Daily Reading

First Reading

Sirach 6:5-17

Pleasant speech multiplies friends,
    and a gracious tongue multiplies courtesies.
Let those who are friendly with you be many,
    but let your advisers be one in a thousand.
When you gain friends, gain them through testing,
    and do not trust them hastily.
For there are friends who are such when it suits them,
    but they will not stand by you in time of trouble.
And there are friends who change into enemies,
    and tell of the quarrel to your disgrace.
And there are friends who sit at your table,
    but they will not stand by you in time of trouble.
When you are prosperous, they become your second self,
    and lord it over your servants;
but if you are brought low, they turn against you,
    and hide themselves from you.
Keep away from your enemies,
    and be on guard with your friends.

Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter:
    whoever finds one has found a treasure.
Faithful friends are beyond price;
    no amount can balance their worth.
Faithful friends are life-saving medicine;
    and those who fear the Lord will find them.
Those who fear the Lord direct their friendship aright,
    for as they are, so are their neighbors also.

Psalm

Psalm 119:12, 16, 18, 27, 34, 35

Blessed are you, O Lord;
    teach me your statutes.
I will delight in your statutes;
    I will not forget your word.
Open my eyes, so that I may behold
    wondrous things out of your law.
Make me understand the way of your precepts,
    and I will meditate on your wondrous works.
Give me understanding, that I may keep your law
    and observe it with my whole heart.
Lead me in the path of your commandments,
    for I delight in it.

Gospel Reading

Mark 10:1-12

He left that place and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan. And crowds again gathered around him; and, as was his custom, he again taught them.

Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

Reflection

Friends, in our Gospel today, Jesus defines the fundamental sacredness of marriage. I’m convinced that the deep sacramental and religious meaning of marriage—even within the Church—has been, in recent years, dramatically compromised. We say that marriage is a vocation, but do we mean it?

We can look at human sexual relationships at a number of different levels. Two people can come together purely for physical pleasure, for economic reasons, or for psychological companionship. And we might witness two people coming together out of authentic love.

But none of these levels is what the Bible means by marriage. When I was doing parish work I would invariably ask young couples, “Why do you want to get married in church?” Most would say something like, “Because we love each other.” But I would reply, “Well, that’s no reason to get married in church.” Usually, they looked stunned, but I meant it.

You come to church to be married before God and his people when you are convinced that your marriage is not, finally, about you. That it is about God and about serving God’s purposes, that it is, as much as the priesthood of a priest, a vocation, a sacred calling.