Jesus asks the question: Who do you say I am? In reverse, He asks us: Who are you? Ultimately, the way you think of yourself determines how you will think of Him. Do you see yourself as created in his image and likeness with God-given talents: intellect, energies, efforts, opportunities, and relationships. In other words, do you see Him in yourself?
Character is everything. Christ comes to give us his character. To have a Christian identity in which we have clear boundaries: the Ten Commandments, to protect ourselves from self-destruction.
Our choices reveal our thoughts. They determines character which safe-guard our dignity. If we lack character, our choices, when temptations come, will succumb. Without character, our integrity wavers. Weakened, we lose our dignity as a person created in the image and likeness of God.
We choose according to the way we think about ourselves. If we think highly of ourselves, we will not succumb to choices that weaken or even destroy our self-worth. We protect ourselves from destructive behaviors: addictions, angers, abuse, and affairs.
The malice of these behaviors should be obvious; yet today they are clouded and many are confused especially about marriage, and divorce, as affairs destroy the essence of marriage. Because divorce is now normative, we forget the commandment: do not commit adultery. It protects marriage and the individuals from degrading their dignity and marriage itself:
Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and soul. It especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way, the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others. (CCC # 2332)
Our character, when integrated, unites our passions and emotions with our reason and will. Integrated, a strong, vibrant character does not succumb to the affairs that dominate and plague many marriages today.
Men and women of character integrate their total self within their relationship. Sexuality does not define them, but it is integral. It is an essential part, but not the total part. In this light, the Catechism continues: Everyone, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity. (CCC # 2333)
The physical, moral, and spiritual differences between men and woman are complementary. They orientate a couple towards the greatest gift, love. Love flourishing in family life creates harmony not only between themselves, but with their God. Their relationship emulates the relationships between the Father, Son and Spirit. Husbands give as the Father gives. The Son receives and returns the love as a wife does. The bond between the husband and wife is no different than the bond between the Father and Son. Hence marriage is a sacrament, a sacred covenant, as is the Trinity.
Marriage reveals the Trinitarian relationship and reveals who we are. Sons and daughters of the Father. Through marriage, man and woman become one with each other as the Father, Son, and Spirit are one.
This oneness, divine friendship, comes at the price. Aquinas defines friendship as the greatest prize of healthy friendships because friends wish the best for the other, as Jesus wants our best: perfection.
Man and woman express friendship: an equality of dignity respecting their differences yet complementing and completing each other through unconditional love. Spouses willingly sacrifice everything for the good of the other. Marriage then, as Jesus defines, is of God: an irrevocable covenant between man and woman in which both are bonded together till death.
Sadly, the Pharisees denied the permanence of marriage. They wanted divorce. To test Jesus , they asked if it is lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason. For Jesus, marriage binds two person in a covenantal friendship and categorically excludes divorce because it partakes in God’s Trinitarian Love. No one ever conceives of the Father divorcing the Son. Why do we conceive reasons to justify divorce (certain behaviors excluded).
Man and woman unite with each other, and in that union they unite with God. This sacramental union: a mysterious exchange of body, mind, heart, and soul with another, is for the soul purpose to gift their total being to another unconditionally and sacrificially. This union besides completing and complementing the other: creating the fullness of character, creates life — human life, our greatest treasure. A child is born out of this love, and becomes the expression of God’s love for us at the incarnation.
Every conception recalls and renews the incarnation, the covenant when the Son united Himself to our humanity through a woman, Mary. Each birth then renews Christ’s birth. It is literally another Christmas.
Each marriage also recalls and renews the first marriage in which Adam beheld Eve and bonded with her, declaring: you are bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.
Because marriage and children recall and renew the life and love God has within Himself and the life and love that God has for us, they are sacred. Nothing should ever put them asunder.
Yet today, divorce, contraception, abortion, and child-trafficking and a host of other social ills attack the sacredness of marriage. To combat these evils, Jesus declares marriage indissoluble and children as the most precious gift God can give to humanity: life creating love.