Homily on Marriage
October 6th, 2009 by Br. Peter Totleben, OP
All of our deacon student brothers are assigned to parishes in the Archdiocese of Washington. At their parish assignments, the brothers regularly preach. Rev. Br. James Brent, O. P. is assigned to St. Peter’s Church on Capitol Hill.
This past Sunday, the 27th Sunday of the year, the readings focused on the mystery of Christian marriage. The second chapter of Genesis recounted God’s original creation of marriage: “This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh . . . That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one flesh.” Jesus reminded the Pharisees of this when He insisted on God’s original plan for marriage in the tenth chapter of the Gospel of Mark: “Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.” Br. James preached this in his homily to the parishoners of St. Peter’s.
Begin homily:
Marriage is forever. That is the teaching of Jesus in today’s gospel. Marriage is forever. Another way to say it is that marriage is indissoluble. Once entered into validly, nothing dissolves the bond of marriage except the death of one of the spouses. To put it into plainer terms still, “until death do us part.” Marriage is forever. So says Jesus.
Now, I know that the topic before us today is a difficult one – marriage and divorce. And I know that there are many people hear who have been touched by divorce in various ways. My own family – my extended family – has been touched by it too. So, I am not stranger to the tears and the grief involved. The issue is a very complicated one, and I do not have time to go into all the complexities. So, I ask for your understanding as I speak on it.
Marriage is forever. If I were to take a child, say ten or twelve years old, and stand him or here right here, or if I were to take you when you were around that age, and ask you, “when you grow up, do you want to get divorced, enter another marriage, and have an ex-husband or ex-wife to share the kids with every other weekend, or whatever the arrangement is” – what would you have said? No one grows up dreaming of getting divorced. People grow up fearing it. What people grow up wanting is a marriage that lasts forever. And if we ask young couples or newly weds, what do you want for your marriage? They all say, “we want to go all the way to the end, through good times and bad, through thick and thin.” Every young couple says that. That is what human beings naturally want. We want marriage to be forever. We hunger for the very foreverness of it. That hunger is written into our hearts. And what Jesus reveals today is that our hunger for the foreverness of marriage was written upon our hearts by God himself. God stamped upon our hearts His desire for the foreverness of marriage. He wanted marriage to be forever, and so He created us wanting the same thing. Why did God want marriage to be forever? Because He wanted marriage to be a created and finite version of His uncreated and eternal love. God’s love is eternal. Marriage is forever.
Let us call this the original account of marriage. Marriage is forever. Every human being carries around in his or her heart the original account of marriage. That is why divorce always hurts – and it always hurts. We know: it was supposed to be forever.
However, as we grow up, and go through life, experience teaches us that there is a tragic side of life. All human beings are wounded and broken. Scripture and Tradition both tell us that all human beings — myself included – carry around four wounds. We are often ignorant of what is good, and easily duped into doing evil. We are often malicious towards other people, even towards the people that we love. We are weak, we find it very difficult do the good that we want to do. And we have an exaggerated passion for pleasure. And those are only the fours wounds shared by all. Each individual has his or her own particular wounds from childhood, from pernicious influences in society, and from our own sins. Given all the wounds that afflict us, we inevitably run into what I call the “tragic side of life.” The tragic side of life is that because of all of our wounds, we cannot be what we really want to be without the help of God’s grace. Even if we are good people, decent people, honest people, our good qualities are not enough. So we find many things that we really want – especially marriage – to be very, very difficult. And many people, under the weight of the many difficulties, choose to throw their marriages away. They give up and walk away. Again, is there anybody who is not hurt by the reality of so much divorce in our society?
Now, a great deal turns on how one deals with the tragic side of life. There are basically two ways.
On the one hand, there is the world’s way. The world’s way of dealing with the tragic side of life is to turn on the original account of marriage and to attack it. The world says that the original account of marriage, that marriage is forever, can’t be true. The attack begins with subtle rationalizations and justifications of divorce. And it proceeds to elaborate sophisticated alternative theories about what marriage is: marriage is a social construct, marriage is a mutual contract binding so long as the psychological benefits outweigh the burdens, marriage is changeable by law, marriage is psychologically paralyzing, and some even say that marriage is an institutionalized form of rape. All of these are theories have their defenders and promoters today. I could give a very long lecture on how the philosophers and politicians of this world have tried to deal with the tragic side of life, but I don’t have the time and I will spare you the details. Besides, I can sum it all up in one word. Despair. The world is in despair over the original account of marriage.
The Church, on the other hand, has another way of dealing with the tragic side of life. Instead of attacking the original account of marriage, the Church comes to its defense. Jesus, when he taught that marriage is forever, directly confronted and opposed a culture of divorce all around him. And the Church does the same thing today. The Church reasserts and defends the original account of marriage. Marriage is forever. And the Church also says something that makes all the difference. There is grace. There is mercy. There is virtue. There is redemption in Christ. By the grace of God, marriage can work. Marriage can be forever. And the grace I am talking about is not something out there in space. The marriage itself is where the grace is to be found. Marriage is a sacrament. It gives grace. The very bond that is formed when two baptized people exchange vows is the place where Christ now lives, and works, and takes action. Through the marriage, Christ touches the husband, touches the wife, and saves the marriage. Those who look for him by faith will find him there by faith. And when they find him by faith, he is there to heal and to save. So there is no need to despair over the possibility of marriage. By grace, marriage can work.
Now, a few things need to be said to various people who are here today.
To those who are still young, and thinking of getting married, whether you are dating or not, it is important for you to hear this: marriage can work. The broken marriages in your life, your parents’ divorce, the divorces you see between relatives and friends, the bad examples all around us, these do not determine your future. Your parents’ broken marriage is not the last word on your life, on your future, on your marriage. By the grace of God, marriage can work.
To those who are newlyweds and young couples, you may be discovering the difficulties of marriage. Again, marriage can work by God’s grace.
To those who have been married for many years – twenty years, thirty years, forty years – thanks be to God. May you glory in the Lord’s gift of victory.
To those who are in difficult marriages, painful marriages, broken marriages, or have failed marriages in their past, I have a special word for you. The Church understands your situation. And I don’t mean just the hierarchy. I mean the priests and the people. There are many people in the Church who can help you. We know you and we love you and we are here to help you pick up the broken pieces of your life. More is possible than you may think. The pastor, Fr. Bill Byrne has a lot of experience helping people in difficult marriages. He is an expert at it. And I have created a list of practical concrete books that can help all marriages recover lost love and grow more deeply in love. The book list is at the back of the Church.
To those who have been abandoned by your spouse, to those who have had their spouse walk away for something, or someone, better, please remember the words of the Psalm: “The Lord is close to the broken hearted, those whose spirit is crushed he will save” (Ps. 34:18). We are here for you.
Sometimes, I think that the Catholic Church is the last institution in our society that believes in love. We believe in love. I believe in love. Marriage is forever.
