The Goal of Marriage

Our Gospel today answers the popular question today: Is there forever? Is forever even possible?

In our Gospel, we hear the ultimate question of the Sadducees: at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? To which Jesus gave a rational and upright and informative answer. Informative because by his answer, we’ve got a glimpse into the mystery of the after life. But first, let us first know to whom Jesus are responding to -the Sadducees.

• The Sadducees do not believe in Resurrection, Angels and after life.

• They only believe to the teachings of Moses and the Revelation of God was only unto the revelation to Moses.

• They do not believe in the Prophets and of course to Jesus.

• It is important for them that the lineage of every Jew is continued. Their notion of Marriage is levirate marriage which puts importance to the continuity and certainty in the fecundity of each Jewish family. (This is the background of the question of the Sadducees. It’s importance in the eyes of the Jewish people is narrated through the story of the 7 sons in our first reading. Killing the 7 brothers or the act of cutting the lineage of continuity is a grave sin punishable of being rejected from eternal life. (2 Maccabees 7:14).

• Fecundity is a sign of God’s favor and an assurance of his faithfulness. Children are a gift from the Lord. -Psalm 127:3). In fact, barren couples in the Old and New Testaments have begged God for offspring, and God granted them fecundity. Abraham at Sarah (Gen 15-21), Isaac at Rebekah (Genesis 25), Jacob at Rachel (Gen 29-30), Hannah at Elkanah (1 Samuel 1), Monoah at kanyang baog na asawa (Judges 13), Shunammite couple (2 Kings 4), and Elizabeth at Zachariah (Lk 1)God commanded Adam and Eve to be multiplied.

It is important to understand that we are both flesh and spirit. Marriage belongs to the language of our humanity and not our being spirit. A spirit does not need anything but God. We marry in this life because of our need for companionship and to have children. But Jesus is telling us today that marriage, family, Children and other earthly relationships are just our needs and nature for our earthly journey. We need companions. We are created as social beings.

There is manhood and womanhood because there is the need for life-giving relationship in marriage.We need someone to celebrate life with in this earth. We need companion when we grow old. We needs someone who will make us happy everyday. We need warmth and hospitality of family. Basically, we get married because we have a need to address, and because it is our nature.

The primary goal of marriage is not to have children or to have companion, but complementarity. We need someone to complement us. We need someone to compete us. Complementation is the primary goal of marriage. Having children and companionship are secondary.

A friend came to me to seek spiritual advise. Her husband is unable to engender because of some reproductive problem. My friend expressed her desire to have children ands she thought about IVF. The couple was convinced that they could only be happy if a child come from their own and that the idea of adoption was just not on the table. IVF is the process of assisting reproduction outside the human body. The husband’s sperm would be reinforced and then mixed into the wife’s egg cell and then inject it back right into the uterus to commence the artificially motivated pregnancy.

The thing is, in IVF we play god. While we recognize the advancement of science to have come to such a point of making human embryo artificially, our Catholic morality does not recognize the value of IVF stands for. Catholic morality sees IVF and all forms of Artificial Reproductive Technologies as against Natural Law and therefore inhumane; therefore inhumane enterprise of assembling humans.

Again, we deacons, priests and religious do not know how it feels to be married and have a child ideally. We are not in the position to talk about the details of married life, but are in the position to talk about what the Gospel teaches. We have no experience in leading and founding a family of our own but we preach the teachings of Jesus CHrist, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Going back to the point of the goal of marriage, complementarity makes man and woman bound together in perfect harmony suited for married life. The first duty of a married couple is to be spouse to each other. No less. But if circumstances permit and if willed deliberately by the couples and by God, having an offspring is a blessing many times over.

This leads us to the question: What then is in life eternal? What does it look like? What does it feel to live eternal life?

Jesus gives us the answer. There is no more relationships based on human language and human needs in heaven. There are no married couples, no parents, no siblings and so on. There is only the only relationship, and that is with God. Eternal life is where spend eternity with God, looking at is face forever.

God placed the desire for eternity and permanence in our hearts for us to yearn towards, and for him to demonstrate to us how he will fulfill this promise to us everyday and in the end of time. (Dianzon)

We must therefore show our love for one another here and now because one day, all human relationships will fade and will come to a level where there is no more separation and broken heart.

We must show our love here and now because one day, we shall not pass this way again.

We must show our love here and now because love is the essence of why we are here, and the meaning of where we will be going.

We must show our love here and now because we are created in love and are made to express it.

As regards the question is there forever? The answer is of course, There is forever in God. Forever is what God promise to each of us. However, we cannot promise forever to one another. We can only promise the day of our death because our love can only be true until then.

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READINGS

FIRST READING

2 Mc 7:1-2, 9-14

It happened that seven brothers with their mother were arrested

   and tortured with whips and scourges by the king,

   to force them to eat pork in violation of God’s law.

One of the brothers, speaking for the others, said:

   “What do you expect to achieve by questioning us?

We are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our ancestors.”

At the point of death he said:

   “You accursed fiend, you are depriving us of this present life,

   but the King of the world will raise us up to live again forever.

It is for his laws that we are dying.”

After him the third suffered their cruel sport.

He put out his tongue at once when told to do so,

   and bravely held out his hands, as he spoke these noble words:

   “It was from Heaven that I received these;

   for the sake of his laws I disdain them;

   from him I hope to receive them again.”

Even the king and his attendants marveled at the young man’s courage,

   because he regarded his sufferings as nothing.

After he had died,

   they tortured and maltreated the fourth brother in the same way.

When he was near death, he said,

   “It is my choice to die at the hands of men

   with the hope God gives of being raised up by him;

   but for you, there will be no resurrection to life.”

RESPONSORIAL PSALM

Ps 17:1, 5-6, 8, 15

R. (15b) Lord, when your glory appears, my joy will be full.

Hear, O LORD, a just suit;

   attend to my outcry;

   hearken to my prayer from lips without deceit.

R. Lord, when your glory appears, my joy will be full.

My steps have been steadfast in your paths,

   my feet have not faltered.

I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God;

   incline your ear to me; hear my word.

R. Lord, when your glory appears, my joy will be full.

Keep me as the apple of your eye,

   hide me in the shadow of your wings.

But I in justice shall behold your face;

   on waking I shall be content in your presence.

R. Lord, when your glory appears, my joy will be full.

SECOND READING

2 Thes 2:16-3:5

Brothers and sisters:

May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father,

   who has loved us and given us everlasting encouragement

   and good hope through his grace,

   encourage your hearts and strengthen them in every good deed and word.

Finally, brothers and sisters, pray for us,

   so that the word of the Lord may speed forward and be glorified,

   as it did among you,

   and that we may be delivered from perverse and wicked people,

   for not all have faith.

But the Lord is faithful;

   he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one.

We are confident of you in the Lord that what we instruct you,

   you are doing and will continue to do.

May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God

   and to the endurance of Christ.

GOSPEL

Lk 20:27-38 or Lk 20:27, 34-38

Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection,

   came forward and put this question to him, saying,

   “Teacher, Moses wrote for us,

   If someone’s brother dies leaving a wife but no child,    his brother must take the wife    and raise up descendants for his brother.

Now there were seven brothers;

   the first married a woman but died childless.

Then the second and the third married her,

   and likewise all the seven died childless.

Finally the woman also died.

Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be?

For all seven had been married to her.”

Jesus said to them,

   “The children of this age marry and remarry;

   but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age

   and to the resurrection of the dead

   neither marry nor are given in marriage.

They can no longer die,

   for they are like angels;

   and they are the children of God

   because they are the ones who will rise.

That the dead will rise

   even Moses made known in the passage about the bush,

   when he called out ‘Lord,’

   the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob;

   and he is not God of the dead, but of the living,

   for to him all are alive."

Or: [Shorter Form]

Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection,

   came forward.

Jesus said to them,

   “The children of this age marry and remarry;

   but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age

   and to the resurrection of the dead

   neither marry nor are given in marriage.

They can no longer die,

   for they are like angels;

   and they are the children of God

   because they are the ones who will rise.

That the dead will rise

   even Moses made known in the passage about the bush,

   when he called out ‘Lord,’

   the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob;

   and he is not God of the dead, but of the living,

   for to him all are alive.”