Not everyone is called to marriage and neither is everyone called to the religious life. The part about some being incapable because of others to me means some of us have no example of marriage and so cannot take part in it ourselves. My parents have an annulment because marriage never existed between them. … so God granted them annulments.
There’s my :twocents:
This is a difficult thing; and not to side-track the thread – but just a passing comment:
You’re parents
were likely married. That isn’t what annulments are about (Though I too understood it that way once) – annulments aren’t about declaring a “non-marriage”; If your parents had never married, then one might argue that it was not a marriage – but it would seem that they married against the law (I assume they had a wedding of some kind…though I could be wrong? )
The NAB is particularly good in this passages translation, if loose with the exact word (unlawful vs. a porno - marriage.).
The marriage existed, but is perverted – is the major idea here.
God does not join people who enter marriage in a perverse way – but only those who enter marriage in the way God intends; Where the church binds a marriage forbidden – it is not going to be joined together by God, for God agreed to give the Church the power of law over a marriage. That is to say, there is no
sacrament of God in a perverse marriage – but there still is a marriage in many cases.
Moses gave divorce for the hardness of heart; and this is not a shallow topic. There is a real danger in the perverted marriage – and from what I recall; Moses says that if a man finds any
un-cleanness in her whatsoever. etc. he may divorce her – which the pharisees took to mean any reason at all (eg: menstruation was unclean is a possible interpretation … etc.)
But, the hardness of heart means an impenitence, a non-changing situation – so Jesus is speaking of permanent fiflth when he explains the true situation.
It is interesting that the Pharisees use two words to describe the divorce according to the “book” (Moses…). They say “apo-lysw” (from-loose) eg: to lose/loose something
from oneself and to one’s self, (divorce) – and the second word for “send her away” is actually directly translated apostacy. Away from the stable… The same word used of those who leave the Church,
the bride of Christ. The hardness, Jesus attributes though – is verbally to the men standing there; Your hearts. It is almost as if Jesus were suggesting that the fault is in the men in the particular question which has arisen.
That Moses granted them annulments is not something I hear in discussions of Moses’ proclamation – but indeed it would seem that Jesus interprets it in that fashion. Most take it in the context of simple hatred and separation; regardless of whether or not they were joined by God; sometimes I hear people try and claim that the wedding of Cana is what raised the marriage to a sacrament; but these were Jews he spoke to; and not his own followers – so that argument is weak for the specific instance Jesus is debating with them. There has to be more.
One thing I see is that adultery is considered a sin against the man, the husband, in these ancient texts.
So I would also humbly offer that some of what is said here is because of that understanding. The man who sends her away forces her to sin against himself.
She brings his reputation down at the very least; and a man who can be her husband intensifies the condemnation of the man who sent her away – adultery.
There is also another thing I notice in reading the text, today; Jesus speaks of the beggining with a male and female; opposed to “man” and “woman”. I intend to spend my meditation time, today, looking at those words more closely – it is something I haven’t noticed before and they are odd to my understanding of normal Greek words; but the english transation makes these singular; a man and a woman.
The first recording of divorce was with respect to Abraham and Hagar; The child she brought forth mocked Sarah, the Princess of Abrahams youth. This was Abram’s/Abrahams’s second wife; and that is a word applied to her (wife).
God had already spoken to Sarai and told her that SHE would have a child. So, this begetting of the promise of God was against what God had told her. It was her unbelief, transmitted to her husband, that brought the sexual perversion of the second marriage into play against God’s decree. Identical to Adam and Eve with the forbidden fruit on the tree of life (a womanly image in many ways).
Abraham laughed, just as his wife did. And oddly enough, that is what they chose as the name of the Child – the sin which the parents had committed in unbelief (in spite of their faith).
Isaac means laughter. And his son Jacob is the one whom the idea of original sin would be most prophetically expounded by the examples of his life; An example which David appears to have noticed in his psalm 50/51 quite intensely.
These are all so intertwined with the idea of marriage, fatherhood, and motherhood, that Jesus’ statements have to be really looked at carefully to grasp the full spectrum of meaning. This isn’t just one or two levels of thought, but a theme running throughout the whole of the Old Testament.
I am sorry to hear your parents could not resolve the hardness which came between them; In my present difficulties (marriage) I have nothing of a bad example from my parents, or hers, and yet I am unable to live with her presently; A sickness has entered myself which I have not the power to change at this time – but I do have hope; Hope that regardless of what comes, that I will persevere in my Catholic oath and vocation; even if I have no sacrament.
This is an area that I long, in many ways, to understand more deeply – exactly what Jesus meant by all these various teachings of history which he brings to light. If I feel shame it is because I am unable to know exactly what is right, and so I am unable to do exactly what Jesus calls me to do. This is the Law which takes something Good, and uses it to kill.
Whether you marry or not; may you be blessed in your vocation.
Love and Prayers,
–Andrew.
that the same is true in reverse. It is almost like they hate their divorced husband/wife of the past by hating me verbally.