Preaching on divorce in light of Pope Francis

Tonight I have to preach in Dulce Nombre at a Celebration of the Word with Communion, following a Holy Hour. IT is sponsored by the Family Ministry group in Dulce Nombre which has been sponsoring these Holy Hours and either Masses or Celebrations in different neighborhoods of the city on Fridays, in an effort to strengthen the families.

Padre German is out of town and asked me to preside tonight (as I did last Friday). But the Gospel reading is Jesus speaking on divorce, Matthew 19: 3-12.

I know there will be married couples there as well as single mothers, abandoned by the fathers of their children, and perhaps unmarried couples. What can I say?

I have decided that the best I can do is to read a few passages of Pope Francis’s Apostolic Exhortation on the Family, Amoris Laetitia – The Joy of Love. I won’t preach all that I’m writing here, but I want to share what is behind my preaching tonight.

First of all, the Pope acknowledges that divorce is an evil.

“Divorce is an evil and the increasing number of divorces is very troubling.” (AL, 246)

But he also recognizes that there are times when separation is called for:

In some cases, respect for one’s own dig­nity and the good of the children requires not giving in to excessive demands or preventing a grave injustice, violence or chronic ill-treatment. In such cases, “separation becomes inevitable. At times it even becomes morally necessary, pre­cisely when it is a matter of removing the more vulnerable spouse or young children from seri­ous injury due to abuse and violence, from hu­miliation and exploitation, and from disregard and indifference”. Even so, “separation must be considered as a last resort, after all other rea­sonable attempts at reconciliation have proved vain”. (AL, 241)

And thus there is the need to accompany the divorced and separated.

But Pope Francis recognizes that we need to find ways to prevent what leads to divorce and separation.

He is well aware of the cultural frameworks that have contributed to the growing numbers of divorce. In paragraph 39, he notes several of them, including, first of all, the prevalence of a “culture of the provisional.” (The English, which I believe is a poor translation, speaks of a culture of the “ephemeral.” The Italian is “cultura del provvisorio” and the Spanish is “cultura de lo provisorio”.)

“Here I think, for example, of the speed with which people move from one affective rela­tionship to another. They believe, along the lines of social networks, that love can be connected or disconnected at the whim of the consumer, and the relationship quickly “blocked.” (AL, 39)

This culture of the provisional, the short-term, emphasized in popular films and television shows, makes it hard for couples to value the long-term commitment needed for marriage.

But there is also the problem of unrealistic expectations of what marriage is or can be. As Pope Francis notes:

Among the causes of broken marriages are unduly high expectations about conjugal life. Once it becomes apparent that the reality is more limited and challenging than one imagined, the solution is not to think quickly and irresponsibly about separation, but to come to the sober real­ization that married life is a process of growth, in which each spouse is God’s means of helping the other to mature. (AL, 221)

Marriage is not something easy. If we don’t present marriage with all its challenges as well as its joys, we are not preparing them for the real life of marriage.

But there are also some problems that can undermine marriage. Pope Francis rightly notes the lack of self-knowledge and of mutual knowledge and understanding.

…Sadly, many couples marry without really knowing one another. They have enjoyed each other’s company and done things together, but without facing the challenge of revealing them­selves and coming to know who the other person truly is. (AL, 210)

Couples need to know who they are, share who they are, and know the other person. This is not a task that is done in an instant, or even in a year or two. It is a lifelong challenge, which can also become a joy and consolation as we get to know ourselves and our spouses more deeply.

The pope is not afraid to say that sometimes the Church itself has not helped couples to maintain their sacramental commitment. Sometimes it has presented an overly strict understanding of the sacrament with its continuing challenges, often in a very defensive way:

… Yet we have often been on the defensive, wasting pastoral energy on denounc­ing a decadent world without being proactive in proposing ways of finding true happiness. Many people feel that the Church’s message on mar­riage and the family does not clearly reflect the preaching and attitudes of Jesus, who set forth a demanding ideal yet never failed to show com­passion and closeness to the frailty of individuals like the Samaritan woman or the woman caught in adultery. (AL, 38)

In addition, the church has sometime so emphasized only one aspect of the sacrament, the procreative:

we often present marriage in such a way that its unitive meaning, its call to grow in love and its ideal of mutual assistance are overshadowed by an almost exclusive insistence on the duty of procreation. (AL, 36)

What is to be done then?

Speaking about divorce, Pope Francis wrote:

our most important pastoral task with regard to families is to strengthen their love, helping to heal wounds and working to prevent the spread of this drama of our times. (AL, 246)

And so we must, above all, help couples before marriage, couples living together without being married, and married couples grow in love.

As Pope Francis notes in the last section of the exhortation: we need a spirituality of care, consolation, and encouragement. (Here I again find the English translation problematic. The Spanish reads “Espiritualidad del cuidado, del consuelo y del stimulo”; the Italian reads “Spiritualità della cura, della consolazione e dello stimulo.” The English translation is “A Spirituality of Care, consolation and Incitement.”) Pope Francis is somewhat poetic:

“Christian couples are, for each other, for their children and for their relatives, cooperators of grace and witnesses of the faith.” God calls them to bestow life and to care for life. For this reason, the family “has always been the nearest ‘hospital’.” So let us care for one another, guide and encourage one another, and experience this as a part of our family spirituality. Life as a cou­ple is a daily sharing in God’s creative work, and each person is for the other a constant challenge from the Holy Spirit. God’s love is proclaimed “through the living and concrete word whereby a man and the woman express their conjugal love.” The two are thus mutual reflections of that divine love which comforts with a word, a look, a helping hand, a caress, an embrace. For this reason, “to want to form a family is to resolve to be a part of God’s dream, to choose to dream with him, to want to build with him, to join him in this saga of building a world where no one will feel alone.” (AL, 321)

So, in face of divorce, we need to help people dream and make their dreams real.

But this requires the commitment of the community. Marriage cannot be lived alone. A family needs a large community. Marriage needs a culture of love, of sharing, of care, of giving oneself for others.

Marriage needs the continuing grace of God - and the support of the community.