Greeting
All praise be to God our Father for creating people in his likeness and making them capable of faithfulness through the self-giving love of his Son and the unifying power of the Spirit. May the Lord be always with you in his love. R/ And also with you.
Introduction by the Celebrant
They Become One
The first pages of the Bible tell us that God created man and woman in his own image. That means that God, who is love, wanted to unite them in the bond of love and make them live for the love of each other. That is how it was in the beginning. That is how it should still be now. When Jesus came, he made the bond between husbands and wives even more sacred, assuring them of God’s grace. Are people faithful to their yes given in the presence of God and the Church? Let us ask the Lord today for faithfulness and deep love between our married couples – and all our friendships.
May Our Love Last
The ardent wish of husband and wife on their day of marriage is: may our love last! This is not only God’s wish for them but his very command. He wants their union in love to be like his own love for his people: faithful, strong, lasting, a covenant love. With all married couples, with all those bound together in friendship, with all our Christian communities we stand before the Lord today and we ask: May our love for one another be strong, reliable, faithful.
Penitential Act
We ask the Lord for forgiveness that our love has not been strong and lasting. (pause)
Have mercy, Lord Jesus, on homes where love is dying, where husband and wife are becoming estranged: Lord, have mercy. R/ Lord, have mercy.
Have mercy, Lord, on homes broken by infidelity, on couples who can no longer forgive each other: Christ, have mercy. R/ Christ, have mercy.
Have mercy, Lord, on homes where there is little or no love, on couples who have no time for their children: Lord, have mercy. R/ Lord, have mercy.
Have mercy on all of us, Lord, and forgive us our sins against love. Let our homes and communities reflect your faithful love and lead us to everlasting life. R/ Amen.
Opening Prayer
Let us pray that our love may be strong and faithful (pause)
God, the source of all love, blessed are you for your tenderness inscribed in the hearts of people; blessed are you for giving us your Son as the token of your faithful love. Keep us from separating what you have united: husbands and wives, parents and their children, your Son and his Church, friends in their joys and sorrows. Let us all live in your creative, lasting love. We ask this through Christ our Lord. R/ Amen.
First Reading: Created for Love
Men and women are destined not for selfish loneliness but for building community in faithfulness and unifying love.
1 Reading: GN 2:18-24
Second Reading: Love Is Self-sacrificing
The source and model of all love is the self-sacrificing love of Christ for us.
2 Reading: Hebrews 2:9-11
Gospel: Love Is Faithful
In God’s plan marriage is, beyond human legalisms, an unbreakable union of love and fidelity. The love of husband and wife will live on in their children.
Gospel: Mark 10:2-16
General Intercessions
Let us pray to God our Father that he may complete in us his work of love and faithfulness, and let us say:
R/ Lord, keep us in your love.
– For the Church, the bride of Christ, that she may always be faithful to the message of the Gospel and the liberating love of Christ, let us pray:
R/ Lord, keep us in your love.
– For the homes built on unselfish love, that through them we may understand better all the depth of God’s love, let us pray:
R/ Lord, keep us in your love.
– For homes that are broken and for partners who have failed each other, that people may show them understanding and that God may give them mercy, let us pray:
R/ Lord, keep us in your love.
– For the young who prepare for marriage, that they may learn from life that the depth and beauty of love rest on generosity and sharing, let us pray:
R/ Lord, keep us in your love.
– For those who have renounced marriage for the sake of the kingdom of God, that they may never become loners but that their hearts may be spacious and warm, open to all people and to all needs, let us pray:
R/ Lord, keep us in your love.
Our God and Father, be present with all your faithfulness wherever people come together to build communities of love and friendship. Build with us, that our love may endure, now and forever. R/ Amen.
Prayer over the Gifts
Our God and Father, confirm your covenant with us through the bread and the cup which we bring before you. Let your Son stay with us and make us keepers of one another’s happiness. We ask this in the name of Jesus the Lord. R/ Amen.
Introduction to the Eucharistic Prayer
With joy and gratitude we praise our Father in heaven for the great love he has shown us. He is the source of all love among us and the Holy Spirit keeps this love alive in our homes and in our communities.
Preface of Marriage
We suggest using one of the prefaces of marriage from the Missal, e.g., the third.
Introduction to the Lord’s Prayer
We have a loving Father in heaven. To him we pray in the words of Jesus himself: R/ Our Father...
Deliver Us
Deliver us, Lord, from every evil and grant us the capacity to love without conditions or compromise. Give us a love that stays faithful and grows deeper in days of trial. Keep us free from all fear of committing ourselves to one another, as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ. R/ For the kingdom...
Invitation to Communion
This is the Lamb of God whose love was faithful to the end. He sacrificed himself to give us the courage to love without measure. Happy are we to be called to his supper. R/ Lord, I am not worthy...
Thanksgiving of Married Couples
Married couples could pray together the following prayer taken from the fourth preface for marriage in the French missal.
Our God and Father, it is right and good that we give you glory and offer you our praise. For you have made man and woman your image and have placed in their hearts the love that binds them to one another, that they may always be one. You tell them that in the pains and joys of their life, in days of weariness and wonder, you are near to them. Through the communion of their love and destiny, you make your own life grow in them, until the day you will fulfil all their hopes in Jesus Christ, your beloved Son. R/ Amen.
Prayer after Communion
Our God and Father you have entrusted love to us not as a finished product but as an assignment for life. Let the love of your Son invest our love with indestructible fidelity and generosity, that it may weather all storms and keep growing in depth, until you crown it with your joy that lasts forever and ever. R/ Amen.
Blessing
Bow your heads and pray for God’s blessing.
God is the source and strength of all love. May he bless our Christian families with happiness and faithfulness. R/ Amen.
May he bless our Christian communities with unity and peace and make us one heart and soul. R/ Amen.
May he give all of us a love that brings out the best in each other. R/ Amen.
May God bless you all and keep his love alive in you: The Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. R/ Amen.
Let us go in the love of the Lord.
R/ Thanks be to God.
Commentary
Treat her as your own flesh!
The first reading recalls what was the beginning of all things. It tells it in a romantic way. Maybe it wasn’t exactly like that, but the most important thing is contained in that story: man and woman met and recognized each other. The look did not stop at the eyes. It reached the heart. Then began a story that lasts to this day. Both felt called to become one flesh, to live united in love.
There are situations in which two spouses wonder if it is still worth insisting on trying to fix a relationship that began badly and is proving to be irreparably broken. They no longer love each other, there are incompatibilities of character, they are mean to each other, speak only to offend…What sense does it make to continue together? Can God demand that we continue living together in a way that is a torment?
Human logic responds without hesitation: divorce is better. When so many couples separate after only a few years of marriage, they ask: Isn’t cohabitation preferable? If things don’t work out, we break up without too many problems.
Many people, including Catholics, disagree with the Church on this one issue of divorce. Any priest who speaks of the Church teaching and the indissolubility of marriage soon would be unpopular for them. That was the case with Jesus too.
Mark tells us that the attempt of the Pharisees to raise the question of divorce was a trap to make Jesus unpopular with the crowd. Because the Jewish society practised divorce as an established norm. Jesus responds in a straightforward and unexpected way. He brings everything back to the beginning, to the beginning of creation, to teach us that God blesses human love, that it is he who joins the hearts of two people who love each other, he who joins them in unity and indissolubility. This shows us that the goal of conjugal life is not simply to live together for life, but to love each other for life! In this way Jesus re-establishes the order which was present from the beginning.
It’s true that there are difficulties in marriage, problems with children or the couple themselves, arguments and fights… It is here that we must understand well the meaning of “becoming one flesh.” In the sacrament, these two individuals have become one flesh. This means the joys, successes, and achievements of one of them are also the joys and achievements of the other. In the same way, the illness, pains, sufferings, and failures of one are also the failures and pains of the other. Those in married life must always remember that your marriage is a silent homily for everyone else, a daily homily.
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6 October 2024
Mark 10: 2-16
Divorce is the absence of the presence
As a test, someone asks Jesus, “Can a man divorce his wife?” Jesus could offer two possible responses to this age-old Hebrew inquiry: "No, unless she violated the marriage agreement by being unfaithful," or "Yes, certainly. If she fails to fulfil her duties as a wife and homemaker to your satisfaction, you have the option to divorce her."…kind of like being fired from a job.”
We discover is that Jesus doesn’t answer yes and no questions. Jesus sees marriage as a small step toward God’s bigger concern: to draw all things together in grace. What God does in marriage is just a tiny sample of what Jesus does for all creation on the cross - to be broken to give life. God does not simply walk past the poor and the weak, he cares for them.
Jesus takes the time to stop and show concern for the woman and her children who are being forced out of their homes. He worries that they will face social stigma and struggle to make a living. This issue is not confined to the past; even in the present day, divorce remains one of the main contributors to poverty among women and children. Jesus demonstrates care and compassion for those who are vulnerable and suffering.
“Jesus, is it wrong to divorce?” This is the wrong question. The Gospel is very categorical in its message: “Let no one separate what God has joined”. This helps us to believe in the holiness and importance of marriage that God put together. Also, to believe in the unconditional care and healing of the weak, including those who have been broken by divorce.
The church has a word of grace to preach on this painful topic of divorce. Maybe there are a lot of broken people from broken relationships who need to hear the consoling voice of a loving God and a loving community.
