Twenty-Seventh Sunday In Ordinary Time- B. 27th Sunday-- Divorce And Remarriage

Today’s readings bring before us some fundamental teachings on marriage.

Marriage requires a couple to prepare 4 types of "RINGS”:

- The Engagement Ring

- The Wedding Ring

- The Suffer-Ring

- The Endue-Ring

1) One highlight on marriage from Saint Pope John Paul II--

Is on what he calls the “original solitude” of the human being. It is a subjectivity and the self-knowledge that one has a special relationship with their creator. John Paul says, “without man’s sense of being alone and understanding himself, the possibility of spousal unity would have been frustrated.”

So, it’s not like, “man was lonely, so God made Eve.” The truth is that there is no person in the world who can perfectly fulfill all your desires.

However, when spouses throw themselves vigorously into prayer and formal liturgical worship, routine antagonisms begin to fall away, because the worshippers are being led to a reality more fundamental than their own being and life. [“Resurgent in the midst of crisis”]

Plus praying for (and with) Your Spouse helps tremendously.

sample married couple’s prayer

Wife: Lord, make me the wife my husband needs me to be. Help me to be willing to grow and stretch in our marriage. And when I don’t feel as if I’m enough, please love him through me.”

Husband: “Help me to be my wife’s friend and partner even through the hardest, most frustrating parts of this. Thank you for this woman who loves me in good times and bad.”

2). For marriages experiencing difficulty--

In a book called “Discernment of Spirits in Marriage,” the author talks about freeing married couples from discouragement and assist them in finding peace in their spiritual life and in their marriage. The author helps you determine what is of God and what is not and will show you how the enemy works to discourage you in your daily spousal interactions in order to undermine both your spiritual growth and your marital bond.

And what happens if the marriage does not work out and there is divorce?

Our Gospel tells us today that divorce based on subjective preference is not O.K. because Jesus has a total prohibition on divorcing like this in a valid marriage.

The Catechism teaches that the spouses are ministers of the sacrament of Matrimony by expressing their consent before the Church. They confer Christ’s grace upon each other (no. 1623).

John and Mary are the ministers of the sacrament of marriage if they are both baptized; the bishop, priest or deacon just asks for and receives their consent.

If the marriage consent was defective at the actual time of marriage it can even be healed if one of the spouses now privately consents to the marriage. For example, if unknown to others, a person who entered marriage invalidly because of a positive intention against having children may change his or her mind later and consent to a marriage now ordered to being open to having children (cf. Canon 1159), thus making the marriage valid.

How to approach Jesus' strict teaching about divorce and remarriage as it appears in Mark's Gospel today?

St. Rita was in a horrible marriage, but she discerned to stay in it. It was a “long obedience” for her which made her very holy. She often prayed for her husband’s conversion. It wasn’t until he was on his death bed when her husband Paolo repented.

Others faithfully discern otherwise, especially since October is National Domestic Violence Month, and the afflicted spouse decides that divorce is the only option.

However, it’s the remarriage after divorce from a valid marriage that creates the problem because Jesus says that it makes one an adulterer.

Well, one can ask: “Don’t people deserve to be happy?

In today’s gospel we see that the disciples can relate to this question as they are somewhat troubled by what Jesus says and ask Him about it again later. But Jesus does not back down; He even intensifies His language, saying, Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.

So, the Church is trying to be faithful to the teaching of Jesus Christ, and therefore maintains that Catholics, who divorce and are remarried civilly, find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God’s law; consequently, they cannot receive Eucharistic communion nor receive absolution in confession.

Clearly the point of Jesus’s teaching on divorce and remarriage is not to reopen old wounds or to increase feelings of guilt or failure.

Remember the account of the woman caught in adultery: Jesus said, “Put the rock down.”

A no-judgement zone. Instead, focus on the solution. Catholics who have divorced and civilly remarried should discuss the circumstances with a priest, who will look for a possible solution to with the Church marriage tribunal, and if the couple in the new union are older in years, there may be the possibility of living like brother and sister so resumption of the sacraments can begin.

God wants us to live in peace and happiness for eternity. This will happen only if we go back to His original teachings and follow them faithfully.

Amen.