NOTES for Mar 10:9

These are the final words of the answer to the question about divorce asked by the Pharisees and other worthy people from the adult, established world. And they receive a rather stern answer, one that allows for no compromises. Saying that divorce is impossible, Christ refers not to Moses and the Law, but directly to God Himself and to the world order established by Him from the beginning of time. It is not so easy for them to hear this answer; it would be fitting for them to ask, as the Pharisees do in another gospel passage: "Who then can be saved?"

Immediately after this discussion the Savior points to a child and says that those who "do not receive the Kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it." It turns out that the ideal to which Jesus calls us is opened to us, but only if we accept it as children. If we do not speculate and philosophize, but remember that the Father Himself leads us by the hand and that with Him everything becomes possible.

Christ's words about marriage, which we read today in the Gospel according to Mark, have lasting significance, because they define God's design for the human person. The Lord refers to the words of the book of Genesis, emphasizing the indissolubility of the union of man and woman in marriage. He says that this union embodies God's will and therefore must not be destroyed by passing human weaknesses or passions. Thus marriage turns out not to be a legally sanctioned way of satisfying physiological needs, nor an instrumental means of procreation that has no independent value of its own. The unity of two distinct persons becomes an image of divine unity in the earthly life of human beings. As the unity of the Persons of the Most Holy Trinity is such that we worship one single God, so the unity of man and woman in the marriage established by God is such that they are no longer two, but one flesh. It is important to note that this unity of flesh is achieved by spiritual means, and not by a physical merging like that of conjoined twins.

In Christ's dialogue with the Pharisees about marriage there is another essential aspect. The point is that the Lord asks the Pharisees what Moses commanded them, that is, in what words Moses expressed God's will concerning marriage. The Pharisees cite a certain legal norm to Him. It is important that Christ explains the origin of these words by the hardness of people's hearts: this commandment of Deuteronomy is the result of a compromise between God's truth and human passions. In itself this word of Christ determines a great deal in Christians' attitude toward law and legality as a form of organizing spiritual life. But the Lord also answers the Pharisees with the words of Moses. Perhaps He expected them to quote precisely those words about God's will, words that reveal and make concrete the concept of the image and likeness according to which the human person was created. Thus revelation itself about God and His will, and not rules formulated on its basis, turns out to be the direct regulator of how we should live.

Answering the Pharisees, the Lord in today's Gospel reading says that marriage was established by God Himself at the very beginning of the creation of the world and is part of the divine design. This thought was new and unfamiliar both to Jews and to nonbiblical culture. The Jews, including the Pharisees, considered divorce permissible, but the Lord, "as one having authority," rejects this provision of the Law of Moses, given "because of your hardness of heart."

The nonbiblical world often refused altogether to see a woman as a human being and considered marriage a concession to the weakness of the flesh. That is why the fact that women in the early Christian communities were treated as full persons provoked mockery in the surrounding pagan world, along with suspicion of sexual immorality. In the legacy of two thousand years of Christian history we sometimes meet remnants of these ideas, but the force of Christ's words is such that the generally accepted errors of the public were never able to distort the truth completely.

For us today, however, what matters more is that marriage established by the Creator's will deserves respect, like every divine institution, and must not be trampled for the sake of momentary impulses.

Christ's words about marriage and marital unity can be understood only in the context of the relationships of the Kingdom. The foundation here is God's design for the union of man and woman, reflected in the Book of Genesis in the account of the creation of the human being. There the union of man and woman, the marital union, is considered not simply one element of human life, but a new quality of that life. It is irreversible in the same sense that every qualitative spiritual change in a person's life is irreversible: it cannot simply be "rolled back" by returning to what existed "before."

Of course, one can reject this new quality, one can ignore it, one can do everything possible to reduce its consequences to zero, but one cannot again become the same person one was before the change. In relations between a man and a woman, on the physiological level this corresponds to the impossibility of returning to a virginal state once virginity has been lost.

A divorced man is not the same as an unmarried man, just as a divorced woman is not the same as an unmarried woman. The issue here is not only the experience of family life, but also the fact that human nature has changed, and changed irreversibly. At the same time, it does not matter at all what the two people living together think about their shared life. They may think that everything between them is temporary, that they have decided only to "try it out," that they need nothing except sex. In the same way, spouses who are divorcing after living a long life together may think that "everything is over" between them. In reality, however, once relations between a man and a woman have begun, they can never end.

They are for all eternity, whatever he and she may have thought when they came together, grew close, and began a life together, whether forever or for one night. The only question is what the quality of these relations will be, how they will eventually be transformed, and what they will finally become. Once established, they will remain forever, and only the two who established them can decide before God and together with Him what to do with them in the fullness and eternity of the Kingdom.

The Pharisees wanted to know Jesus Christ's opinion on the disputed question of divorce: whether divorce was allowed and for exactly what reason. They themselves had different opinions on this matter. But Jesus' answer amazed everyone.

Jesus states that Moses allowed divorce only "because of your hardness of heart," in other words, to avoid something worse, such as husbands murdering their unloved wives. Yet God wants husband and wife to attain an indissoluble unity in marriage ("one flesh").

This appears not merely difficult, but impossible. This was the disciples' first reaction, recorded by another evangelist: "If such is the obligation of a man to his wife, it is better not to marry" (Matt. 19:10).

Jesus' statement about the indissolubility of marriage was so astonishing that the disciples asked for an explanation. Jesus confirmed what He had said before. Yes, God desires from us what, by human standards, is impossible. Therefore Jesus says: "With people this is impossible, but not with God, for all things are possible with God."

God acts in us and through us when we fully trust Him, just as little children trust their parents. The Greek word "paidia" indicates that the children brought to Jesus for blessing were no older than 7 or 8 years. The disciples evidently did not consider little children fully complete human beings. But Jesus emphasized that adults need to learn lessons of faith from children.

Having learned faith from children, we will receive the blessings of the Kingdom of God already here and now, and God will accomplish in us and through us what is "impossible for people."

Today's reading is devoted to two themes: the theme of divorce and the theme of children taking part in Jesus' conversations. In the first case it is interesting to note how Jesus interprets the norms of Old Testament law. He evidently separates in them what has been revealed by God as a commandment to be followed from what God permits a person, condescending to human weakness. Divorce is indeed permissible from the point of view of Old Testament law: it would have been impossible and meaningless to demand from sinful humanity the fullness of family and married life that was given to people before the fall and was later lost.

Then it becomes clear that marriage and family life are God's gift, and that fidelity in married life is a commandment given for all times. The possibility of divorce, however, is not God's gift at all, and certainly not a commandment; it is only a concession to human weakness, a forced concession that cannot exist in the Kingdom of God, where the fullness of life no longer requires any concessions. Jesus sets the bar as high as possible, but His demands cannot be any lower, because He offers them with the understanding that they are made of those who live not according to the laws of this world, but according to the laws of the Kingdom of God, where these demands turn out not to be excessive at all, but entirely ordinary.

The same applies to the presence of children: in a world that lives by the laws familiar to us, any appearance of children can only interrupt a serious conversation and get in the way. But in the Kingdom of God, where the depth of a person's participation in communion apparently depends less on age, the presence of even a small child at an "adult" conversation may not only fail to interfere, but may even enliven the conversation. That is how different the laws of the world we know and are used to are from those by which the Kingdom of God lives.