27th Sunday in Ordinary Time
This Gospel reading leads us into a clearer understanding of Jesus and those Pharisees who opposed him. The Pharisees, estimated to be about 6000 or so at the time of Jesus, were totally dedicated to obeying the Law of Moses and its Traditions deduced from the Law. Jesus differed from these Pharisees in two fundamental ways. First, he did not agree always with their understanding of Moses’s Law, and secondly, he did not think the Traditions, which are not the Law but rather drawn from the Law, to be as important as did the Pharisees.
Today’s Gospel is a good example of the challenge the Pharisees were to Jesus. Indeed, the Pharisees of the moment hope to trap Jesus and show him to be in error. The question of the moment has to do with allowing divorce. Does Jesus understand God to allow this, or no? The religious leaders at the time of Jesus earnestly debated the question of divorce. As Jesus responds to this question he reaches back to the original intent of God. The text that Jesus quotes forms one of the most foundational passages in sacred scripture. It is the second account of the creation story in Genesis 2 [which forms part of the first reading]. This passage affirms that God, the author of all life, created the world and, in particular, the human person out of love. Alone among the beauty of creation, the human, male and female, is created in God’s own image (Gn 1:26-27).
The first reading shows that humans are like God, because men and women are capable of choice and of a quality of love reflected in God’s own immense and creative love. We as humans are to also share in God’s love for all creation. This passage shows the uniqueness of the human dignity and its responsibility in sharing in God’s authority to name the animals God has created. Since humans enjoy a great capacity to love as God loves they are called to leave their parents’ home to become “one flesh”. Marital love is so deep and so powerful that husband and wife become “one flesh”. This passage that Jesus sites in his response to the Pharisees has nothing to do with divorce but a vision of the human person’s capacity for love and fidelity.
The Church has always understood that marriage is for life. In marrying, even couples who do not share our faith generally anticipate that their love will last; permanent marriage is their ideal and hope. Thus, Jesus' teaching on the permanence of marriage, far from arbitrarily burdening His disciples, wonderfully confirms the mutual love of a Christian bride and groom: what they want is exactly what God has provided for them. Since by baptism they are members of Christ's body, their one-flesh marital communion is in Jesus, and their marriage's indissolubility signifies His indivisible union with the Church.
Many Catholics who have divorced and civilly remarried, feel that the Church does not understand them or care about their problems. The reality is that the Church does care and continues to recognize such persons as members of the Body of Christ. John Paul II wrote that The Church does not cease to “invite her children who find themselves in these painful situations to approach the divine mercy by other ways ... until such time as they have attained the required dispositions” (Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, n. 34). Pastors “are called to help them experience the charity of Christ and the maternal closeness of the Church, receiving them with love, exhorting them to trust in God’s mercy and suggesting, with prudence and respect, concrete ways of conversion and participation in the life of the community of the Church” (Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church concerning the Reception of Holy Communion by Divorced and Remarried Members of the Faithful, 14 September 1994, n. 2). The Lord, moved by mercy, reaches out to all the needy, with both the demand for truth and the oil of charity.