Celebración de la palabra

Joined together by God

“There is no brighter face of God on earth than friendship,” writes Brother Roger of Taizé. Ben Sirach speaks in moving terms of friendship, yet he remains on a superficial level and falls far short of friendship as described by Christian authors. Christ himself made the willingness to die for one’s friends, the highest mark of friendship, and he put it into practice.
To Christ, marriage is planned by God to be indissoluble. Infidelity in marriage and divorce are against the will of God, whose faithfulness is the model of fidelity in marriage. We pray for fidelity for our Christian couples and for all of us in our commitments for fidelity to God and our neighbor.

Reading: Sirach 6:5-17

Good mouths multiply fans and mollify enemies; a cordial tongue wins friends and influences people. A thousand people may get to know you, but bare your soul to only a few. If you have a friend in the making, don’t rush to bare your innermost thoughts. A chance friend may not be a friend for all seasons, especially when it comes to the Final Inspection.
There’s the friend who turns amity to enmity, revealing all your confi- dences. There’s the friend who loves to join you at the table but is nowhere to be found on the day of necessity. There are good-times-only friends who act like your long-lost relative, hithering and thithering your domestics as though they were theirs. If you suffer financial reversals, however, they all turn against you—all of a sudden they’re history and nowhere to be found.
Get rid of these “friends” and pay attention to your real ones. There’s the faithful friend, a strong protection against the storm. Find a friend like that, and you’ve found a treasure. There’s no substitute for a faithful friend; they have a goodness money can’t buy. The faithful friend is a life-extender, an elixir of life. Those who fear God know such a friend when they meet one.
Fear God and you’ll discover a unique friendship, for the friend you find will be God himself.

Gospel: Mark 10:1-12

From there he went to the area of Judea across the Jordan. A crowd of people, as was so often the case, went along, and he, as he so often did, taught them. Pharisees came up, intending to give him a hard time. They asked, “Is it legal for a man to divorce his wife?”
Jesus said, “What did Moses command?”
They answered, “Moses gave permission to fill out a certificate of dismissal and divorce her.”
Jesus said, “Moses wrote this command only as a concession to your hardhearted ways. In the original creation, God made male and female to be together. Because of this, a man leaves father and mother, and in marriage he becomes one flesh with a woman—no longer two individuals, but forming a new unity. Because God created this organic union of the two sexes, no one should desecrate his art by cutting them apart.”
When they were back home, the disciples brought it up again. Jesus gave it to them straight: “A man who divorces his wife so he can marry someone else commits adultery against her. And a woman who divorces her husband so she can marry someone else commits adultery.”

Prayer

You have created us, Lord our God,
for friendship and for durable love,
and you have shown us in Jesus, your Son,
how to live for one another and for you.
May we learn from him
to remain faithful to one another,
each one according to one’s calling in life.
Let our love for one another be
the language in which you speak to us
and the sign that you are near to us
through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.