Twenty-Seventh Sunday In Ordinary Time, Year B: The Fellowship Of The Rings

Marriage requires 4 types of "RINGS”:1

The Engagement Ring:

The idea of Soulmates was first written about by a Greek playwright, the ancient equivalent of Hollywood.1 It’s a made-up romantic term meaning that there is only one person whom you are spiritually destined to marry. “Those daunting odds are likely to be debilitating. I’m reminded here of the song “Whole Wide World”… in which the singer laments:

When I was a young boy; My mama said to me; “There’s only one girl in the world for you; And she probably lives in Tahiti.” I’d go the whole wide world. I’d go the whole wide world just to find her.2

The reality is, for marriage, we are called to discern among the viable options available to us, the same way one discerns which convent or monastery to apply for if one feels called to religious life. If there are no viable options, so that one remains in a single vocation, that too, may be the result of one’s discernment.

The mistake of the soulmate idea is that one’s spouse is predestined as an unchangeable plan without any human effort. The Catechism flatly rejects this idea of unconditional predestination, whether for the soulmate idea or for eternal salvation, teaching that when God “establishes his eternal plan of ‘predestination,’ he includes each person’s free will (600).

So, yes, destiny or predestination and freewill do co-exist, but only by using your freewill can that be brought about. God predestines no one to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end” (1037).

Destiny can only be seen in hindsight.

E.g. of the Engagement Ring- The Archangel Raphael lists many reasons why Tobiah should marry Sarah: it was in accordance with Jewish law, Sarah comes from a good family, she is sensible, brave, and very beautiful. ONLY THEN, he says that Sarah has been set apart for him before the world was made (Tobit 6:18).

Similarly, it was only after discernment, that Isaac married Rebecca after evaluating that she was from his own country, was very kind and well spoken, and only then do we hear that God answered the prayer that Isaac would marry the right girl.

- The Wedding Ring: Our First Reading ended with Genesis 2:24, “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one flesh.”

This verse speaks of the attraction of male to female. The marital act and the desire that gives rise to it are reflections of the divine will.

-But remember, that one is not married until that moment of public vows. The New Testament is clear that unrepentant fornicators will not inherit eternal life, that Our Savior, Jesus Christ freely offers us.

- The Suffer-Ring: Holy Orders and Matrimony, according to the catechism, “are directed towards the salvation of others.” (1534).

Matrimony and holy orders can contribute to an individual’s personal salvation, but only through service to others. As Pope Francis has warned, “no vocation is born of itself or lives for itself.”3 Every true calling from God is a call to deeper love: for us to grow both in our love of him and in our service towards our neighbor (whether that means serving our spouse, our religious community, our parish, or something else).

- The Endue-Ring

"Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?" we hear in our Gospel today in Mark 10:2. They were testing him. Jesus responds, “Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate." "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery."

The Catechism asks, “What is the attitude of the Church toward those people who are divorced and then remarried?”

The Church, since she is faithful to her Lord, cannot recognize the union of people who are civilly divorced and remarried. The Church manifests an attentive solicitude toward such people and encourages them to a life of faith, prayer, works of charity and the Christian education of their children. However, they cannot receive sacramental absolution, take Holy Communion, or exercise certain ecclesial responsibilities as long as their situation, which objectively contravenes God's law, persists.”

To be clear, 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 are thinking along these lines and ask Jesus about it 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.