A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Some pharisees came up to Jesus and said to test him, may a man divorce his wife for any reason whatsoever? Jesus replied, have you not read that at the beginning, the creator made them male and female and declared, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, and the two shall become as one? Thus, they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, let no man separate what god has joined.
The pharisees said to Jesus, then why did Moses command divorce and the promulgation of a divorce decree? Because, Jesus replied, of your stubbornness, Moses let you divorce your wives. But at the beginning, it was not that way. I now say to you, whoever divorces his wife, lewd conduct is a separate case, and marries another commits adultery. And the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
His disciples said to Jesus, if that is the case between man and wife, it is better not to marry. Jesus said, not everyone can accept this teaching, only those to whom it is given to do so. Some men are incapable of sexual activity from birth. Some have been deliberately made so, and some there are who have freely renounced sex for the sake of god's reign. Let him accept this teaching who can.
And this is the gospel of the lord. Praise the lord. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. In a nation that at the present time, speaking of our own, where the number of marriages in a year are just about double the number of divorces. Or to put it in another way, each year the number of divorces amount the last figures I saw, amount to about fifty percent of the marriages entered into that year.
In other words, one out of two. That is a frightful figure. Now when we use the word divorce, we are not we are talking about a dissolution of a marriage, the breakup of a marriage with the right or the privilege of entering into another union called holy matrimony. That's what we're talking. We're not talking about mere separation.
We're talking about splitting up a man and a wife and letting each of them go their own, each his or her merry way, and to encounter another partner and start something like it all over again. It's amazing what has happened in this country in our nation is regardless matter of divorce. In the in the smallest town that I grew up in and wasn't isolated, it was close to a great metropolitan city named Baltimore. Why, divorce was was was unthinkable. I mean, for anybody, for anybody.
And in the one or two instances that it had happened, it was it was not accepted by the community at all. Now, not so many years later, it is accepted as a way of life. This is a tremendous sociological change, leaving religion out of an entirely. Because you see, there is no social scientist who doesn't realize that to have a healthy society there's got to be a a healthy substructure, there's got to be a healthy basis, a healthy foundation. And whether we like it or not, it's the family so far.
Today you hear considerable talk about alternatives, which is a mischoice of words. What they should be saying, a number of other choices. But they don't work. You can apply a pragmatic test to it. They do not work.
And so so far at least, we have not come up with a substitute, a replacement for this institution called the family. Now, of course, I'm not up here to to try to to resolve this problem of why husbands and wives are splitting up. And they remember another tremendously significant fact is the early age with which marriages are breaking up. One and two years. One and two years you're having marriages break up.
This is not many years ago. This was the figure was up around between '10 and 15. You see you have this do people get married? Well, in my own experience, what it for what it's worth, I have yet to meet a couple who didn't know, absolutely know, because this is where they make a big mistake. Who knew beyond all shadow of the doubt that there would be no splitting between them.
Because they, at that particular moment, couldn't think of life apart from each other. Well, can tell you of one instance where that beautiful union didn't last a year. From the time they walked out from that very communion ring. Now, leaving aside all kinds of problem notice, I'm talking about the dissolution of a marriage with the right or the privilege of remarry. Everyone knows there are situations beyond people's control.
There are situations in which one person is certainly an aggrieved party. There are situations where the union cannot endure. We all know this. But the answer is not divorced with the right to remarry according to the church. According to your society that we're living in, that's the proper and right thing to do.
Again, our blessed lord said, my kingdom is not of this world. As far as I can judge this situation, the trouble with people today in marriage is they don't realize these younger people don't realize that this wonderful glow they have, this wonderful feeling, these wonderful sentiments, this persuasion and conviction which sweeps over their whole impersonality. You know, marriage of of of two young kids don't come from up there. That that this is the whole thing. See, we have lost as a society, a concept of of marriage, as a relationship in which all kinds of responsibilities come in and in which each person is asked to hold his or her end up.
Now what's going to hold that kind of a union together? You know, you've heard so, at least I have, so much about marriage as a partnership. Well all I can say is if a marriage is a partnership, God help it. Statistics for what they're worth show that the worst kind of a business relationship is a partnership. So if that is all marriages, forget it.
It is it is doomed before it starts. If all that marriage is is two people sitting down and trying to write a contract which is going to cover all the adjutencies of the next seventy five or eighty years. It's crazy. Our blessed lord is saying here, not all can accept this. There is no marriage, someone said, that is so good that it can't bust, break up.
And there's no marriage so bad that it can't be made to work. But you see this is a this is where the the heart of the problem is. Too many people, especially young people who do most of the marrying, don't have this concept that marriage is an achievement. It is not something you discover. It is not something you find.
It is not something that comes to you ready made with all the glow of romantic love. That's not marriage at all. That isn't family at all. That isn't being a member of corporate member of society at all. That's being your own little narrow egotistical self.
And that is the God today of self. Self fulfillment. Self fulfillment. The imperial self, and this is what the sociologists see in our culture, the imperial self. Now there there's one answer to this problem and it is an overriding answer and that is God.
I have yet to find anyone coming to me with a marital problem that came with a question on their lips, What does God want me to do? Secondly, I have yet to have a couple come. Now I haven't had much experience so I don't want to exaggerate this. But for what it's worth, I have yet to have a couple come and say, Look, we're in we're in we're in difficulty. And we What can we do?
What can we do to keep this ship of state afloat? A lot of things can be done if they're done in time. But when one party comes and wants to save the marriage and you can't even get in communication with the second, what can you do? And here you're dealing with people are supposed to be God fearing Christians. And yet neither or both are asking, What does God want me to do?
I maintain that there is that a Christian marriage is doomed to failure, just like 50% of other marriages are, unless there's a third party and that's God, our Lord Jesus Christ. There's got to be a third party who is recognized as an efficient cause in that marriage. I said efficient cause. They're operational. And of course the church surrounds this marriage with every adornment, every ritualistic help to to make it a solemn, impressive ceremony, but with a third party present, God Almighty and his son Jesus Christ.
And the marriages that succeed of Christian marriages, they are marriages that have that third party. In all aspects of the marriage of of the home of marriage, in the bedroom, in the dining room, in the basement, in the kitchen, every place there's that third party hovering over the home. You see there's hope for any situation when two people who are each other's throats can say, look, let's bring in a third party. There's hope there. There's no hope if they're each other's throat and all they want to do is strangle each other.
But you see that I know that this is just a talk because this isn't the way it works. Here you have a young couple who know they can't live without each other. They know that life would be absolutely frustrating and vacuous if they couldn't bring their lives together and be in the close intimate loving union of husband and wife. And in two years they can't bear the touch of each other much less the sight or the sound of the other's voice. I am not exaggerating this.
How do you explain this kind of business? How can you explain a situation where a mother walks out on her children, or a father walks out on his children, and it's being done just just yesterday, the day before. The statistics gathered by the federal government, thirty percent of divorced men do not support their obligations their These are legal obligations of 30% of them. How do you explain this sort of thing? Oh, you can explain it very easily.
The imperial self. That explains it. The imperial self, my right to fulfillment. I can't make this marriage? Alright.
Wipe the slate clean if you can, and then start another one. And if that one fails, start another one. And if that one fails, start another one. If at first you don't succeed, try and try again. Because of all things you must fulfill yourself.
You've got to do what is best for yourself. As if we were leave living for ourselves. See it comes back to this. A Christian by definition has accepted Jesus Christ. By definition they're not living for themselves.
By definition they are living with a tremendously ultimate goal. That's the theory of the faith. In practice, it doesn't work out that way in many instances. In some, it does. And where where you have that third party in the home, the son of god, Jesus Christ, there's a wonderful chance that there will not only be a lasting marriage, but there will be a happy one with the happiness of Jesus Christ.
In the name of the father, the son, and spirit. Amen.