One of my favorite books about the Sacrament of Marriage is called
A Daring Promise: A Spirituality of Christian Marriage by Richard Gaillardetz. The readings this week in Genesis and Mark’s Gospel about marriage brought this book to mind. The description of the book is a good indicator of the humor and lived-experience of Christian marriage presented in this work:
Christian marriage offers the daring proposition that,
inspired by faith, two people might unconditionally
bind themselves together for life without
destroying each other in the process!
The book opens with the author describing a time in his new marriage while working on his Ph.D. He received a summer teaching position in a new town, and he and his wife had just had twins. So, they moved where they did not know anyone, he was at the peak of his preparation for his career (stressed and very busy) and they were caring for two infants in a place with no support of friends and family nearby. He talks of the growing resentment they both began to feel for one another in their tough situation. As a theologian, he did not quite know what to do with his negative feelings about his marriage…yet, through persistence and prayer, they began to experience a grace in their marriage that slowly brought them back together. For me, that was the most concrete experience of grace I had heard about in relation to marriage, and in difficult times, a word of hope in my own relationships.
Jesus’ prohibition against divorce in our Gospel today is really about inclusion and not exclusion. What is behind Jesus’ statements is the assertion that God’s laws are meant for us to love well and to care for those who are vulnerable. Some scholars think that the children coming to Jesus to be blessed at the end of today’s Gospel are ones who were left vulnerable after divorce. Jesus’s blessing and accepting of them is yet again another record of Jesus showing that the Kingdom of God is a place where all are included, especially those who suffer and who have been left to the margins of society.
Then Jesus embraced them and blessed them, placing his hands on them.
Mark 10:16
For all those people we know who have suffered as a result of divorce, may we imagine Jesus’ same embrace of them and those they love.
Whether we are not married, in our first marriage, divorced and/or remarried, there are times we have not lived up to our call of living in right relationship. We have not been the person we promised to be, we have not put others first, and we have not always seen our relationships as the privileged place where conversion and the working out of our salvation will take place, as Gaillardetz suggests Christian marriage is.
May the Lord bless us, all the days of our lives (Psalm 128) in our efforts to strive for human flourishing in all of our relationships, and may we invite God’s grace to heal what divides us.