Marriage: More Than a Contract, A Sacred Covenant

Happy Sunday! As we continue our reflections on marriage, we are going to move to the Gospel of
Mark to see what Christ teaches concerning marriage, and then we will look at how it becomes a
Sacrament in the Gospel of John. In Mark 10, we read the following:
The Pharisees approached and asked, “Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?” They were
testing him. He said to them in reply, “What did Moses command you?” They replied, “Moses
permitted him to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her.” But Jesus told them, “Because of the
hardness of your hearts he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation,
‘God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother [and
be joined to his wife], and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh.
Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.” In the house the disciples
again questioned him about this. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another
commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits
adultery.”
There are several key points here we should pay attention to:

Why the connection between divorce and adultery? It is because marriage is more than
a contract. Marriage is a covenant, that is, a complete self-gift for the good of the other.
This is why divorce is not meant to be an option in the mind of God. To give one’s word
one moment and try to nullify it the next is not marriage. Marriage means that we live up
to our marriage vows.
With that being said, I would like to add a clarification. Marriage is meant to be permanent, but that
doesn’t mean that every marriage is perfect. There are marriages where violence, abuse, and
manipulation are lived experiences. Christ’s teaching does NOT mean that the victims are stuck.
It means, rather, that one has to investigate to see what problems existed before and after the
marriage (meaning that the gift of the spouse’s word was invalid). This is why we have the
annulment process as Catholics: we seek to be faithful to Christ’s own teaching.