Before original sin

Jesus came to the district of Judaea and the far side of the Jordan. And again crowds gathered round him, and again he taught them, as his custom was. Some Pharisees approached him and asked, ‘Is it against the law for a man to divorce his wife?’ They were testing him. He answered them, ‘What did Moses command you?’ ‘Moses allowed us’ they said ‘to draw up a writ of dismissal and so to divorce.’ Then Jesus said to them, ‘It was because you were so unteachable that he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation God made them male and female. This is why a man must leave father and mother, and the two become one body. They are no longer two, therefore, but one body. So then, what God has united, man must not divide.’ Back in the house the disciples questioned him again about this, and he said to them, ‘The man who divorces his wife and marries another is guilty of adultery against her. And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another she is guilty of adultery too.’ (Mark 10,1-12)

Marriage sanctions the equality of man and woman before God who blesses their pact of love and is at the origin of the family. When the importance of the value of marriage  is no longer recognised socially, all the human relationships that are derived from it are corrupted. Jesus, with the specific Grace that binds marriage, allows man and woman to restore this divine plan, so that what was established before original sin is made possible once again: the project for the union of two persons in one flesh, without overpowering each other. This is the only way that our families be a safe haven full of love for ourselves, others and God.