A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Mark. As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man came up running, knelt before him, and asked Jesus, good teacher, what must I do to share everlasting life? Jesus answered, why do you call me good? No one is good but god himself alone. You know the commandments.
You shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. You shall not defraud, honor your father and your mother.
The man replied, teacher, I've kept all of this since I was a boy. Then Jesus looked at him with love and said to him, there's one thing more you must do. Go and sell what you have and give to the poor. You will then have treasure in heaven. And after that, come, follow me.
At these words, the man's face fell. He went away sad for he had many, many possessions. He's a rich guy. Jesus then looked around and said to his disciples, how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of god. At this time, the disciples could only marvel.
So Jesus repeated what he had said. My sons, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of god. It is easier for a camel to pass through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of god. The disciples at this were completely overwhelmed and exclaimed to one another, if that's so, then who can be saved? Jesus fixed his gaze upon them and said, for man, it is impossible, but not for god.
With god, all things are possible. And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord. What god has joined together that no man put asunder. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Perhaps you recognize those words from last Sunday's gospel, Mark chapter 10 verses nine and following.
And as I pointed out, and, of course, you I'm sure you noticed, my well chosen remarks were truncated by the movement of a cock. And I didn't get around to a few what I consider important points in regard to this matter of what god has joined together that no man put asunder, namely the holy sacrament of matrimony. Specifically, divorce as it's contradictory. Now I didn't talk much about divorce. I'm not gonna talk much about it today.
It's a negative thing. It's negative. And you heard what our friend Clarence Thomas had to say about negatives yesterday. You could tell he had some good Holy Cross teaching. What I the best argument against divorce is arguments for matrimony, for marriage, the sacrament of marriage.
Now this is a very important word here. They're talking about a sacrament. And have you asked yourself, what do I mean when I say marriage is a sacrament? Specifically, what do I mean? Answer it.
Most of you are involved in this holy state of matrimony. What do you mean when you say that marriage is a sacrament? What makes that different from a purely civil marriage? What? You ought to be able to answer that.
I mean, answer it in real concrete terms, which has which have application to your daily lives, to your daily decisions in that contractual relationship, which is far more than a contract when you say it's the holy state of matrimony, a sacrament. Now the first little point I wanna make, which is, I think, terribly important and especially today is this. Our lord said what what god has joined together that no man put asunder. Now the Greek word there took the time to look the blooming thing up. The Greek word there to join means to yoke oxen.
That's the classical meaning of the word, to yoke two oxen. You put that heavy yoke around their necks. And and then, of course, it was through that yoke that they pulled their heavy loads. In many instances, they didn't have wheels. They had sledges.
Now, of course, the word came to mean to unite, to bond, to bind. You know? But the basic meaning is to to yoke oxen, and that's the word our lord used, the verb. Now what I mean wanna say because almost immediately, our lord goes on to say that now the the spouses, the man and the woman, are no longer one flesh. They I mean, two.
They are now one flesh. One flesh. Now these words need careful analysis. Now first of all, let's look at this business of not many of you people have seen oxen. Not many of you have put a yoke on oxen's necks.
I never have, but I've seen it done. And these huge, mighty, slow moving animals move out. And here, this heavy punk of wood is a tremendous thing because the whole force of the load is on the middle of that yoke. And each takes his place and very humbly submits to having the yoke put over its head. It goes down on its huge shoulders.
Now it's a sign of unity. But notice, when those oxen are put under the yoke, they don't see see cease to be their individual selves. They each is the each is an individual ox. And on any good decent farm, they had names. They were individual oxen.
They don't become one ox or one flesh when you put a yoke on them. And yet our lord uses that he taught uses that verb. And then he goes on to say, now in marriage, the spouses are one flesh. Well, now what does he mean here? What does it mean?
Well, I looked the word up in a couple commentaries, and there there is no dispute about it. It's in Jewish thought, to say one flesh was the way of emphasizing the totality of a human being, the totality. As we do today would say, you have to love God with your whole mind, with your whole heart, with your whole soul, and so forth and so forth. What we're trying to say, it's gotta be a total giving of oneself. That's what our Lord's trying to say.
He's not in the remotest slightest bit eliminating the individuality of the spouses. He's not minimizing it. He's not negating it. He's not rejecting it. But I admit that that if you if you stop with that matter for a loan, it's misleading.
It's holding up a very false notion of what marriage is. A man and a woman who who go through the ceremony and are legitimately united in the holy sacrament of matrimony, they don't renounce their individuality at all, at all. You can't without ceasing to be a human being. Men and women in the holy state of matrimony remain their individual selves, but now they are united. And the whole difficulty is to try to say, well, what's the adjective to describe that union?
Our lord says you've got to be so united that you're equivalent to being one person. That's what he said. Now there have been some other figures of speech. I've used it just to rattle them off. For example, you have a ceremony sometime, which I think is a very good one, with the three candles.
You start this marriage ceremony with two three candles, two of them, the outside one's lid. Then after the man and the woman have exchanged their vows and are now mister and missus, then they come up and each takes a taper and they could together light the middle candle and and put out the two outside ones to to give a symbol of now they are one. That's a beautiful symbol, again, to emphasize the unity. But my problem with that is what happens to the individuality? Because the the man and the woman never cease to be individuals.
Another example, Van Nuyken, and you've I know some of you, at least, have read his severe mercy. Van Nuyken, he says it's like a nut and bolt. Well, a nut and bolt are almost worthless without each other, and they have to fit. If you have a bolt and a nut and they have different threads, you know what happens. I've known.
I've been trying to put them together, and it's crazy. They won't go together. They have to fit. But when they're together doing their jobs with a nun in the boat doing what they exist for at their best, they are united and united very closely. But they keep they keep their individuality.
Another metaphor, but I and I think it's my favorite one. It's that the husbands and wives are like strings on a violin. And each of those strings, depending how it's tuned, each of those strings has its own characteristic qualities. We know them. We can we can make an a mathematical equation of them.
Now when you when you take the bow and go across both of them, you get one sound. But it the strings don't lose their individuality. They remain what they were with definite names. I think that's my favorite metaphor. What I'm saying is this metaphor of the flesh is it of course, our lord used it, and it brings out the the the tremendous importance of the unity of man and of woman in this holy state of matrimony.
Money. It's not like a contract of buying a house or buying a car or something. It's totally different. It's a total giving of oneself to another. But in doing that, you don't cease to be individuals.
Meaning, you come in there with a lot of good qualities, and you come in there with qualities which some people may not think so good, even yourself. You don't throw them off when you leave the altar. So figure it out for yourself. But what our lord says is very clear. He's not asking you to renounce who you are.
That's a terrible mistake. Terrible mistake because we are what we are. We are the strings of the violin. And the whole point, if you'll pardon this cliche, is that when we we are in some way joined together to make a single sound that is harmonious, not cacophonous, meaning bad sound, evil sound. Now the next point I wanna make, and this is terribly sensitive, But it has to be said that some Catholic marriages, some sacramental marriages, for good reasons, for good reasons, are broken.
Separation takes place between these spouses. It's a sad way of bringing an end to what should have been something very different. But in some instances, there doesn't seem any other way out. Point number one, the right to separation does not create the right to remarriage. The only way a person who has a valid separation in a Catholic marriage can remarry again validly is that the first marriage is, for some reason, declared null and void.
In other words, it isn't broken. It never existed. Never existed. That's what a declaration of nullity means. Never existed.
Then you can remarry. Now it's very important today in a world, in our world, I should say, where divorce is practically universally accepted. The best people have two and three and eight or nine, and I don't know why you wanna stop at nine. Why not make a good even number? Make it an even dozen or so.
After all, we're living in a world where marriage as well as divorce is trivialized, is made frivolous. And we can't avoid this world which we're living. Can't avoid. Now the bishops of The United States have faced up to this. And in 1979, they approved a statement called a national catechetical directory for Catholics of the United States.
It was fully approved by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. Now I wanna read it to you. That so you know it's not my my opinion and my words because because this is different, a little different from what some of you may have been brought up with. Now I repeat, this is the National Catholics Directory for Catholics of The United States published in 1979 with the approval of the National Council of Catholic Bishops. Here's what it says.
I am quoting, and, of course, it was written in English, if you can call these documents English. At the core of Christian marriage are a radical, that means root, a radical permanent commitment and a high ideal of loving fidelity, marital chastity, mutual generosity, fruitfulness, having babies, and personal and social growth. That's a very loaded sentence. Personal and loaded growth. A human being is to be in marriage and be a better individual for it.
Now living up to these demands, this this document says, living up to these demands can be difficult. Boy, that is the understatement of the year. Living up to them can be difficult in a secularized, hedonistic, pluralistic culture, that's us, in which divorce and remarriage are almost universally accepted even by some so called Catholic theologians. Concern for those who have suffered the trauma of divorce should be integral to the Catholic community. Now here's the part which I want you to notice.
Divorced persons and their children should be welcomed in the parish and made to feel truly a part of it. That is a little something that some people are not aware of. It's not up to us to lower the boom, to lower penalties of any sort. And it's one of the complaints of some Catholics whose marriages have been declared untenable and have separated from their spouses that they complain bitterly of being ostracized by their fellow communicants. That's what they say.
That's not the mind of the church at all. And I've read you the official text of the bishops that they are supposed to be accepted, they are supposed to be treated with charity and with love, and may and as well as their children and made to be a part of the parish. Now I hasten to add. This is not the document. If they if if Catholics who have been legally civilly divorced, whose marriages have not been declared null previous marriages have not been declared null and void, if they proceed then to go into another union, that union isn't.
They are not married in the eyes of the Catholic church. But even there, we are bound in charity to pray for them and to do what we can to help them and to be kind and generous to their children, to incorporate them into the parish. Even though the parents may not, by church law, go to holy communion, but they should be encouraged in every way to go to mass. Their obligation still exists to go to mass on Sunday and to be participants in the parish. Now whether I don't know whether but I know that for some people, this is really news.
I don't know whether it's to you or not. I hope it's not news. I really hope it isn't. Because the the fact that people have have done something which is wrong and which in many instances they admit is wrong, I never will can't tell. But, anyway, believe me, plenty of people who are in this situation, they are there, and they are terribly sad about it.
But what can they do? They're married. They have a home. They have children. They're they're stuck with it.
They need our prayers. They need our charity. They need our going out to them. They need the parish, and they should be encouraged to be part of us. They should not be ostracized.
Now in con the third point I want didn't get to last week was what I wanted to be, its conclusion. So you're getting it today. Point number one, this matter of marriage is not church law. It's not like the law of eating meat or not eating meat on Friday. It's natural law, and I'm sure you remember my well chosen remarks on that three weeks ago.
This has to do with divine natural law that is the of marriage. It's natural law. If the church makes a law, it's simply to reaffirm and to to articulate the natural law. And no civil authority can change it, and no theologian can change it. Try as they may.
It can't be changed, but notice there's a word in it. No man. Our lord said, what god has joined, let no man put asunder. He didn't say absolutely that it couldn't be broken, but he said, don't you don't any man try to break that, meaning any court of law or anything else. Remember what I said last week about these do it yourself divorces.
Now that has been the traditional doctrine of the church. It's nothing new at all. It was council of Florence, the council of Trent, the Gallium et Spes in this very beautiful chapter on in Vatican two Gallium et Spes, this beautiful chapter on marriage and the family, and then more lately still, an encyclical of our holy father on the on the family. I wanna read a paragraph from that, paragraph 20, number 20. The indissolubility of marriage, this is the holy father speaking, rooted in the personal and total self giving of the couple, the man and woman, and being required by the good of the children finds its ultimate truth not in some sociological bad consequences, but in the ultimate truth in the plan of god who has revealed that plan and has communicated the indesolubility of marriage as a fruit.
It isn't something reprehensible. It isn't something we ought to shy away. It is something we should grasp with thanksgiving, a sign and a requirement of the absolutely faithful love that god has for man and that the lord Jesus has for the church. What Paul is saying there is that the love of a man and a woman united in sacramental marriage is like Christ God's love for man and Christ's love for the church. Can you have any metaphor more strong than that?
Christ renews the original plan that the creator inscribed in the hearts of man and woman, natural law, and in the celebration of the sacrament of matrimony offers a new heart, new heart. You don't do it with a purely natural heart. It's asking the impossible. Thus, the couples cannot only overcome hardness of heart, but also and above all, they can share the full and definitive love of faithful witness and the supreme realization of the unconditional faithfulness with which god loves his people. Have you thought about that in your own daily lives with relation to one another?
It's tremendous. Christian couples are called upon to participate truly in the irrevocable, indissolubility that binds Christ to the church as his bride. Can you improve on that? Prove it true in your daily lives. In the name of the father, and of the son, and holy spirit.
Amen.