Sunday October 6, 2024, Twenty-seventh Sunday of the Year B
Today’s readings: First Reading – Genesis 2:18-24; Second Reading – Hebrews 2:9-11 and the Gospel – Mark 10:2-16.
Theme: God created them male and female. Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. What God has joined together no one should put asunder. These are beautiful representations of the institution of marriage.
Marriage is for building a happy family where the parents and children find love, care and peace.
While marriage is a sweet institution founded by God himself, there are many threats to the marriage as an institution today.
The Bishops Conference of the United States declares,”
In 2009 after many drafts and much controversy, the United States Catholic bishops released a pastoral letter on marriage in which they identified four key threats to marriage: contraception, divorce, cohabitation and same-sex marriage.
Each of these practices is described as diminishing something fundamental to Christian marriage.
According to the bishops, contraception separates the unitive and procreative meanings of sexuality and treats children as a lifestyle choice rather than a gift; cohabitation involves claiming the goods of marriage before making a commitment of exclusivity; divorce breaks the promise of lifelong fidelity; same-sex marriage (union) denies the centrality of gender complementarity to married love.
The bishops are troubled by the fact that far too many people do not understand what it means to say that marriage- both as a natural institution and a Christian sacrament- is a blessing and gift from God.
The bishops defend a traditional understanding of marriage as:
Procreative, permanent, exclusive, and complementary.
Though the document includes some of the beautiful, personalist language that characterizes the work of Pope John Paul II (such as “total self-gift”, Communion of persons”, “become what you are”),
it is dominated by more doctrinal language (such as frequent references to “God’s plan for marriage,” an insistence that marriage involves “the union of man and a woman,” and descriptions of marriage as “a sacramental sign of salvation”).
In the United States and across the industrialized world, many are beginning to question this traditional vision of marriage.
This concept is gradually coming to other less developed nations in Africa and Asia.
Most historians and social scientists who study marriage characterize our time as one of great transition. While the history of marriage is marked by diversity, certain features have been common in most cultures: heterosexual union, male authority, shared labour, the inclusion of relatives and servants in the family, and common residence.
This is the traditional or institutional marriage.
Today, the sanctity of marriage is under threat. Marriage is no longer taken as an institution established by God.
The effect of secularism, hedonism, consumerism has caused a great havoc on marriage and family life.
Most young people have a total misconception of what marriage is all about. Often, some young people equate marriage with money and not love. This makes it difficult for them to understand the aspect of sacrifice in marriage.
We pray that Almighty God may rekindle his fire of love among married people and help them to understand the essence of marriage and be ready to sacrifice themselves for one another in marriage.
May Almighty God bless us and protect us from all dangers through Christ Our Lord. Amen. Have a blessed and happy Sunday.
Rev. Fr. Ambrose Onyeka Anene SDB is the Parish Priest of Church of the Archangels, Gaduwa Abuja.
