13 March 2027 · Syro-Malabar Rite
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“Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” Mark 10:9
We usually hear the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians at weddings, and it belongs there. But Paul did not write it for a bride and groom. He wrote it for a quarrelsome parish in a rich port city, where believers competed over spiritual gifts, divided into parties, and went to court against one another. So he begins by emptying every gift of its value if love is missing: “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” Even heroic giving counts for nothing without it. Then he describes love not with feelings but with verbs, things love does and does not do: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” An old retreat preacher used to tell his listeners to read these lines again, putting their own name in place of the word love, and to stop at the first line where it became untrue. Only one Name fits every line: Jesus. Corinth was famous for its bronze mirrors, which gave back a blurred and darkened image; Paul uses them for our present knowledge of God: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.” Prophecies, tongues and knowledge will pass; “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”
In the Gospel some Pharisees test Jesus with a question much debated among the teachers of his day: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” Jesus asks what Moses commanded, and they answer that Moses allowed a certificate of dismissal. Jesus goes back further than Moses, to the beginning: “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘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, let no one separate.” The Church has kept this word faithfully: a valid sacramental marriage, once consummated, cannot be dissolved by any human power. This is not a heavy burden laid on weak shoulders; it is a gift of grace, for Christ who asks it gives the strength to live it. At a Syro-Malabar wedding the bridegroom ties the minnu around the bride's neck and places the manthrakodi upon her, both blessed by the priest, signs of a bond meant to last until death. Paul's hymn is the daily bread of such a marriage: patient, kind, not irritable, bearing and enduring all things. At the same time the Church does not forget those whose marriages have been wounded or broken. They remain her children, are welcome in the parish, are accompanied with care, and may seek the help of the Church's tribunals to examine whether a true marriage existed. The Great Fast is a good time for every married couple to renew their promise, and for every family to pray for the marriages that are struggling.
Theme: “Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Love without which every gift is nothing, the patient and kind love of daily life, and the marriage that God joined from the beginning.
“Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If one offered for love all the wealth of one's house, it would be utterly scorned.” Song of Songs 8:7
“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” 1 Corinthians 13:1
Apply: Do one good work today simply out of love, expecting nothing in return.
“Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.” Genesis 2:24
“Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” Mark 10:9
Apply: Pray tonight for your own marriage, or for a marriage you know that is struggling.
“One thing I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: to live in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in his temple.” Psalm 27:4
“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12
Apply: Spend ten minutes before the Blessed Sacrament this week, asking to see the Lord's face more clearly.
Without love we are nothing; with Christ's love a home becomes a sanctuary.
What God has joined, his grace can keep; and the love we practise now will see him face to face.
Take-home resolution: Read 1 Corinthians 13:4–7 each evening this week with your own name, and pray for the marriages in your family.
Dear friends, Paul tells a divided parish in Corinth: if I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal (1 Corinthians 13:1). Without love, every gift is nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind; it does not insist on its own way; it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Corinthians 13:4–7). Put your own name in place of love, and see where you must grow this Lent.
In the Gospel Jesus goes back to the beginning: God made them male and female, and the two become one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate (Mark 10:6–9). Christian marriage is a gift of grace, and Christ gives the strength to live it.
Let us pray today for all married couples, especially those who are struggling, and for those whose marriages are broken, who remain our brothers and sisters. Faith, hope and love abide, and the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13:13). Amen.
Children, Paul says that love is patient and kind, and does not always want its own way. Can you be patient and kind with your brothers, sisters and parents today, even when it is hard?
Lord Jesus Christ, you are the love that is patient and kind, that bears all things and never ends. Without you we are noisy gongs and clanging cymbals. Make us patient and kind in our homes; strengthen husbands and wives to remain one flesh, as God joined them from the beginning; heal the wounds of broken marriages and console those who suffer from them; and bring us all at last from the dim mirror to see you face to face. Amen.
Two readings on love that lasts. Paul’s great chapter tells a divided community that without love every spiritual gift is empty noise, and that love alone will never end. In Mark, Jesus is asked about divorce, and he goes behind the concession of Moses to the beginning of creation: “what God has joined together, let no one separate.” One reading describes what love is, and the other shows it as a covenant. Both are demanding, and neither is possible without grace.
Setting.
Paul writes from Ephesus (16:8) in the mid 50s to a gifted and quarrelsome community. Chapters 12–14 concern the spiritual gifts, especially tongues and prophecy, which some were treating as marks of rank. Chapter 13 stands in the middle of that argument. People often hear it at weddings, and it does suit them, but its first hearers were a divided parish. Paul is correcting them.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” (13:3)
A note on the text. The ancient manuscripts differ by one Greek letter in the key verb. Some of the oldest read “so that I may boast”, which the NRSV follows. Many others read “to be burned”, which the Malayalam POC follows. Either way, even heroic giving is empty without love: a sobering word for a season of fasting and alms.
“Love is patient; love is kind;” (13:4)
Paul begins with patience, the slow-to-anger of God in the Old Testament, and kindness. The Corinthians’ faults stand behind the list: envy, boasting, rudeness, insisting on one’s own way. It is said that one may test the passage by putting one’s own name in the place of “love”. Better still, put Christ’s.
“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.” (13:12)
This is the Church’s language for heaven (CCC 1023). What we know of God now is true, and it is only partial. The verse ends with something greater than our knowing: we have “been fully known”, and we are known by God now.
“And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” (13:13)
These are the three theological virtues. Love is greatest because it does not pass into something else: in the end, faith gives way to sight and hope to possession, and love remains.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism quotes vv. 4–7 and vv. 1–3 when it teaches on charity, the form of all the virtues (CCC 1825–1827). Pope Benedict XVI calls this hymn “the Magna Carta of all ecclesial service” (Deus Caritas Est 34). St Thérèse of Lisieux, searching these chapters for her own vocation, wrote that in the heart of the Church her mother she would be love (Story of a Soul, Manuscript B). It is a page that speaks to every vocation.
Setting.
Jesus has left Galilee and is moving toward Jerusalem, through “the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan”. Some Pharisees come “to test him”. Deuteronomy 24:1–4 presupposed that a husband might write a certificate of dismissal. Later Jewish sources record a debate among teachers about what grounds for it were sufficient, so the question was a live one. The land beyond the Jordan was also ruled by Herod Antipas, who had put to death John the Baptist, the man who challenged his marriage (Mark 6:17–18), so it was also a dangerous question.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you.” (10:5)
Jesus does not attack Moses or Israel’s law. He distinguishes what the law allowed for a broken situation from what God wanted in the beginning, using the Torah itself to do so.
“Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” (10:9)
Here is the heart of the reading. The new thing is that the Kingdom has come, and with it a grace that can heal the hard heart. Jesus’ word protects the wife as well as the husband.
“and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” (10:12)
Only Mark has this verse. Roman law allowed a wife to divorce, and many scholars think that Mark is applying Jesus’ word to his Gentile readers. The rule is the same for both, and that itself was a protection for women.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism says that Jesus unequivocally taught the original meaning of marriage, and that the permission of Moses was a concession to hard hearts (CCC 1614). It adds that he gives strength and grace to live marriage in the new dimension of the Reign of God (CCC 1615). The bond of a valid, consummated sacramental marriage cannot be dissolved (CCC 1640).
What does the Church say to those whose marriages have broken down?
She holds to the Lord’s word and also to his mercy. Separation is allowed where living together has become practically impossible, for instance when there is danger, while the bond remains (CCC 1649). A Church tribunal can examine whether a valid marriage ever existed (CCC 1629). Those who have divorced and entered a new civil union have not been cut off: the Catechism asks for attentive care for them (CCC 1651), and Pope Francis asks that they be made to feel part of the Church (Amoris Laetitia 243). A priest can guide each person through what is possible in their situation.