Fr Marco Lazzaron
hat God wants with all of us is to have a relationship. So, what can he do but defend every authentic relationship strenuously? Indeed, to defend one’s favourite creature, which is made in his image and likeness?
This is the profound meaning of the wonderful praise of marriage that Jesus gives us. He invites us to return to the origin, to that plan of love which has inscribed in the heart of every man and every woman, the yearning to love and be loved totally and forever. God created the human beings capable of giving themselves and welcoming the man or woman who, “face to face”, stands before them in identical and radical dignity. Jesus knows well the hardships and risks inherent in the desire for a life together that is lasting and faithful, that has no limits while drawing on the limits of our flesh. And he takes care to reiterate the eternal word of the Father in evoking the original plan because he knows that therein lies the secret of the happiness that each of us desires to reach.
We are made to be one starting from respect and care for the other, which holds something unattainable while giving ourselves to the other. A journey that can always start again when we return to discover the truth inscribed in the spirit and therefore widespread in every cell of the human body, capable of loving everything in its entirety: the truth is discovering talents and fragilities, gifts and defects, strengths and weaknesses, that generates freedom and joy.
Jesus chooses to always be on the side of those who suffer most from the inconsistencies of this bond, because they are victims of a wrong way of living it or because they are still incapable of assuming all the consequences. The Son of the Father never mentions being satisfied with half-way relationships or convenient solutions, which have no other consequence than disfiguring the intimate dignity of men and women, especially those who are more vulnerable. And in reiterating the immense trust that God has in our ability to adhere to his life plan ‘in toto’, he does not hold back from doing his part, from irrigating the field of relationship with his testimony and his strength of total offering . On the cross, Jesus definitively marries his Church and at the same time showers it with the grace that enables it to follow his example.
The same goes for social life and for relationships between peoples, for every area in which humanity finds itself investing its vital energies to establish bonds. The other is a surprising expression of the unprecedented and unexpected care that God has for me.