The older I get, the less I understand. Or maybe a better way to put it is the more I know, the fewer simple answers there are.
Except the ones which Jesus gives us...for he is the way we are supposed to walk, the truth we are supposed to love and the life we are supposed to live.
And, today, he gives us a simple saying about marriage and divorce: “what God has joined together, no human being must separate."
Now the rate of divorce in Massachusetts has risen, as you might have guessed, from 17 percent in 1960 to almost 50 percent this past year.
So what does it mean if I am divorced?
Is Jesus saying that I should have stayed with an abusive spouse? No. No one should ever be abused, and when divorce is the only way to escape an abusive relationship, you escape the abusive relationship. The Church wouldn’t want you to stay in such a thing.
But Divorce is always the last resort. And even after I am divorced, I can’t make believe the vows I spoke were never spoken. Surely, there are times when one or the other party was psychologically incapable of promising life-long fidelity, for better or for worse, with an openness to children. In fact, that’s what annulments are all about: declarations by the Church that there really wasn’t a true marriage there in the first place, even though you were acting in good faith.
But if I am capable of meaning those promises and if my spouse if capable of the same, I make a promise “brought about by the Church, strengthened by the sacrifice, sealed by the blessing, witnessed by the angels, and ratified by the God the Father.”
For marriages, like the vows we make, never go away because they are inconvenient or we have grown tired of them. And that’s why Jesus said: “what God has joined together, no human being must separate."
