The gospel for Friday of the seventh week in Ordinary Time is taken from Mark, 10th chapter, 1st through the 12th verse. Jesus came into the district of Judea and across the Jordan again. Crowds gathered around him, and as was his custom, he again taught them. The Pharisees approached him and asked, is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife? They were testing him. He said to them in reply, what does Moses command you?

They replied, moses permitted a husband to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her. But Jesus told them, because of the hardness of your hearts, he wrote you this commandment. For 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 and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate in the house.

The disciples again questioned Jesus about this. He said to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. When Jesus is talking about divorce, the world the disciples lived in, where it was very easy for a man, especially to get a divorce from a woman by just simply writing a bill of divorce, handed her the paper, and she was cast out. Jesus wants to make clear to the disciples that he sees marriage differently. And what he wants everyone to experience is a kind of oneness that comes through a sacrament of ritual that he establishes where the person can feel a mysterious power within them that makes them sense, that anything they do, they’ve done to their partner, that there’s an unbreakable bond. And to be convinced of that is the goal of marriage.

It’s not always understood, it’s not always accepted. And even Jesus himself gave some exceptions to divorce. And the beauty of his teaching is the simple truth that one is asked to go beyond human nature, participate in divinity within them, and continue to work through the difficulties of a marriage. I ask you to take a few moments to reflect upon the images of these stories. And then I will close with a prayer. Foreign the closing prayer.

Father, help us to trust in grace, the mysterious power that you share with us to accomplish the way in which we are asked to live in this world. And we ask this in Jesus name, Amen.