MARRIAGE AND FAMILY FROM THE ORIGIN TO OUR DAYS.
October 3, 2021
Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time – B.
A Romanian proverb says: “Love is blind, but marriage finds
a cure.” And a Filipino proverb adds: “Marriage is not just a porridge that you
spit out if it's too hot.”
All things are established within God's will. All that
exists, exists because of his divine plan and there is nothing that can resist
his will. Even marriage and family life find their origin in that will of God.
In his project, the Lord established marriage as something
very sacred. “The love of the spouses requires, of its very nature, the unity
and indissolubility of the spouses' community of persons, which embraces their
entire life: "so they are no longer two, but one flesh." They
"are called to grow continually in their communion through day-to-day
fidelity to their marriage promise of total mutual self-giving." This
human communion is confirmed, purified, and completed by communion in Jesus Christ,
given through the sacrament of Matrimony. It is deepened by lives of the common
faith and by the Eucharist received together.” CCC. 1644.
The liturgy today provides us a biblical ground to talk
about the singular place of marriage in God's plan and the reality of the
family today. It all starts at the origin, the genesis of the matrimonial
union, and the first human family. In the book of Genesis, we read that
everything started with a divine comment, "It is not good for man to be
alone." Therefore, God planned to find a pair, a partner to Adam, the man
he created. However, among all the creatures, Adam found nothing to be a
suitable partner. Hence, God created from Adam's ribs, Eve, the woman. In her,
Adam found what he was missing in order to not be alone and to be a fulfilled MAN.
Thus, his exclamation, "This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh
of my flesh; this one shall be called 'woman', for out of 'her man' this one
has been taken."
This episode of the creation raises two principal elements
of marriage: it is a union between a man and a woman, and it is indissoluble.
Adam chose nothing else to be his pair, nor animal, nor even a man (male) like
him, but a woman. Here comes a mobile to reflect on the definition our
legislations and societies are finding of marriage and family life. The
homosexual union is against nature and insane. It is not in accordance with
God's original project. Divorce also, except cases of unlivable union, finds no
justification in God's plan.
To the Pharisees who questioned him about Moses' bills of
repudiation, Jesus answered, “Because of the hardness of your hearts he wrote
you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male
and female...what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”
Marriage finds its roots in God's original project. Since the creation, he made
it as a consecrated union between man and woman and as a permanent and
indissoluble reality.
The Matrimonial union, in the project of God, is aimed at
the sanctification of the family members. The man unites himself to his wife
and both, through that union blessed by God journey together towards holiness.
The Church, in her teachings, especially in Familiaris
Consortio sets the different aims of Matrimonial union. A family born of
matrimony is the basic cell of community and society, and it springs from love.
The Magisterium defines love as man’s fundamental vocation. The vocation to
love in totality is realized in marriage or celibacy. And marriage follows from
this plan of God for man’s love (FC. 11). Marriage, that union between man and
woman is a proclamation of God’s love for his people. Their conjugal love is
ordered to the procreation and education of children, and finds its crowning in
them, though the communion of life still has meaning and value when it is not
possible to have children. So, marriage, in God’s project, is at the service of
life. It is for the transmission of life, through procreation. It is for
education. And the Church insists that parents have the first right and duty to
educate their children (FC. 36). Parents must educate their children in the
essential values of life: justice, but above all love, in particular as regards
sexuality, in which it pertains especially to parents to educate their
children. The sacrament of marriage makes parents’ education of their children
a true “ministry” of the Church and the family becomes the first school of
following Christ. Besides these aspects, marriage is participating in the
development of society. For, the family born from the matrimonial union is the
first and vital cell of society.
Coming back to our today’s societies and the world, what our
countries and societies face are the fruits of our definition and understanding
of marriage and family. The worse corruption the world lives in today is not
political or economic, but the corruption of family and matrimony. The
matrimonial union has lost its fundamentals that are a union between a man and
a woman founded on love, and its indissolubility. Marriage is no longer a
matter of love, but a contract. Some people get married for a visa, others for
promotion, and some others ad-experimentum or any other purpose. Children and
their education are no longer an essential part of matrimonial union. Divorce
is as easier as changing clothes and varying meals. And as if those corruptions
were not enough, homosexuality is another greater plague. Consequently, the
world suffers and loses direction. Brotherhood as preached by the Letter to the
Hebrews in the second reading becomes a platonic dream. Everyone searches for
his own egoistic and selfish interests. Adultery, fornication, sexual abuse,
and many other sins are fruits of our misunderstanding of marriage as sacrament
and coronation of love.
Comments
Post a Comment