Friday in the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time, February 25, 2022

Mark 10:1-12

Jesus came into the district of Judea and across the Jordan. Again crowds gathered around him and, as was his custom, he again taught them. The Pharisees approached him 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 a husband 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 Jesus 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.”

“Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?”  This question seems strange because the Mosaic Law clearly set out the ritual for divorce. However, the Pharisees were convinced that Jesus was attempting to abolish the Law (cf. Matthew 5, 17) based on his dismissal of their teaching on the Sabbath and ritual purity.  They seem, then, to be seeking his views on other matters of the Law to determine just how subversive, in their view, he was.  “What did Moses command you?”  The Lord most often spoke on his own authority, but here he points to Moses as the starting point for the teaching he will give.  “Moses permitted a husband to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her.”  The Pharisees answer by referring to the ritual which effected the divorce, affirming it as originating with Moses.  “Because of the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this commandment.”  The Lord Jesus does not dispute the fact that Moses wrote the commandment, but contests that he wrote it in view of “the hardness of your hearts”, due in part to the fallen condition of human nature.  The Lord adds, “But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.”  That is, of all the ways God could have created humanity, he created it as consisting in males and females.  As Mother Teresa said, these are the two ways of being human.  He says, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”  A man and a woman — the two ways of being human — then come together in unity that is expressed in a wonderful intimacy.  This unity is also signified by the unity of the original “Adam” (human) before he was divided.  The Lord affirms this, saying, “So they are no longer two but one flesh.”  And then he concludes: “Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”  It is God who joins the man and woman together in marriage, not humans.  Only God can make a unity.  The Lord may have been revealing marriage as holy in that it is God joins the man and woman together for the first time, here.  Where marriage is spoken of in the Law the language is not particularly religious.  

“Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”  The revolutionary nature of the Lord’s teaching on marriage causes the Apostles to ask questions when they get alone with the Lord.  The Lord puts his explanation in a succinct form so that it can be most easily understood.  Throughout this encounter with the Pharisees we see how the Lord fulfills the Law.  An aspect of the Law is presented.  The Lord explains what it means.  Then he commands a strict observance of the Law as he has taught it.