Gn 2:18-24
Ps 128
Heb 2:9-11
Mk 10:2-16
There are certain readings make a preacher break out into a cold sweat when he looks ahead for the coming week. Today's readings are of that type.
There are, of course, a few ways to avoid saying anything controversial.
Tell a few cute stories from your past about how your family stopped at
Dunkin' Donuts after Mass every Sunday.
Toss in a joke about a rabbi, a priest, and a minister.
Cite a few pious platitudes.
Decide it would be a good day for the deacon to preach.
Or plunge in.
Were a teacher or professor to say to a class today that "from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female" and indicate that there are only two sexes, the teacher's job would be on the line for contradicting the delusion that men can become women and women can become men with multiple other options between. That is a homily in and of itself.
Then we come to the matter of divorce,
Donahue and Harrington begin their commentary on this passage with a short summary that says it all: "Mark presents Jesus’ radical teachings on marriage and divorce.” Radical is the key word.
The teaching on divorce is as radical, challenging, and difficult today as it was when Jesus answered first with a question of his own and then a teaching on marriage.
Jesus’ teaching was radical in His time because of the nature of marriage. Marriages were arranged and negotiated for financial, political, and social reasons. Love or attraction were not important factors. After a couple was engaged or betrothed they got to know each other for about a year before the woman moved into the man’s home.
In their attempt to trap Jesus into giving deviant teaching on marriage the Pharisees were alluding to two texts in Deuteronomy regarding divorce.
Jesus, on his part, cited more ancient writing from Genesis, as expressing God’s original plan: “and the two shall become one flesh.” Then, He elaborated and extended the teaching: “Therefore what God has joined together, no human must separate.” This charge is repeated following the giving of consent in the sacrament of marriage as performed in the Catholic Church.
Divorce was the exclusive prerogative of the husband in the Ancient Near East. The procedure was simple. The husband gave the wife a certificate of divorce and sent her away. She was now free to marry someone else.
From Donahue and Harrington again, “In a society in which divorce was widely accepted and the controversial issue was the grounds for divorce Jesus’ teaching about no divorce went against custom and the cultural grain.” The more things change the more the stay the same.
The early Church struggled with the question as mightily as we do today. There is Paul’s advice to those who found themselves in “mixed marriages” or marriages in which one party reverted to paganism. And there are the “exceptive clauses” found in Matthew which permit divorce for porneia or what is translated as unchastity though that translation does not fully capture what Matthew meant.
We continue to struggle with the meaning and implications of Jesus’ teaching on marriage today.
Some time in the early 2000s I first heard a woman with whom I worked gleefully note that even at the wedding the family was referring to the groom as her sister's starter husband. Even more mystifying are the celebrity types,--and many non-celebrities--who have been "married" six or seven times. After a certain point it seems silly to bother with the paperwork.
When considering Jesus' teaching we have to ask if it Is an ideal to shoot for, a challenge to be faced, an extreme example, or divine law?” Another line of questioning asks which part of New Testament evidence is more compelling: Jesus’ prohibition of divorce or the exceptions introduced by Paul and Matthew?” These questions are destined to be debated for a very long time
In today's world and, one can assume, in Jesus' time, there are marriages that should and must end. Many never should have taken place. One doesn’t have to be a psychiatrist to realize that; just watch the horror of so-called reality TV.
Perhaps one of the saddest commentaries on the misuse of Church teaching against divorce comes from the life of the actor Spencer Tracy who carried on a twenty-five year long adulterous affair with Katherine Hepburn. The affair ended only with his death. However, he remained legally and ecclesiastically married to his Episcopalian wife for 44 years.
As several sources confirmed he wouldn’t divorce her because of his "staunch Catholicism." Apparently adultery posed no problem whatsoever to that staunch Catholicism. While some see Tracy-Hepburn and similar stories as great romantic epics, they are merely examples of adultery at its worst.
We live in odd and very troubling times marked by a frightening arrogance and egocentrism. They are times in desperate need of prayer.
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A woman walking down an alley in Ljubljana. I saw this particular photo forming. Waited. Waited. Waited. Shot.
+Fr. Jack, SJ, MD
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