Friday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 417

Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.

Perhaps Jesus' statement about your hardness of heart is not so much a judgement as an observation. A judgement implies, "You should do better!" An observation means, "You have a moral disability; you are incapable of lifelong marriage and Moses compassionately permitted you to divorce and remarry." 

    Any stable arrangement that resembles what God intended from the beginning is better than an endless, humiliating cycle of hookups between strangers. 

    I certainly hear that story often enough in the VA. I remember one proud graduate of Saint X, a premier Catholic high school in Louisville; he had been married four times, and the one he was with now was not his spouse. The fellow seemed to have never heard, "from the beginning it was not so." Whatever he learned in the Catholic school had been overruled by the example of his family, friends and the prevailing American culture. 

    In today's gospel Jesus acknowledged some are "incapable" of marriage as he went on:

Not all can accept this word, but only those to whom that is granted. Some are incapable of marriage because they were born so; some, because they were made so by others; some, because they have renounced marriage for the sake of the Kingdom of heaven. Whoever can accept this ought to accept it."

My nephew remarked lately that he had to attend a wedding as the couple had attended his. I reminded him that every wedding ceremony should include at least a renewed appreciation, if not a renewal of vows for all the attending married couples. There is no point in one couple making their vows before a congregation if, afterward, they're the only married couple in the room. That would be a mockery of the sacrament which has already suffered enough. 
    Jesus assured Saint Peter that the Gates of Hell cannot prevail against the Church which stands upon the rock of his faith. Likewise, I am confident that the Sacrament of Marriage will prevail against the crushing waves of our time; it is built by the Holy Spirit on the faith of Peter and of all the saints, on your fidelity and mine.