16 August 2019
Friday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time
It is not easy to be a disciple of Jesus Christ! Jesus is always pushing us to conform to the Father’s will, which means letting go of all our own individual, selfish satisfactions, personal desires, and private determinations. We cannot always get what we want, which seems to be a loss of our “inalienable rights” or personal freedom. Jesus challenges us in today’s Gospel by addressing the teachings of marriage. He says, “Have you not read that from the beginning
the Creator made them male and female and said,
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, man must not separate.” (Matthew 19: 4-6)
The last line is used in the rite of marriage immediately preceding the exchange of vows. Marriage is the most joyful sacrament, but it also requires a radical shift in life on the part of the man and woman. To live the married life means a letting go of individual satisfactions, personal desires, and private determinations. It is a loss of personal freedom for the sake of communal unity. As Jesus acknowledges in today’s Gospel, “”Not all can accept this word,
but only those to whom that is granted.
Some are incapable of marriage because they were born so;
some, because they were made so by others;
some, because they have renounced marriage
for the sake of the Kingdom of heaven.
Whoever can accept this ought to accept it.” (Matthew 19: 11-12)
It is not easy to be a disciple of Christ. Let us pray for the divine grace to embrace the sacrifices required to follow Christ unconditionally in whatever state of life in which Christ is calling us.