The people Jesus was addressing in the Gospel had a fixed mindset regarding marriage and divorce. We can fall into the same thing, holding on to the well-known – yet outdated – statistic that half of marriages end in divorce. The truth is much more nuanced.
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There are 86 divorces every hour, compared to 230 marriages an hour
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Marriage and divorce rates in the U.S. are decreasing for a range of reasons
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Estimates say 41% of first marriages will end in divorce
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As many as 60% of second marriages won’t make it
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Third marriages end in divorce 73% of the time
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The average lifespan of a first marriage before divorce is eight years
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Millennials are waiting to get married and stay married longer, driving the divorce rate lower
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As many as 64% of men and 52% of women will remarry after divorce
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Couples between ages 18 and 24 are most likely to split up
So often, we hear people talk about marriage who reduce it to the kind of statistics on divorce you see above. I feel this is unfair and I think Jesus feels the same way I do. Even if half of marriages end in divorce (and this number is actually closer to 40% than to 50%), that does not mean that you personally have a 50% chance of getting divorced if you get married. There are things you can do to pave the way for a good marriage.
Don’t Have a Hard Heart
In the Gospel, the Pharisees think they have a “gotcha moment” with Jesus when they point out that Moses allowed divorce.
“Moses permitted a husband to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her” (Mk. 10:4).
I have to wonder if Jesus rolled his eyes at this comment. I always feel bad for Jesus, getting repeatedly caught up in arguments with people proposing absurd points of view. Jesus had to be thinking: “I created the universe and you are quoting an obscure law from one of my prophets?” Jesus probably had a lot more self-control, but I would definitely have done the eye-roll. Perhaps he understood that for them, Moses was the maximum exponent of the Law and that anyone would have needed time to adjust to Jesus.
Jesus replies
“Because of the hardness of your heart he wrote you this commandment” (Mk. 10:5).
So, if you want to have a successful marriage, the first requirement is to get rid of that hard heart. If you don’t believe in lasting love, you probably will have a hard time forging a good, lasting marriage.
Live What the Church Teaches About Marriage
What does the Church teach about marriage? We tend to think that we implicitly understand what marriage is, based on what we see in society. What is so special about Catholic marriage anyways? There is a kernel of truth in the fact that marriage should be similar for people from all faith traditions and even those with no faith tradition. But there are definitely some clear expectations in Catholic marriage that help give it a better success rate. Now, we cannot reduce this to the entire population of couples that get married in the Church. Unfortunately, many people who get married do not believe everything that the Church teaches, and they set themselves for a much more difficult journey.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church gathers the teaching of the Church on marriage.
The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring, this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1601).
A covenant is deeper than a promise. So much of dating is often about having fun, when it should be about finding someone who is going to help you grow in your love for God and create a family. In marriage, you form a lifelong partnership. This is more important than founding a company. No decision will affect you as much as deciding who you marry. And yet, the temptation is to make fun the priority or give into other societal pressures.
If you get married in the Catholic Church, you are promising that your mission is to help this other person get to Heaven. This should be the first goal of your marriage. Are you living your dating life in a way that it prepares you for this life’s mission?
Original Plan
When Jesus establishes marriage as a sacrament, he brings it back to its original purpose, that we see in the Genesis story.
“This one, at last, is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
this one shall be called ‘woman, ‘
for out of ‘her man’ this one has been taken” (Gn. 2:23).
We understand man and woman in relation to one another and in relation to God. Jesus brings us back to the beginning because the purpose of God in the Garden was to make us happy. We turned away from that through sin. Our efforts to live the sacrament of matrimony is an effort to live according to God’s will and according to our own nature.
Your marriage is not just a statistic, since statistics apply to populations of things, not to individuals. You do not have a 50% chance of divorce if you live out what the Church teaches. By conforming your mind to the mind of Christ (cf. Rm. 12:2), you increase your possibility of a long and lasting marriage. By praying together, you strengthen your marriage. By living out the Church’s teaching on intimacy and love, you vastly increase your probability of a lasting marriage.
Not all of us are called to marriage. However, we are all able to learn about God’s great love through those who live out marriage authentically. The love spouses have for each other is a shadow of the great love that God has for us. Our society tries to give us a hard heart regarding marriage so that we fall into the trap of cheapening love instead of holding out for real love. We are called to go with God to the Garden so that he can love us and we can love freely, according to his original plan.
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