Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 4 September 2015

Fr Robin Gibbons

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2015

The passage from Mark 10 concerning divorce is not an easy one to hear or fully understand. Anyone listening to it in church or reading it on their own will have an opinion on the matter. But we do not live in the same situations as the Pharisees or Jesus' disciples. We can accept that our knowledge of human behaviour and the complexities of personality and preference are very different now than in the past.

I cannot deny that people experience love and expressions of love very differently today, for I realise that the conditions and experience of life are simply not the same everywhere or at all times. There is not one amongst us who does not know somebody who is different to us or to our common experience. We have divorced and remarried people, or LGBT persons in our families and amongst our friends, but we would not condemn them for being so, or would we?

In the matter of divorce the Church of Christ understands it in different ways, yes the Roman Catholic Church holds fast to the indissolubility of the marriage bond but recognizes cases where it is just not good for two people to continue living in a spiral of destruction, where being apart is far healthier than being together. The Eastern Church acknowledges that sometimes marriage completely breaks down and is irreparable, allowing in mercy, once the facts known, that sometimes a second chance is necessary. Many Protestant Churches are perhaps more flexible and pastoral in their approach to those wounded and hurt by relationship troubles.

Yet, time and time again there are those who firmly uphold the words of Jesus, 'what God has united we must not divide'. But hold on, Jesus appeals to the God of creation, to that blessing of giving life not only to humans but to the world, at the heart of which is relationship. Part of the key phrase i: 'It is not good that man should be alone' ( Gen 2:18) and perhaps that is where we should really start from not just marriage. Real divorce is being alone!

Jesus isn't appealing to God's law either but to God's will and there lies the real problem. Do you or I know and understand God's will? This Gospel ends with the Children, there is our hope, mercy is given to those who enter the kingdom like them, open to God's love.

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Great Britain.