MARRIAGE, A NOBLE VOCATION.
October 6, 2024.
Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time – B.
“If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is
brought to perfection in us.” 1 Jn 4:12
A Romanian proverb says: “Love is blind, but marriage finds
a cure.” A German proverb adds: “Marriage is the opposite of a fever attack; it
begins very hot and ends very cold.”
Marriage is a noble divine institution. It is the surgent of
the society, of life, and so, of any other calling. Through the marital union
of husbands and wives, a new life originated opening to a new vocation. Without
doubt, after the Holy Eucharist, the Matrimonial Union is the nobless of all
Sacraments. It even has greater value in terms of impact on social life than
the Sacramental Order of the Presbytery.
In the Diocese of Lucena, while celebrating the 74th
Foundation Anniversary, this year is dedicated to vocation. In the prayer for
the year of vocations, we read: "As we celebrate the Year of Vocation on
the 74th anniversary of the Diocese of Lucena, we thank You for calling us to
holiness, whether it be in Family Life, Single Life, Priesthood, or Religious
Life."
So it becomes clear that we all have a common and unique or
universal vocation, holiness. Then, many ways are offered to us to achieve that
holiness. Among them, comes first in the list, the family life, built on the
Sacramental Love and Holy Matrimony.
The marriage is a divine institution. As such, it has some
characteristics that transcend human choices and decisions. The Catechism,
talking of matrimonial union says: "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, on this 27th Sunday in the Ordinary Time B,
points to the unity and indissolubility of Matrimonial Love. In the first
reading, we are brought to the origin of that institution, Marriage, in God's
providential project. The Lord said: “It is not good for the man to be alone. I
will make a suitable partner for him.” So the Matrimonial Union finds its
origin in God. It is not a human imagination or creation. God created man and
woman and wanted them to be together, united by one love, helping each other.
Moreover, he wished the union to be permanent, and indissoluble. Through
marriage, a man unites himself with a woman, and they both become one body, one
flesh.
One great element that will contradict the move of today's
societies is that marriage is a union between a man and a woman. God did not
plan it to be a man and a man or a woman with a woman. Or between human beings
and animals. The first and greatest corruption of our world is to transform
God's original plan for family.
The Lord Jesus, in the Gospel, answering to the trick of the
Scribes and the Pharisees raises the second dimension and characteristic of the
matrimonial union, its indissolubility. After affirming what the Creator
planned in the beginning, the Lord adds: "Therefore what God has joined
together, no human being must separate.”
Divorce or breaking of the matrimonial union is harmful to
creation and the second greatest corruption man brings to God's plan. It
destroys the roots of family life and society.
Unfortunately, we live in a world today, where one of the
institutions that suffers the most is family. It suffers from the gender theory
and its politics. Family suffers also from divorce and its consequences, and
because family is battled by all these plagues, the future of the world is
compromised, and our youths are lost.
Nevertheless, let us make an act of honesty to acknowledge
that if family and the matrimonial institution suffer that much if the world
today tries to redefine the family and open marriage to something else than
what God planned originally, it is because many families and many unions are
not built on love. Many people put themselves together and ask to be united by
the bond of marriage just because they fell in love with each other. What they
forget is that though falling in love is the first stage of love, falling in
love is just an emotional reality, it is not love. Perfect love is not about
seeking oneself in others but being ready to give, and at some needed extent,
to sacrifice oneself for the one we love. Love seeks the good of others, not of
the self. Love seeks unity. Love seeks harmony. Love seeks peace. If your union
with the one you call your loved one is not built on those values. If in your
couple, you tend more to use your spouse than to be in you for him/her. If what
matters more for you is your personal interest than the good of the other, no
doubt that time will come and you will think of separation.
No one goes to marriage to live as in hell. No one falls in
love to become an instrument of sexual or material satisfaction. We could save
our families from divorce and the world from all that harms the matrimonial
union and family by rediscovering the true meaning of love.
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