Life’s Big Questions
Answers to the really big questions of life can be found in the teaching of Jesus Christ.
In last Sunday’s gospel we find the following;
“But from the beginning of creation God made them male and female.
This is why a man must leave father and mother, and the two become one body.”
(Mark 10:1-19)
In this reading the Pharisees, the Jewish leaders, asked Jesus if it was right for a couple to get divorced. The question must have provoked great interest as Jews were permitted to divorce. Jesus asks, “What did Moses command you?” ‘“Moses allowed us,” they said, ‘to draw up a writ of dismissal and so to divorce.”’ “It was because you were so unteachable that he wrote this commandment for you,” Jesus replies, and Jesus quotes our opening verse which comes from Genesis 2: 18 – 24 which is the first of the Sunday readings at Mass.
Once formal consent is given (validly) and the marriage consummated it cannot be dissolved the church teaches. Marriage is for life.
So when a couple say, “I do” at the altar in front of witnesses including the priest who is there to witness on behalf of the Church because the couple confer the sacrament on one another, they begin this amazing journey with all its ups and downs joys and sorrows. It is total permanent and exclusive giving which is open to children and family life. Family life of this quality is God’s plan for our happiness and is the bedrock of society and the continuation of human life. Children are meant to grow up in a loving caring and secure setting to become all that God has planned for them and achieve their full potential and play their part – their unique and indispensable part – in God’s creation.
What a wonderful vocation and for Christians and God will be ever present to guide them in their roles as mother and father to this end.
Society should nurture and protect family life socially, economically and politically because the health, wholeness and wellbeing of individuals depends upon it and thereby all of humanity collectively.
But couples need support and things don’t always work out. Organisations like ‘Marriage Encounter’ and ‘Care for the family’ are among many which can offer this, and ‘Marriage Care’ when relationship ‘first aid’ is needed.
Marriage is for life and a spouse who is elderly or suffering from a serious ailment of even terminally ill is most likely to wish to stay the course so as to go on feeling the love that surrounds them from a loving partner and be with family for as long as possible. It would be cruel to make them feel a burden which is what assisted suicide may leave them feeling.
Life is sacred and love is for life.