Today I am preaching about marriage. There is a coincidence between the regular Sunday readings on marriage and the opening in Rome today of the Bishops' Synod on Families.
Sunday, October 4, Mark 10
2-16 Marriage and Divorce
Perhaps the Spirit or even the Bishops planned that today’s
particular readings would be part of the liturgy on the very day of the opening
of the Synod of Bishops that is discussing family life. That day is today in Rome. In Rome they read as we do from Genesis. Genesis reveals that the possibility of
mutual relationships between male and female completes God’s creation of the
human person. Not only that but where
possible the male-female relationship includes the responsibility of
procreation. In Rome, too, they read as we do from the
gospel of Mark about Jesus’ understanding of the permanent nature of marriage.
Pope Francis while in Philadelphia, greatly inspired by testimony from family members about their human relationships, talked to all of us family members, and all of us belong to families of one kind or another. He talked about love for one another, about struggles in prayer and in service. He called the family a “domestic church” and encouraged family members to engage in those countless small acts of kindness that are the signs of love that imitate the generosity of God.
The meeting starting today in Rome will be addressing chiefly all of the pastoral issues related to the fundamental Catholic doctrine expressed clearly by Pope Francis about the permanence of marriage. This doctrine is an ideal that flies in the face of so much that happens in human life but Jesus acknowledges that any historic gestures supporting the notion of impermanence are related to “hardness of heart”. He also elevates the permanence of marriage as a sign of the permanence of God’s covenant with God’s chosen people. I have among so many of my friends men and women who have committed themselves to such permanence despite so many obstacles. I consider them to be living a miracle, particularly those who have flourished in their relationship by their constant care of the next generations, whether those in next generations are of their own families or others.
But the Pope and the Synod in its realism knows that people make mistakes and sinful mistakes, too. The Pope talks of young people poorly prepared for a permanent life-long relationship. He talks of the lack of free choice in so many ways and he understands that the appearance of marriage between a man and a woman does not always mean a true marriage. In such cases he wants to make the process of recognizing the nullity of such marriages a more merciful process. Surely the Synod will affirm a process that requires less stress and time.
The hardness of heart about which Jesus speaks in the gospel of Mark ensnares us sinful human beings in a great variety of ways, not simply in our desire for divorce. Here Jesus is speaking of the hardness of heart not open to growing through the difficulties so frequent in the marital relationship, a growing that can yield to great graces and understanding. But there are other kinds of hardness of heart such as one in my own family history. In my Irish grandmother’s family, her sister Margaret was the black sheep. Margaret ran off from the family with a married man, a neighbor from her own small Irish town. Margaret shamed the family and was disowned; her name was never spoken to the next generation of the family; no attempt ever made to restore contact with her. This was, I gather, in that culture a fairly standard version of hardness of heart.
In contrast I remember the softness in the heart of a Black Catholic family in North Philadelphia, whose husband and father died suddenly not long after abandoning his family and going to live with his mistress. The family loved this man and saw that he was buried with love from the Catholic Church where the family regularly worshiped.
I have learned from this family to repeat often those famous words of Pope Francis: who am I to judge? And the corollary statement: whatever the need for judgements that such necessary judgements be made with mercy. But we must acknowledge that we also have a further responsibility, that is, the responsibility to define characteristics for relationships, characteristics that are consistent with the revealed word of God and with the time-proven traditions of the Catholic Church in its judgement about sacramental marriages and about non-sacramental marriages. Moreover, whatever we think of civil unions of same sex couples I judge also that these characteristics are just as essential for them as well.
I understand these three characteristics as consistent with Catholic teaching. There must be
1) the mutual love
and support of both parties in the relationship,
2) the
commitment to permanence, and
3) the support
of the next generation, procreative when this is possible.
Without these characteristics two individuals simply live together and tolerate to their peril a lack of direction and stability in their lives.
But to all those committed to these characteristics we pastoral people owe our prayers and support even when the juridical state of their relationship is in serious question or even non-existent within the Church.
Yes, whatever our state in life it is difficult for all of us
to maintain these characteristics. But
still when we and others fail we owe ourselves and others that mercy that belongs
most completely to God.
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