Complementarity and Divorce

Every time I am given the chance to preach to married people, I always begin with an apology.

I apologize that I may not be able to guide them as a marriage coach, or a marriage counselor. I am just a simple seminarian and now a priest who have no idea at all how to build and rear a family of my own.

We, religious, have no experience of rearing a family of our own, but our proclamation is not about marital coaching. Our proclamation is Jesus is Christ. We proclaim Mary and Joseph as the perfect married couple. We proclaim that Christian vocation is about love.

Every vocation is for love. Every vocation is a position of power to love. Marriage, religious life and even single-blessedness are institutions for love, and a fertile ground to grow in love.

All Vocation is for love.

Marriage is a vocation to love a single person. An exclusive love for the spouse and family.

Religious life is a vocation to love univocally everyone. It is an inclusive love for everyone. It is not exclusive.

Single blessedness is a vocation to love equivocally.

In short all vocations are meant to celebrate love.

This love is bounded in order to be free. This love is defining. This love defines the boundaries of love, a bouldery or space where we can express and celebrate love without hesitation and second thoughts.

What do I mean?

Vocations are grounds where our love could flourish. Marriage and Family are grounds for us to enrich ourselves, to discover our identities, a ground for us to grow and arrive at the fullness of our humanity and identity.

A spouse is to find his or her identity in the partner because they complement each other. They are one. They are not two different people. They are one.

The primary goal of marriage is complementarity. It is the primary requirement of the Church. Having children is secondary.

The love between the couples and for their children is expected to grow so strong that this love makes them holy. Family life, which is a ground for love, is ultimately a training ground for holiness.

A religious person is planted within the ground of the religious life in order to grow in love and this love is expected to assume a different form. The form of holiness.

For us religious, the vows, the community, and our devotion to Christ in our charisms make us holy.

The primary goal of our religious life is an offering for the life of the world.

A divorce is therefore a decision to end a marriage with all the reason for the separation. Today, there are many reasons why people separate. 1st among these reasons is incomplementarity or Incompatibility. Incompatibility manifests itself in the form of unwillingness to commit to the other, being unfaithful to the other or unwillingness to be full and whole for the other. This is the reason why pre-cana seminars must be strengthened. Discernments must be taken seriously.

Complementarity happens when the person for marriage or for profession of vows is whole and full. Total and undivided. Mature and capable of mature decision for complementation.

“Again I passed by you and saw that you were now old enough for love.

So I spread the corner of my cloak over you to cover your nakedness;

I swore an oath to you and entered into a covenant with you;

you became mine, says the Lord GOD.”

Marriage and profession is for people who are free. This freedom comes from the fact that they can sacrifice. These people are thoe who choose to be committed and devoted. It is the people who choose to be faithful. It is for people who choose love everyday.

Is love and holiness still the center of our lives?