Mark 10:1-12 NRSVue

¹He left that place and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan. And crowds again gathered around him, and, as was his custom, he again taught them.

²Some, testing him, asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” ³He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” ⁴They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” ⁵But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. ⁶But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ⁷‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife,^{, 8}and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. ⁹Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

¹⁰Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. ¹¹He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, ¹²and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

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Some thoughts on this scripture

Reflection
Jesus stuns the Pharisees and his disciples by forbidding divorce. On what grounds? In words repeated in the marriage rite he insists, ‘What God has joined together, let no one separate.’ God who ‘from the beginning’ in his love created these two individuals now calls them together to commit without reserve to a lifelong union of hearts, so that they are no longer two, but one flesh.

Reflection
The solution to marriage difficulties is not desertion, but forgiveness and a rekindling of love.