Indissolubility: a requirement of love, not a precept

 

Twenty seventh Sunday in the Ordinary Time – Year B

 

 

Introduction

There are situations in which two spouses wonder, with good reason, if it is still worth insisting on trying to fix a relationship that began badly and is proving to be irreparably broken. They no longer love each other, there are incompatibilities of character, they spite each other, speak only to offend each other, and even the children are involved in the failure of the parents. What sense does it make to continue together? Can God demand that we continue living together in a way that is a torment? Is it not better that each one goes his way and rebuilds his or her life?

To these questions, people’s logic responds without hesitation: divorce is better. If so many couples separate after only a few years of marriage, isn’t cohabitation preferable? If things don’t work out, we break up without too many problems.

In no other field, as in that of sexual ethics, is a person tempted to give himself his morality, and so the salt of the evangelical proposal is often rendered insipid by so many ‘buts,’ ‘ifs,’ ‘it depends.’

It is necessary to “become like children” to enter the kingdom of heaven, to understand the difficult, demanding proposal of Christ. Only those who feel small, who believe in the love of the Father and trust him, are in the proper disposition to welcome God’s thoughts. Not everyone can understand them, “but only those to whom it has been given” (Mt 19:11), “hidden from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike”(Mt 11:25).

 

• To internalize the message, we will repeat:

“Only the narrow way that Jesus proposes leads to life.”

 

First Reading: Genesis 2:18-24

At the end of creation, “God looked at what he had made, and founded very good” (Gen 1:31). Everything was marvelous, yet the Lord noticed that in the garden where “every tree that was delightful to look at and good for food” (Gen 2:9) sprouted from the ground, men was not happy. He sensed the reason and decided to fill the gap: “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suited to him” (v. 18).

Adam enjoyed the intimacy with God who, in the evening breeze, came down to walk with him; he had a job, land to cultivate, love and respect; he was protected and had food. All this, however, did not satisfy him because he was alone. He needed someone to dialogue with, whom to give, and whom to receive love. Loneliness is a defeat. How to remedy it? The Lord created the animals, molded them with clay from the ground, as he had done with man, and gave them a life similar to that of man, then gave them to men who, grateful, welcomed them as his helpers and companions (vv.19-20).

Using mythical language, the sacred author recognizes and blesses the profound bond that unites the animal world to that of man. Men by birth come from the earth and is a relative of the animals. He establishes a relationship of coexistence and collaboration; the animals can guard, protect, and even save man.

Adam is no longer alone. He cultivates the land, he is the owner of herds, but he is still not satisfied. Creatures and professional success are not enough for man; not even God is enough for him; to fill his loneliness, he needs his fellow human. “I have no one; I belong to no one” is this perhaps the most heartfelt complaint.

The Lord, who wants man’s joy, goes back to work and creates woman. The objective of the biblical story is not to teach where the woman comes from but to answer existential questions: who is the woman? For what reason does sexual bipolarity exist? Why does men feel such a strong sexual attraction? Is woman inferior and a servant of man?

In the field of sexuality, where instinct easily obscures the intellect and induces choices that, even if dictated by common sense, turn out to be dehumanizing, it is fundamental to discover God’s plan.

The first message that he conveys to us through this story is the demythologization of sexuality. Sexuality has nothing sacred or numinous about it, as the ancients believed; it is a natural instinct, a passion “whose flames are flames of fire” (Song 8:6), and it is willed by God to push the man out of himself and towards the other. Man exists (from the Latin: ex sistere = to be outside) only when he follows this divine impulse and, forgetting himself, offers himself as a gift to the other.

Sexuality is good. The dualisms and Manichaeism that have infiltrated the Church since the first centuries are contrary to the biblical vision of creation (Col 2:20-22). God blesses sexual pleasure. Sexuality was intended to induce an encounter, a dialogue with the other, which is why autoeroticism deviates from it. However, a healthy pedagogy considers the progressive evolution of the personality and is careful not to create, especially in children and adolescents, fears, anxieties, and phobias.

Sexual bipolarity is a constitutive part of the human person; the asexual does not exist, and the diversity of the sexes must be maintained and valued. The woman is similar to the man and is given to him as help. Similar and help are the two most important terms of the entire passage: they reveal who the woman is for God. To grasp their true meaning, it is necessary to refer to the Hebrew text.

Ke negdò, translated as similar, actually means against him. The woman has been placed by God before man, not to be dominated, but to establish with him a relationship of fruitful dialogue, a demanding and even harsh confrontation, which involves inevitable tensions because the goal is the progressive humanization of both. Women and men become, in this perspective, help for each other.

The woman is assigned the task of being a help to men. This task has sometimes been erroneously considered a confirmation by God of the inferiority of women. Biblical scholars, however, have noted a significant fact: the Hebrew term ‘ezer,’ help, is employed in the Bible practically only for God. “My God, you are my help”—confidently exclaims the psalmist (Ps 70:6). God alone is deemed capable of coming to the aid of men in situations where his very life is at stake.

Referred to the woman, this title not only does not designate inferiority but defines her sublime task: she is called to make God-help present at man’s side. She must give continuity to the work of the Lord, offering man the help necessary for his full realization. Without her, man would remain unfinished. The image of God the potter, which frequently recurs in the Bible, helps us to understand the woman’s mission.

The psalmist addresses this moving invocation to the Lord: “We are clay and you are our potter: we are all the work of your hand” (Is 64:7). Man is clay to be molded, and God decided not to work alone; he wanted someone to help him bring to completion the most extraordinary of his works: man. For this reason, He created women and entrusted him as a clay vessel to be forged, shaped, and decorated. From her, He expects, at the end of life, the return of a masterpiece.

It was believed that the primary purpose of the sexual encounter was procreation. Today’s biblical story speaks to us rather of an absence (the rib that was taken away) and of an incompleteness that must be filled, of a wound that must be healed, of a need to come out of solitude that demands to be satisfied. However, it is essential to become aware that only the correct use of sexuality achieves this goal. When selfishness infiltrates the male-female relationship, loneliness reappears, even if one is married and lives under the same roof.

When male-female relationships are established, and one considers the other an object of enjoyment; when each lives on his own, cultivating his friendships, his interests, his amusements; when we do not talk to each other to discuss the common project that we intend to achieve; when decisions are not made together; when in the encounter one disfigures, erases, annihilates the other, then husband and wife fall back into loneliness and return to being sad and unhappy.

The love between man and woman, contracted “in the Lord” (1 Cor 7:39), is indissoluble (v. 24). It is not a question of law because recourse to precepts is always the rebuke of a defeat of love but of the discovery of the intimate and profound reality of love which, by its nature, cannot die. It is “a divine flame that great waters cannot extinguish”; it is a participation in the love of the Lord, a love capable of withstanding any trial, unshakable as a solid rock that “rivers cannot sweep away” (Song 8:6-7).

And it is monogamous. Polygamy, which the Bible attributes to a son of Cain (Gen 4:19ff.), is a consequence of sin and the distortion of God’s plan for sexuality. The extramarital adventure, which is a betrayal of love and impoverishes the protagonists, the simple cohabitation and pre-marital relationships are not part of the divine plan, because they lack the full and final involvement, clearly presupposed in the sacred text: “A man … will join his wife and the two of them become one body” (v. 24).

Sexuality is not a game; it is not fun. Building love is an arduous task, so impatience, haste, and disorderly giving of oneself must be avoided. These always cause interior dramas, confusion, and unsustainable situations, even if those involved try to flaunt apparent happiness.

 

Second Reading: Hebrews 2:9-11

Today begins the Letter to the Hebrews that will accompany us until the end of the liturgical year. The first two chapters are dedicated to the presentation of some aspects of the person of Jesus. After having affirmed, in the first chapter, the superiority of Christ to all creatures, including angels, the author responds to a question: Jesus, so elevated with respect to us, is he not too far removed from our condition, from our experiences?

The author responds to this objection in the second chapter, from which today’s passage is taken. “It was fitting” (v. 10)—he explains—that the Father chose, for his Son, the path of suffering and the cross. He destined him to be the leader who introduces people to the glory of God. Only a leader who has passed through all human experiences, including loneliness, betrayal, abandonment, and death, inspires confidence.

The passage’s last statement is moving: he is not ashamed to call the people he came to save brothers (v. 11). He feels solidarity with them; he understands their miseries and weaknesses because, as will be said later in the letter, he has learned from what he has suffered how hard it is to follow the path traced by the Father (Heb 5:7-9).

 

Gospel: Mark 10:2-16

Surprisingly, the Pharisees should ask Jesus the question, “Is it lawful for a husband to repudiate his wife?” Like all Israelites without exception, the members of this sect had no doubts about the lawfulness of divorce since the Old Testament contemplated the possibility of a second marriage. The discussion revolved, if at all, around the reasons that might justify it.

Mark’s theme of indissolubility is introduced in the central part of his Gospel, along with other moral issues such as dialogue with non-believers, charity towards the brothers, scandal, relationships with the weak, property, wealth. It is placed in this context because the demand for absolute and unconditional marital fidelity leaves one stunned and bewildered and cannot be understood unless one frames it in the logic of Christ’s love and the gift of life.

Responding to the question put to him, he clarifies the true meaning of the law of Moses, a law which he does not intend to abolish but to explain and bring to fulfillment. The book of Deuteronomy seems to allow divorce: “When a man, after marrying a woman, is later displeased with her because he finds in her something indecent, and he writes out a bill of divorce and hands it to her, thus dismissing her from his house” (Deut 24:1). Some rabbis, the strictest ones, taught that the husband could send his wife back only if she had been unfaithful to him. Still, others, more tolerant and possibilist, claimed that it was enough that the woman had cooked dinner poorly or that the husband had found another more attractive woman.

Before pronouncing on the subject, Jesus clarifies the meaning of the biblical text. It was not Moses—he explains—who introduced divorce. This institution existed long before him and has always been accepted by all as legitimate; he only tried to regulate it, putting a stop to abuses. He did not demand the Israelites, who were still too hard-hearted, a moral behavior superior to that of other peoples; he limited himself to dictating a rule that would protect the woman. He established that the husband should give her the document of repudiation so that she could remarry.

This provision was most suitable because many would drive their wives out of the house, take another, and, if the first one joined another man, they would accuse her of adultery, a crime that carried the death penalty. The precept of Moses had the purpose of defending the woman from this abuse: the document of repudiation declared her free. Some of these acts of repudiation have come down to us, signed by two witnesses; here is one of them: “You may go, you may be taken as a wife by anyone, at your pleasure.”

Jesus recognizes the value of the rule established in Deuteronomy and considers it binding. If someone wants to divorce—he asserts—at least respect the rights of women! The tolerance manifested by Moses, however, is not the perfect expression of God’s original plan.

After clarifying the meaning of the Old Testament provision, Jesus invites us to go beyond the norm and to consider sexuality in the light, not of foolish reasoning and deteriorating behavior introduced by people, but of God’s plan, revealed from the very first chapters of Genesis: “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” (vv. 6-9).

This last injunction, put together by Jesus with the quotation from Genesis, could not but leave astonished his interlocutors who considered divorce, in certain situations, not only a right but a duty. The Rabbis taught that the first precept given by God is that of procreation: “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:28), and they considered this duty so fundamental that, if children were not born in a marriage, the husband had to send his wife back to have children with another woman.

Jesus takes a break from this traditional conception of his people and affirms, in the most resolute way, that no divorce is part of God’s plan. Men introduced repudiation, which is an attempt to destroy the work of the Lord, who united man and woman in one flesh.

With Jesus, the kingdom of God has come into the world, the prophecies have been fulfilled, people have been given “a new heart and a new spirit”; from them has been taken away “the heart of stone and put on a heart of flesh” (Ezk 36:26; Jer 31:31-34). The time has come to say no to compromises, pettiness, and deceptions and to aim at the ideal indicated “in the beginning” by the Creator.

Only monogamous and indissoluble marriage respects God’s plan and achieves the purpose of making people “male and female.” Even if very ancient and culturally explicable, all other forms of cohabitation do not respect the dignity of man and woman.

Faced with the harsh and uncompromising position of the Master, not only the Pharisees but also the disciples were perplexed, almost shocked. When they returned home, they questioned him again on the subject. But Jesus reaffirms: “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her”and adds: “and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery” (vv. 11-12). This affirmation establishes –a phenomenon unheard of until that moment—the perfect equality of rights and duties of man and woman.

How should it be interpreted? Christ did not impose a new law more rigorous than Moses’s; he only recalled God’s original plan that does not contemplate repudiation. The goal is very high, but the steps of people are often uncertain. Since only God knows the frailty of each person, no one can set himself up as a judge of his brothers and sisters; no one has the right to assess their faults and pronounce condemnations. Concrete situations must always be approached with prudence, and each brother or sister must be understood, accompanied, and helped so that he or she can give the best of himself/herself. Showing understanding and patience does not mean softening the Gospel’s demands or adapting to current morality but showing pastoral wisdom.

In the last part of today’s Gospel (vv. 13-16), Jesus takes up the image of the children and invites the disciples to accept the kingdom of God as their own. Those who feel like adults, those who trust in their wisdom, those who have become sclerotic in their convictions and do not accept that the word of Christ challenges them will never enter the kingdom of God. To understand the indissolubility of marriage, it is necessary to become children again and trust the Father’s thoughts.