WORD ALIVE
Once a husband was examining his and wife’s marriage certificate. He looked at the back, trying to find something. Seeing what he was doing, the wife blurted, “What are you doing? You have been scrutinizing that marriage certificate for a long time already.” The husband replied, “Well, I’m trying to find out if there’s an expiration date!”
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In the gospel of this 27th Sunday, Jesus teaches empathically and firmly that marriage is monogamous, permanent and indissoluble. Marriage has no “expiration date.”
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He said, “From the beginning of creation God made them male and female. For this cause, a man shall leave his father and mother and the two become one flesh. What God has united, man must not separate. The man who divorces his wife and marries another is guilty of adultery” (Mk 10, 6;9;11).
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This teaching of Christ is the basis of the Catholic Church’s doctrine against absolute divorce.
Admittedly, there are numerous trials and problems in monogamous marriage but they outweigh the problems of broken families and separated spouses.
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As director of our SVD high school students, I had noticed that those who came from broken families developed problems like frequent misconduct, getting into trouble, failing in academics, unhappy, and so on. The main reason is due to lack of parental supervision, negligence, and loss of love from divorced parents.
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Aside from the traumatic experience of separation suffered by the couples and children, divorce, which has been passed in Congress, is a simplistic way of resolving marital problems. Couples who resort to divorce because one of the spouses is lazy, irresponsible, and a drunkard is only transferring his or her personal problems to another marital relationship.
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Recycling personal problems lead to the same result of separation or divorce. At the start, it may be the sweet and loving relationship. However, as it gets sour, the other party may look for another companion again.
What should be done for couples is to work out their problems and save their floundering relationship.
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Spouses should learn to forgive and reconcile. Looking back, my parents were always quarreling, arguing, and altercating. This made us siblings very sad.
However, when our mother would leave the house and cool off for some days, our father would feel sorry and would entreat her to return home. By the way, our father would ask Mama to return home because he did not know how to cook!
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Our ever patient and affectionate mother would give in because of her love for us siblings. If our parents failed to reconcile, we would have been a broken family and I could not have become a religious priest.
As the saying goes, “A happy and lasting marriage is the union of two forgivers.”
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There are other reasons which make the Christian teaching of marriage hard to swallow at times. However, there are values in fidelity, sanctity, and God’s blessing that outweigh the difficulties of married life.
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One way of remedying it and other problems in marriage is joining renewal programs like Couples for Christ or Marriage Encounter. From my experience as spiritual director of various Marriage Encounter Weekends (MEW), many couples found a new, peaceful, happy marital relationship.
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Support seminarians. Our seminarians have enrolled for the new school year. Seminarians are very important in the church. Without them we cannot have priests, missionaries, and episcopal leaders.
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Donate any amount or sponsor a seminarian's schooling good for one school year. For inquiry, e-mail me at: [email protected].
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TV family mass is aired on TV5 One Sport Channel 59, Free TV Channel 41 at 6 to 7 a.m. every Sunday and 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Sunday at “MCFI SVD Media” Account on YouTube and Facebook Page.
“The family that prays together stays together.”