Sunday, October 6, 2024 – Twenty– seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time - Cycle B Readings: Genesis 2:18-24, Psalm 128 “May the Lord bless us all the days of our lives”, Hebrews 2:9-11, Mark 10:2-16 or 10:2-12

                               A COVENANT WITH NO CRACKS
 
Man and woman have been created to love and help each other. They are at once similar and complementary. Their union flourishes in fruitfulness. They are no longer two individuals but one flesh until death. “What God has united, let no one put asunder.” Nevertheless, married love is threatened by divorce. And if one adds a new union to the separation it becomes adultery. Jesus reminds us that God’s plan has always been the happiness of man and woman, united and faithful till the end.
 
Brothers and Sisters,
 
1. The union between a man and a woman is the model of all human relationships. This adventure is undertaken only by those with a vocation. God intervenes to put his seal upon the free choice of the spouses: It is a consecration that divinizes human love through the sacrament of marriage. This is a divine reality that no man or institution may break. To touch this reality would be sacrilege. Our generation urgently needs marriages forcefully shouts to men and women around them: “Love exists!” This is the same as saying “God exists”.
 
2. God wants indissoluble marriage; The Second Vatican Council states: “As a mutual gift of two persons, this intimate union and the good of the children impose total fidelity on the spouses and argue for an unbreakable                 oneness¨between them.” However, this pact of love is continuously threatened by death. When man separates what God has united he is plunged into a deep failure. The spouses suffer, and the children are hurt. It would be naïve to think that divorce solves repugnance.
 
If it is real, it needs to be faithful: It excludes any other love that could come to overshadow it. Love risks it all, forever! There is no “bargaining” in love, you either take it or leave it! It has a definitive seal. You cannot enter into love watching the clock, as if stingily calculating something provisional.
 
3. Society needs marriages that are “one heart and one soul”. Marriages that are open, caring, generous, and happy. Christian marriage lived according to the Gospel, is a fountain of personal maturity, generosity, peace, and happiness. The vow of love made at the altar is irreversible – “all the days of my life, in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer” – it is not guaranteed by two wills in love, but by God who makes it into a gift for the spouses and a sacrament for the world. As a gift, it needs to be received with joy and humility; as a sacrament, it is announced to the world.
 
Brothers and Sisters:
 
Let us promise to strengthen these convictions and proclaim them without shame. Let us be on the side of those marriages that live a complete love, committed in each and every circumstance of life and forever, marriages that strive to make their love progress more each day, marriages that value the Christian celebration of marriage as a sacrament of God’s love, and that assist younger Christians to understand and discover this value.
 
Source: ePriest.com / Best Practices and Homily Resources for Catholic Priests