This morning’s Gospel reading is Mark 10:2-16:
The Pharisees approached Jesus and asked, “Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?” They were testing him. He said to them in reply, “What did Moses command you?” They replied, “Moses permitted a husband to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her.” But Jesus told them, “Because of the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.” In the house the disciples again questioned Jesus about this. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
And people were bringing children to him that he might touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this he became indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.” Then he embraced them and blessed them, placing his hands on them.
How many readers got exactly what I meant in the headline to today's Reflection? I certainly hope that everyone recalls Peter Cook's hilarious cameo in the classic motion picture The Princess Bride, in a scene where the cowardly prince attempts to force Buttercup into marriage, and worse. For those who never saw it or don't recall it, this video edits the sequence to capture Cook's entire performance in the 1987 movie as 'The Impressive Clergyman,' along with Robin Wright, Chris Sarandon, and Christopher Guest:
It's a hilarious interlude near the climax of the screen, and it's perfectly timed for comic relief from the peaking tension. But Cook gets it right in his opening statement -- marriage is literally a blessed arrangement, intended not just for human flourishing but also as a model and instrument for salvation.
From the beginning, as Jesus reminds the Pharisees in this passage, the Lord intended marriage as a covenant and not just a contract. Jesus recaps our first reading from Genesis 2 to explain that marriage has a special function -- to bind a man and woman into "one flesh." By this time, however, the Israelites had grown accustomed to treating marriage more as a contract or business arrangement, one to be severed if conditions turned unfavorable.
The Pharisees chose this question as a test for Jesus. Contradicting Moses would have given them a powerful argument that Jesus was indeed a false prophet, the better to discredit Him and His ministry. Instead, Jesus teaches them why Moses allowed divorce: "the hardness of your hearts" prevented the Israelites from grasping the meaning and purpose of marriage, a condition that certainly hasn't improved recently, even among Christians.
Marriage is a blessed arrangement indeed, and with a far higher purpose than romance or even child-rearing. The scriptures are replete with marriage imagery to explain the Lord's love for His people, and as a model of salvation. In Revelation 19:6-9, John relates his vision of the wedding feast of the Lamb, in which all who are saved become His bride in eternity:
Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunderpeals, crying, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb * has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure”— for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel saidl to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are true words of God.”
Marriage is our model of salvation in this life. In the covenant of marriage, we become one with our spouse through the Holy Spirit, which forms us in several different ways to become sons and daughters of the Lord. For one, we have to see beyond ourselves to reconcile with the will of another in daily life. We also have to remain faithful to that bond in all ways, without forsaking our spouse for another or other passions or pursuits. That bond mirrors the true caritas of the Trinity, and that's no accident; the purpose of marriage is to form us so that we can enter that caritas and join the other sons and daughters of the Lord in eternity, as we read in this passage from Revelation.
The scriptures speak to the importance of marriage in that covenant more than once. Christ's first recorded miracle comes at the Wedding Feast of Cana, of course, a symbolic signal of the importance of this covenant. The most memorably direct of these lessons comes from the prophet Hosea, who tried to warn those in the Northern Kingdom of Israel about their unfaithfulness. God commands Hosea to marry a "harlot" as an example of their faithfulness to Him and to His commands to care for the poor and to cease idolatry, among other sins. He marries Gomer and has three children: Jezreel ("scattered by God"), Lo-Ruhama ("not pitied"), and Lo-Ammi ("not my people").
But even then, Hosea preached the Lord's forgiveness for the "harlotry" of the Israelites if they returned to His word. In this, the Lord explicitly refers to His relationship to the Israelites in marital terms as a covenant with Him (Hosea 2:16-23):
“And in that day, says the LORD, you will call me, ‘My husband,’ and no longer will you call me, ‘My Ba'al.’ For I will remove the names of the Ba'als from her mouth, and they shall be mentioned by name no more. And I will make for you a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground; and I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land; and I will make you lie down in safety. And I will espouse you for ever; I will espouse you in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. I will espouse you in faithfulness; and you shall know the LORD.
“And in that day, says the LORD, I will answer the heavens and they shall answer the earth; and the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil, and they shall answer Jezre'el; and I will sow him for myself in the land. And I will have pity on Not pitied, and I will say to Not my people, ‘You are my people’; and he shall say ‘You are my God.’ ”
Furthermore, we know that marriage is intended to be formative because of its connection to this world. In another passage where Pharisees and Sadducees try to trap Jesus, they ask Him about marriage in eternity. His response to a trick question about a widow of seven men and which marriage will endure in Heaven is recounted in both Matthew 22 and in Luke 20:
Jesus replied, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. But in the account of the burning bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”
How can this be? Marriage is our formation in this life for eternity in the Trinity. It models the love God has for us and His faithfulness, and disciplines us to prepare for that love and fidelity in eternity with the Lord. It has other purposes, the most significant of which is to properly prepare us to use the creative power with which He endows us for building families, which itself continues to form us in His Trinitarian model. This is also one context for the rest of this Gospel passage about allowing children to "come to me," to serve the kingdom of God properly, although not the only context. But as Jesus explains, marriage is meant for us in this life, and that means it serves to form us for eternity, as all of the sacraments do/
To understand salvation, one must understand marriage, and vice versa. Through it, the lesson of fidelity to the Lord and His Word can be fully realized in this life. And even when we fail, Hosea prophesied, the Lord stands ready to forgive those transgressions if we repent and return to fidelity to His love. That is indeed a most blessed arrangement.
Previous reflections on these readings:
The front page image is "The Marriage at Cana" by Paolo Veronese, 1563. In inventory at the Louvre, Paris, France. Via Wikimedia Commons.
“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature, looking at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections from the main page can be found here.
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