation of the race—formed by God and called into being, sacramentally, by Christ. It is something we should all work for and pray for, and it is something that the Church must continue to hold up as sacred. It is, whether or not others wish to accept this reality, the fundamental building block of our society—of our families. It forms what the late Pope John Paul II called "the Do-mestic Church," the family. To weaken it by making marriage something you enter into on a whim or by making divorce as easy as ordering dinner out on Tuesday night, or to weaken it by mak-ing other forms of relationships "equal alternatives" is to destroy the very fabric of our creation as formed by The Creator.
As a community of believers we need to be about helping people seek the excellence of life, by helping families remain families. We need to support couples in their difficult times so that they can overcome the difficulties and not be overtaken by them. We need to help families work out the stresses of everyday life—rather than add more "must dos" to an already over-flowing plate. We need to help families enjoy their time together and to make our community more family-friendly (can we all remember last October when the freak snow brought our busy lives to a halt? It was amazing to hear that in the midst of all that inconvenience, many folks said the nicest thing to happen was to spend time as a family—without the burdens of all those "scheduled" activities). We need to encourage our governments, our school systems, our faith communities to reach out to those in need and give them a helping hand by enabling parents to nurture their kids with true love rather than being their "best buddies"; showing them through true kindness—and not by giving them everything that makes them happy—but by offering those things that make them right-eous people (sometimes being kind means making people do the right thing even when it hurts) which will in turn bring about true happiness.
Our message today needs to focus less on the "Thou Shall Nots" or the "ways out" of a relationship and instead on what we can do to help marriage and families be strong and healthy, so that the excellence of God’s intent for marriage, thus families and society, comes into being more often than not. And when mar-riages and families do fail, let us be with them in their sorrows and help them to heal. May that be our prayer this Sunday and everyday.
Peace!