May the Lord bless with peace and health in the Holy Spirit.
We celebrate the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time.
We reflect on Genesis 2:18-24; Hebrews 2:9-11 and the Gospel of Mark 10:2-16. The following are the lessons from the readings of the day.
The original and personal plan of God is marriage between man and woman who wishes to create families for God, community, and themselves.
Family love is not fancy, fanatic, or frantic rather it is friendly, faithful and for life.
Divorce is not the answer to solve the problems in the marriage.
Accepting the brokenness of the other, we reconcile with our brokenness.
Faithfulness and frankness wrapped in sensitive, not sensational love guard the marriage to the end.
Beware of strangers who fan the fire of hatred, division, and dislike toward the spouse.
Prayer, penance, and patience are the medicine for the spiritual wounds in the marriage.
Finding fault with the other spouse is not the aim of marriage but finding goodness in others even when it is hard to find one. It is a constant endeavour to protect the mistakes, failures, ill-treatments from the eyes of the stranger or the third person could help maintain the secrecy of the family but when needed, the spouses are to willingly look for professional, spiritual, and additional support to heal the wounds, hurts and misunderstanding.
Marriage becomes fruitful and fabulous whenever the couples engage in relationships that are inclusive, innovative, interested, infrangible, ingrained, intermingled, intensifying, and intentional.
God expresses God’s concern when God observed the loneliness of the man. “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” (Gen.2:18). So, God created woman. “This, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.” (Gen.2:23). The responsorial Psalm showers families and marriages with blessings. “Your wife will be like a fruitful vine in the heart of your house; your children like shoots of the olive, around your table.” (Ps.128:3).
Fruitful and inspiring families emerge from the sufferings of living together, struggling to sustain the relationships, altering the boundaries of intimacy, and accepting raw realities of life when things are not working for each other in marriage.
A couple got married. The man chose her and intended to marry her because she was so beautiful, better-half for him in everything. After a few years, the wife developed a skin condition that made her so disfigured while her husband was working abroad. The wife was so scared whether the husband would accept her in this miserable and disfigured state. As he was returning home, he met with an accident and lost his eyesight. From the day he returned from work, till she died, he was blind and helping her to be the person she wanted to be. She was so upset yet she cared for him and took him around. Both were in love with each other so much. One fine evening, the wife passed away. Having buried the wife, he was walking home alone reminiscing all the memories of his beloved wife. Seeing him walking alone, his friend who noticed asked how he could walk alone without his wife. Then he disclosed to his friend that he pretended to be blind so that his wife would not feel inferior about her figure.
“Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So, Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.” (Heb.2:11). God is the pioneer of all our families and marriages. Without God no family could grow and mature in the aspects of love, peace, and compassion.
“The people became impatient on the way” (Num 21:4). Marriage is a journey. At times, it is scorchy, windy, violent, thirsty, volcanic, stormy, and suffocating. The spouses could become impatient with the journey, with one another and all that is unfolding the way it happens. Unless married ones draw water from the wells of salvation, the Sacrament, they either terminate the journey or terrorize the relationships and tamper with the springs of life. The temptation of discouragement, infidelity, weakness, abandonment is entertained in the family members.
His Holiness Pope Francis teaches us, “The love of Christ can restore to spouses the joy of journeying together. This is what marriage is all about: man and woman walking together, wherein the husband helps his wife to become ever more a woman, and wherein the woman has the task of helping her husband to become ever more a man. This is the task that you both share. “I love you, and for this love, I help you to become ever more a woman”; “I love you, and for this love, I help you to become ever more a man”. Here we see the reciprocity of differences. The path is not always a smooth one, free of disagreements, otherwise, it would not be human. It is a demanding journey, at times difficult, and at times turbulent, but such is life!” In the Apostolic Letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae, we are reminded: “The family that prays together, stays together” (n. 41).
The Lord, encourages every family, “Come to me, all you labour and are heavy burdened and I will give you rest” (Mt 11,28).
Threatening marriage with the sword of divorce is now on the rise in many families. When the relationships have turned sour, the attack of a loving relationship in the family is visible. Instead of leaving the family of origin, we still want to be in touch with them to a level that compromises the truthfulness, sincerity, quality and taking a firm stand for the family God has entrusted us with. There are so many problems due to these false and disproportionate attachments that sacrifice and suppresses the lifeline of the family we are supposed to tender. “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.” (Mk.10:7).
“Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.” (Mk. 10:14). God has given children to adorn the families. We always forget so conveniently one thing that the children are gifts of God and belong to God. The parents are to bring the children closer to God in every moment of their life, even if they find it hard to believe and accept God and the Church.
Jesus 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 too.” (Mk.10:11). The Church never gives divorce just because it is the divine institution. It is God who put people together. How then to live when we have serious issues that emerge in the marriage? The annulment of marriage by establishing the intention to marry between the aforementioned couple never existed.
Not all marriages are going to survive given the life situations, the challenges, longevity of the couples and their constant disconnect. A lifelong relationship with the person is nearly impossible without partnering with God. It is indeed a loving decision to continue the journey the couples began in faith, love, mercy, and forgiveness. Since it is the covenantal relationship between the couples, so it is a lifetime project with its balance sheet of tallying between emotions and decision, tolerance and narrow-mindedness, freedom and fanatic expectations, love and romantic infatuation, cooperation and individuality, stability and sensationalizing, priorities and persons, dynamic relationships and static strangers, dying to our egoistic tendencies and selfishness and greediness, petty fights and unsolvable quarrels, faith and friendship, prayerful life and playfully pessimistic living and the list could be endless.
Marriages are bound to fail when there is an immature relationship, lack of respect, love and joy, emotionally imbalanced and immature way treatment between couples, and refusing to include God in the covenantal relationship. May the Lord bless the marriage and married couples in a special way to honour the promises they gave to God, the Church, and the community. Praying for all the families to be fruitful, forgiving, forbearing and faithful to one another till the end. May God bless you all.