27th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

Domenica 6 ottobre 2024
Mk 10:2-16

“Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate””
(Mk 10:2-9)

While walking with His disciples towards Jerusalem, Jesus is approached by some Pharisees, who wanted to put Him to the test on a very important issue which remains current today: marriage.

Examining this dialogue, in the light of divorce statistics, particularly the growing percentage within the Christian world, leaves a definite impression. Jesus explains that what was permitted through Moses is not what God had in mind in the original plan of creation, but a concession due to hardness of hearts. In God’s divine plan, “a man leaves his father and his mother and UNITES to his wife, and the two become one flesh” (Gen 2:24). The verb used to express this union, davàk in Hebrew, is curious. This verb is the root of the modern Hebrew word devek, which means ‘glue’! When the text of Genesis was first translated into Greek, the translators used the word kollào or kollàomai, which sounds very familiar in Italian (the Italian word for glue is colla. The same root gives us the word ‘collage’ in English). In short, the idea of glue is clear: the husband and wife glue themselves together. This is, therefore, the original plan in the mind of God the Father: marital friendship!

Like all friendships, even marital friendships necessarily go through a crisis; at a certain point, the idyllic moment ends and the beloved becomes burdensome, even unbearable… What then should they do? Return to Jesus, ask for the miracle that changes ‘water into wine’, as happened at Cana in Galilee. If God’s plan is for the indissolubility of marriage, then we are called to grow in faith and trust in the One who asks this of us. He can, and wants to renew marital friendship between spouses. He can, and wants to revive the feelings typical of dating and engagement, even for those couples who are no longer so young.

We dedicate a lot of teaching time to directing people to a certain profession, but never enough to directing people to love with maturity and responsibility.

Fr. Giuseppe