St. John Paul II on God’s Plan for Marriage

One of the most striking passages in the Gospels is when Jesus’ disciples, upon hearing that marriage is not meant to end in divorce, muse, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry” (Matthew 19:10). Jesus tells them, “Not all men can receive this precept, but only those to whom it is given” (Matthew 19:11). The Church has taken nearly 2,000 years to understand more deeply what Christ meant when he said, “For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so” (Matthew 19:8). Now, this is not an essay on divorce and remarriage, but on the phrase “in the beginning it was not so.” Pope St. John Paul II helped the Church understand the great gift the Lord gave us by raising marriage to a sacrament and how we can, through grace, live free of the curse that was put between husbands and wives because of the Original Sin. Spouses married in the Church, to whom sacramental marriage has been given, can live as equals mutually submitting to the love given through the self-gift of each other. In the beginning this was so.

Read the rest at the National Catholic Register…