Today’s readings can be found here.
Too many times we reduce the issue of the indissolubility of marriage only to the matter of which people are for it and which are against it, but it would be good for us Christians to pause and listen to the explanation Jesus gives:
“Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator made them male and female and said, 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.”
The fact that Jesus, speaking of love between two people, describes it as the possibility of being so closely united that the two are one, should make us reflect.
It’s not a toxic form of fusion, in which one is confused with the other, but the extraordinary feeling that the other is part of me, is the dearest thing about me, is what most makes God’s love concrete in my life.
I believe that everyone should believe that in life there exists a love that is so reliable, so good, that they can base the “forever” of their lives on it. Of course one can fall, make mistakes, and ruin things, but one cannot assume that reliable love simply does not exist.
It’s on this basis of reliability that Jesus concludes, “Therefore, what God has joined together, man must not separate.”
Thus, it’s not a matter of blaming ourselves if we have stumbled into the situation of a failing relationship, but of not playing around with a truth that Jesus expressed with crystal clarity.
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Father Luigi Maria Epicoco is a priest of the Aquila Diocese and teaches Philosophy at the Pontifical Lateran University and at the ISSR ‘Fides et ratio,’ Aquila. He dedicates himself to preaching, especially for the formation of laity and religious, giving conferences, retreats and days of recollection. He has authored numerous books and articles. Since 2021, he has served as the Ecclesiastical Assistant in the Vatican Dicastery for Communication and columnist for the Vatican’s daily newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.
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