Friday, 19^th week in ordinary time – 14^th August 2026 – Matthew 19:3-12

Jesus wraps up His teaching of the community discourse in Chapter 18. He now leaves Galilee and heads straight toward Judea. Our Lord does not succumb to the applause of his disciples. He refuses to play the celebrity game even as the crowds continue to swarm Him for a quick fix. Bypassing the religious noise, He rolls up His sleeves to heal them and deliver raw mercy on a strict deadline, fully aware that the shadow of the cross looms large with Jerusalem waiting at the end of this road. After all, true compassion doesn’t consult a calendar.

Having already set in motion the plan to kill Jesus, the Pharisees are now stacking up evidence to use against Him. The Pharisees aren’t just asking questions; they are building a weapon, stacking up evidence because they are terrified of the popularity of this itinerant rabbi. They didn’t show up to have a theological debate or test His knowledge, they showed up to test His authority and drive a wedge right down the middle of His ministry to scatter the disciples.  

So what’s so deadly about this contentious question?  This question wasn’t just a theological debate; it was a weaponized trap carefully designed to force Jesus into a public relations minefield. By asking if a man could legally divorce his wife for any cause, the Pharisees threw Him into a vicious catch-22 that had already split the Jewish community right down the middle. They weren’t looking for a divine revelation; they were looking for a dividing line.

At the heart of this issue were two rabbinic schools of thought. The school of Hillel held that divorce could be granted for some rather frivolous reasons. A man could divorce his wife over bad cooking or because the wife left her head uncovered, or to say nothing of the ‘must happen’, the inevitable; a fight with the in-laws. All these and more could be grounds for a divorce. On the other hand, the school of Shammai, held that divorce could be granted only in the case of moral impurity such as adultery.

We have no idea which school of thought was behind the question posed to Jesus but we can be sure of this: He understood the implications of even appearing to take any particular side. Jesus was not here to take sides but to go back to the truth.

When the Pharisees stepped up with their traps, Jesus didn’t just dodge the question; He completely flipped the script to expose the hypocrisy hidden beneath their robes. He looked right at these highly educated, deeply religious experts and dropped a truth bomb that cut straight through their pride: If anybody on this planet should have known the answer, it was them—but they had been flipping through the pages of scripture so fast trying to find a rule to enforce that they completely missed the Revelation standing right in front of them. You see, you can memorize the text and still miss the Truth, because information without intimacy always leads to hypocrisy!

Jesus takes the discussion to where it all began; the Garden of Eden. He takes a step back in time, even before the matter found reference in Deuteronomy 24.  For Jesus, the bigger picture begins with what God ordained. Marriage is His idea, not ours and so we have no business to alter, delete, subtract or alienate.

Interestingly, Jesus is doing some serious course corrections. While the issue in question seems to be divorce, the real issue lies with the understanding of marriage. That is why Our Lord re-visits the first human marriage.  

 Stop trying to build a covenant on a cliché! We have completely romanticized marriage in our culture, painting a picture that looks great on Instagram but collapses in the living room because families keep pushing people into a lifelong commitment just to check off a social expectation. Marriage is not easy, and we have to stop treating it like it is the only destination for a fulfilled life because God has not called everyone to the exact same path. If you enter a covenant based on a fantasy, you will abandon it the second you face a reality check.

That is exactly why the Church doesn’t let you stand at the altar and read some poetically written, fairy-tale vows that you found on Pinterest; she forces you to look truth in the eye and say words that actually matter. The traditional vows don’t hide the scars of real life; they lean right into the friction, forcing a couple to acknowledge that there will be bad times, dark seasons, and worst-case scenarios. Because true biblical love isn’t a feeling you stumble into when things are good, it is a daily, intentional choice you lock into when everything else falls apart!

Marriage is not a tool to fix ‘broken people.’ So often we hear people say, “Get him(her) married and the problem will be solved, he(she) will become responsible.”  Marriage is a sacred covenant, not a rehabilitation clinic. As a holy sacrament, it requires deep reverence and spiritual commitment, not the expectation that a spouse will fix your broken pieces.

Parents who insist that their children marry in Church even when their child has professed himself or herself to be a non-believer or a lapsed catholic, do a great disservice to the sacrament. In our desire not to be embarrassed before our relatives and to ‘look good’ to the world we cause grievous harm to the sanctity of the sacrament.

The same must be said of mixed marriages in Church. While the Church, with conditions, permits the ‘nuptials’ to be held in Church, it should not be done primarily to please the parents or society. It is God we ought to please, for it is with Him as a witness, that we pledge love and fidelity. Sadly, most Catholics who enter into ‘disparity of cult’ marriages (Catholic with a Hindu/Muslim/Jew etc) are not even aware that such a marriage, even though held in Church, is not a sacrament but merely a ‘nuptial rite.’

As a pastor I have seen more than my share of Catholics who marry a person of another faith in the Church, merely to please mummy and daddy, with mummy and daddy insisting on the ‘mass’ being celebrated while there is a perfectly valid nuptial rite that can be held; reading, homily et al but without the eucharistic prayer. But sadly, mummy and daddy want to be made happy or want catholic society to be happy – not God.

Finally, to married couples – Marriage needs to be approached with the purpose that God had in mind; mutual love and procreation. When couples speak of not having children or ‘postponing’ conception, they violate the very reason for marriage. This is not some personal choice that you make. If you choose to freely be married in the presence of almighty God and his Church, then you do it, keeping his idea of marriage in mind and not change the goalpost along the way to suit your comforts and personal beliefs. Contraception is a grave moral sin and that cannot be changed because you find it a hard pill to swallow while conveniently swallowing other pills.

It would be better not to be married in Church if one has already intended to disregard the purpose of marriage as ordained by God.

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