Matrimony images Christ’s union with his Church  

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
First Reading: Gn 2:7, 15, 18-24
Second Reading: Heb 2:9-11
Gospel Reading: Mk 10:2-16 

Everyone knows that the Roman Catholic Church forbids divorce. Actually, the Church does not say divorce is forbidden, but that it is impossible.

Quoting Genesis, Jesus says that from the beginning, marriage makes a man and a woman one flesh, no more separable than the parts of a body. By his presence at the wedding in Cana, Jesus gave marriage the dignity of a sacrament and confirmed its goodness and proclaimed it would henceforth be a sign of his presence.

Matrimony is the sacrament by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life which is directed by its nature toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Like any other sacrament, it is a sign instituted by Christ and entrusted to the ‌Church to dispense divine life to us. That sign, the mutual consent of the spouses consummated by sexual intercourse, is efficacious; it actually brings into being the spiritual reality it signifies.

What is that spiritual reality?

Genesis 1 says God created man in his image, male and female. Genesis 2 says he created the man and then the woman whom the man recognized as his partner. Together, these accounts mean humans image God “through the communion of persons which man and woman form right from the beginning,” said Pope St. John Paul II.

The spiritual reality that matrimony brings into being, then, is nothing less than the love among the persons of the Holy Trinity, a love God extends to humans, particularly in Christ’s love for his ‌Church.

That love is indissoluble. 

The ‌Church teaches no power on Earth can dissolve a sacramental marriage. As we hear in the second reading, Christ, the one who sanctifies and the ‌Church, those who are sanctified, are one.

Legal divorce, which pretends to break the covenant between spouses, ruptures the covenant of love between Christ and his ‌Church, of which matrimony is the sign. Contracting a new union, even if it is allowed by civil law, adds to the gravity of the rupture, for then the “remarried” spouse is in a state of public, ongoing adultery, as Jesus asserted in the Gospel reading.

Ever since Adam and Eve rebelled against God, marriage has been threatened by discord, domination, infidelity, jealousy, conflict, hatred, and separation, says the Catechism. 

That’s why Moses allowed divorce. However, Jesus declared the original nature of marriage persists, even though it is seriously disturbed. Man and woman can achieve the union for which God created them and they must never stop trying.

God helps them by the very consequences of Adam and Eve’s original sin, committed out of pride, namely pain in childbearing and toil in getting food. These consequences limit pride’s damaging effects by helping spouses overcome self-absorption, egoism, and the pursuit of their own pleasure.

Moreover, through the sacrament of matrimony, Christ gives them the strength to take up their crosses and follow him, rise again after they have fallen, bear with each other, get rid of all bitterness and malice, forgive each other, bear each other’s burdens, submit to each other out of reverence for him, encourage each other, build each other up, and love each other with supernatural, tender, and fruitful love.

“It can seem difficult, even impossible, to bind oneself for life to another human being,” says the Catechism, but that only makes it all the more important to witness to the good news that God loves us with an irrevocable love.”

In the sacrament of matrimony, couples share in this love and, by their fidelity and fecundity, their union achieves what it signifies, God’s faithful and life-giving love.

Spouses who give this witness, often in very difficult conditions, deserve the gratitude and support of both the ‌Church and society.

Father Hawkswell is again teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English with new insights, in both print and YouTube form, at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. He is also teaching the course in person on Sundays from 2 to 4 p.m. at the John Paul II Pastoral Centre, 4885 Saint John Paul II Way, 33rd Avenue and Willow Street, Vancouver, and Mondays from 10 a.m. to noon in St. Anthony’s Church Hall, 2347 Inglewood Avenue, West Vancouver. The title of the presentation next week is Who is Jesus Christ? The course is entirely free of charge and no pre-registration is necessary.

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