Marriage: Gate to Hell?
Several countries have legalized divorce and many label the Church as “inhuman” for not allowing two persons to separate when their marriage has become hell.
Beyond all doubt, the ideal is that marriage should be an indissoluble union between two people. But life is not a completely neat and tidy business. Always, the unpredictable enters life. Two people enter into the marriage relationship with the highest hopes and the highest ideals, and then something mysteriously goes wrong, and the relationship, which should be life’s greatest joy, becomes hell on earth. Counselors, priests and psychiatrists try to help, but often all is in vain, and these two people remain forever bound together in a life of misery.
It is extremely difficult to see Jesus legalistically condemning two people to such a situation. But Jesus, though not married, did know very well that marriage could turn into hell. Because rabbis of His time included in their teaching sayings like: “A bad wife is like leprosy to her husband. What is the remedy? Let him divorce her and be cured of his leprosy.” Other rabbis said, “If a man has a bad wife, it is a religious duty to divorce her.” And often it was not the wife that was bad but the husband.
Opposing these teachings, Jesus stressed that a marriage cannot be dissolved. He based His strict teaching on His Bible, the Old Testament, quoting God’s Words in the Book of Genesis. Obviously He had experienced that marriage is not doomed to become a hell. Surely, Mary and Joseph experienced also tension and stress in their union but as it was profoundly rooted in God, they were able to overcome those moments. That seems for Jesus the solution for saving a marriage that faces a crisis.
Too many people today rush into marriage without proper preparation, following only their sentimental feelings. A marriage built on sentimentality and feelings will not last; only a marriage that has taken God as third partner into the union does. Fr. Rudy Horst, SVD
REFLECTION QUESTIONS: Do you easily judge couples who are estranged? Do you pray for young people who plan to get married, and for couples who are in trouble?
Lord, today I pray for all those who plan to get married and for those who are going through difficult times. May You guide them and inspire them to make You part of their union.
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