DIVORCE
INTRODUCTION
The title of my homily is, “Divorce.”
The word “divorce” jumps off the page of today’s gospel – so I decided to line up some thoughts and wonderings about divorce.
What does the word “divorce” trigger for you?
Today’s first reading from the second chapter of Genesis proclaims God saying, “It is not good for us to be alone. We need a suitable partner.”
So God made all the animals and brought them to the First Man. It’s great story telling. And no animal was a suitable partner. “Woof! Woof. Meow. Meow. Chirp. Chirp.” Sorry. Sorry.
So God puts the man into a deep sleep and takes from the man one of his ribs and closes up the spot with flesh. Then God builds the first woman. If you know the book of Genesis, you know this is the second creation account in the book – but it’s much more primitive and filled with great symbolism. It gives us our human dimension. The first creation account – in the first chapter of Genesis, but not as old, gives us our God dimension, “God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.”
In today’s creation account we have this earlier story and the God who made the first man out of the mud and clay of the earth, steps down to earth for the creation of woman.
I love James Weldon Johnson’s creation account where he has God say, “I’m Lonely, I’ll make me a world.” (1)
I love Bill Cosby’s creation account where he has Adam say when he first sees Eve, “Woo Man!”
Then today’s first reading from Genesis jumps in time to a reflection: the two should leave their father and mother and cling to each other – and the two shall become one flesh. Cling implying rib to rib cling. Great static cling. Very important.
Marriage – weddings – celebration. We’ve been to many of them and we drink, dance, lift our glass and celebrate and sometimes we look and wonder at the couple – in tux and gown. Will they make it? We pray for them. We look ahead and hope for them.
Will they be the part of the 60 % who make it or the 40% who don’t?
Divorce statistics are very tricky – and vary very much.
Divorce. Disaster. Mess. What do they do with the wedding pictures and the keepsakes in a box under a bed or in a closet? What happens to that little couple that was on top of their wedding cake?
WE KNOW
We know about divorce. It happens in our families or with our neighbors or with our friends. Messy. Never easy. Difficult. And we don’t know what to say. I know I don’t.
As priest sometimes it seems absolutely smart, right, best for these two – that they get divorced – but then sometimes because of kids, there is the feeling of hesitation.
And we know that many couples have stayed together because of the kids – and sometimes that seems the right thing to do – and sometimes it seems like that it is a mistake as well – because sometimes the kids sense the tension – and hear the word fights – and it’s tearing them apart as well.
Divorce. Mixed feelings. Drama. Pain. Hurt. Questions. Wonderings.
What are your thoughts and questions and wonderings about divorce? I’m wondering: what would be helpful words from the pulpit?
And I feel guilty at times, because I wish I had better skills and better advice and answers when listening to a couple in a problem marriage. Their marriage just isn’t working the way it should be working. I try to get them to go for counseling. Sometimes they do and sometimes only one wants to. Sometimes couples make the Retrouvaille Seminar – a Marriage Encounter type weekend program for problem marriages - and that helps. (3) Sometimes nothing helps.
COKIE ROBERTS AND SAM DONALDSON
A good bunch of years back I was watching television one Sunday morning in between Masses. Well, Sam Donaldson says to Cokie Roberts, something like this, “Cokie, you’re Catholic. What’s going on with this Kennedy fight up in Massachusetts? He got an annulment and she is contesting it. What’s the story? I think she wrote a book in protest.” (4)
And Cokie said something that I found remarkably clear. She said the Catholic Church proclaims a theology of marriage that says: marriage between two baptized Christians is a lifetime covenant. The teaching is that these two vow to stay together in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, till death do they part. And Cokie said that the Church has to teach this. Unless you go into marriage with the idea that this is it for life, you won’t struggle as hard to make it last for a lifetime. The couple needs that for themselves as well as if they are blessed with kids.
Then Cokie said, “Sometimes things fall apart. Sometimes there are disasters.. The couple get divorced. People are living much longer and more people were getting divorced. So the Church relooked at annulments to see if we can do something to help people start again and remain in communion with the Church community – if they get re-married. Pastoral theology called for this."
I thought then and I still think now: her description on what happened in our Church was a good assessment. Obviously, more has to be done to strengthen marriages as well as to help folks who had disastrous marriages to stay with the Church. They need the sacraments more than ever. “It is not good to be alone. It’s good to have a partner.”
CONTEXT
I would assume that context is a key issue in all this as well as much of life. That’s a good word and concept to do a lot of thinking about: context.
Cokie Roberts was trying to give context.
Whenever we hear about a couple getting a divorce, what is the context of these two people?
That’s one of the reasons why the annulment process is a long process. Sometimes it looks like a crazy or too difficult a process. Hopefully, it helps people to not only see what happened, but to take a deep look at their life patterns – family patterns – who they are and where they have come from – and areas where they have to grow – otherwise we are repeat performances – and déjà vu is our modus operandi.
What’s the context?
We don’t know the context of so many things – not only why and what someone said or someone did, but the whole process.
I assume that’s one reason Jesus said not to judge. [Cf. Matthew 7:1-5]
I assume that’s why the Native American saying, “Don’t judge someone till you have walked a mile in their moccasins.”
I would add, “till you have walked a mile in their sins.”
In today’s gospel Jesus says there is to be no divorce – nobody can separate what God has joined together.
What is the context that Jesus was looking at? As best as I can gather, women in the time of Jesus were treated as second class citizens or had no citizenship in a marriage. They didn’t have the rights of males. They could be dismissed or dumped and divorced for various reasons.
In the time of Jesus marriages were not just about two people. Marriages were arranged by families – without much choice by the couple to be married.
In the time of Jesus children were not seen like children of today are seen. I was surprised that the gospel a few weeks ago called a child an “it” instead of he or she. (Cf. 25 Sunday OT B, Mark 9: 36)
In the time of Jesus, if there was a divorce, often whole families would end up in the feud.
In the time of Jesus most people did not live as long as folks are living today – so are we asking people who are divorced and get remarried without benefit of an annulment, to stay away from communion for the rest of their marriage?
That’s context. [5]
TWO BOOKS
I recently read two books that were eye openers. The Bookseller of Kabul was the first. (6) It was written by a Norwegian woman journalist, Asne Seierstad. She went into Kabul in Afghanistan two weeks after the September 11th attacks. She met a bookseller in Kabul named Shah Muhammad Rais. He spoke English and he invited her into his home for a few months. Being a journalist she decided to write a whole book about her experience. She changed his name in her book to Sultan Khan – and it’s a sort of fictionalized non-fiction. He sends his first wife off to Pakistan and buys a new wife – aged 16.
In her book, she gives the context for women in Afghanistan. It’s horrible. It was worse under the Taliban. It’s still horrible. The book takes the reader into the back room – into the inner workings of Afghan family life. As I was reading it, I sensed that it’s closer to what family life might be in a Nazareth village 2000 years ago.
The second book is entitled, When Men Become Gods (7). It’s an investigation by a man named Stephen Singular. The book gives you an inside view into the life of Warren Jeffs – leader of an offshoot Mormon group. It tells about countless young girls who are manipulated into polygamy by Warren Jeffs and his group.
Both books were page turners. I the reader was given the context of life as a woman in Afghanistan and life as a woman in various Mormon polygamy situations in Utah, Texas – and various places where Warren Jeff’s was operating.
Women in some countries have certainly come a long way – and when they discover horrible, unredeemable, abuse, hopefuly they can learn to run – but with great difficulty.
IN THE MEANWHILE
In the meanwhile, each of us ought to do what we can do to strengthen life in the context we live and work in.
I remember a continuing education course I took in New York under Father Benedict Groeschel. He told us he was asked by Cardinal Cooke to be the person the Cardinal would send a priest who wanted to leave the priesthood.
The priest had fallen in live or become angry with the institutional church or had become disillusioned. I listened up – because I was ordained in 1965 and saw lots of priests leave. Talk about divorce. They left our communities. Half my ordination class of 16 left. And it was not only a blow to the places where they were living and working, but also on our lives. So I think I know the impact of divorce – without seeing it in my own immediate family.
As Benedict listened to these priests, he began to see it was too late. Many were already involved with someone. Their minds have been made up and they wanted out of the priesthood.
So he told us, we need to do things now to strengthen what we have, before a problem would arise. The goal of the course was to come up with a whole group of priests to serve as spiritual directors – to get priests talking to other priests about their life.
When a couple come to me with a marriage that is falling apart, if the timing is right, I ask a key question, “Is there someone else?” That’s a whole different ballgame. That’s a whole different context.
In the meanwhile, here we are in Church this Sunday morning. If you are married, what does your marriage look like? What is the context you’re living in?
CONCLUSION: THREE RECOMMENDATIONS
Let me make three recommendations for strengthening a marriage.
1) Communication: shut off the TV and talk. Shut off the zillion and one gadgets and communicate with each other. Talk about the context of your marriage, family, life, how you’ve grown, how you’ve taken each other for granted. Listen. Listen. Listen to each other. The opening question is always, “How’s it going?” or “What’s happening?” or “Where are we?” And listen – listen – listen.
2) Compliment: I love to tell the story about the grandfather whose 8 year old granddaughter took his wedding ring off his finger. They were sitting and talking with each other on a couch. The girl looked at the ring. Then inside the ring, she sees the letters, “SSNTST”.
The little girl says, “Grandpa what do those letters stand for?”
He says, “Oh something. Just something.”
Well, the little girl wouldn’t let up. She had to find out what the letters, “SSNTST” stood for.
Finally the grandfather says, “Okay Jessica, but you have to promise you won’t tell anyone.”
She says, “I promise I won’t tell anyone.”
So her grandpa says, “Well, after your grandma and I were married we got too used to each other, so I felt something was wrong. I went to a priest and we talked. He listened and said, 'Take your wedding ring to a jeweler and have him engrave inside your wedding ring, the letters, ‘SSNTST.' Like you, I asked him what does that mean. He said, ‘Say Something Nice To Sara Today.’ And I’ve been doing that ever since.”
Jessica still holding the ring said, “That’s really beautiful!”
Then she jumped off the couch and ran into the kitchen yelling, “Grandma, grandma, let me show you something that grandpa has on his wedding ring about you.”
Yesterday after a wedding at St. Mary’s, I’m standing in the back of the church with the daughter of the videographer for the wedding. I think that’s who she was. Without knowing it, she compliments me by saying, “Great wedding. You know what I’m going to do when I get home today. I’m going up to my husband and thank him and hug him to death for marrying me.”
I said, “Thanks for making my day.”
3) Surprises: Three weeks ago at a wedding rehearsal, the father of the groom said that an old man one time told him the secret of a happy marriage. It went something like this, “Provide surprises and give unexpected gifts to spouse on a regular basis.” And he told me that it has really worked in his marriage – and I said, “Can I steal that message from you?” He said, “Of course.” I said, “Thank you.”
It’s like sticking that famous bumper sticker, “”Practice Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty” on your marriage.
Enough already. What’s happening with you? What’s context are you in right now?
NOTES
(1) The Book of American Negro Poetry, Ed. James Weldon Johnson, New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1922
(2) Bill Cosby, Cf. Audio Tapes on Creation Account
(3) Type “Retrouvaille” in your computer search engine check out what this seminar type program is about.
(4) Type into your search engine, Joseph Kennedy’s marriage to Sheila Rauch and her 1997 book, Shattered Faith.
(5) For exploring the context of this text from Mark, confer, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels by Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, pp. 240-242. Cf. also Gaudium et Spes, The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Part II, Chapter 1, "Fostering The Nobility of Marriage and the Family," pp.248-258 in the Walter M. Abbot, General Editor, edition, 1966; Cf. also Catechism of the Catholic Church, Liguori Publications, 1994, 1601-1666, 2380-2400, -
(6) Asne Seierstad, The Bookseller of Kabul (2003)
(7) Stephen Singular, When Men Become Gods, (2008)
