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Good evening, Father.

My name is M. and I am 54 years old.

I ask for your advice which my heart needs so much….

I am divorced but not by my choice.  I then lived with my son’s father for 7 years, but the story ended badly because of his abusiveness. After several years I met C. in painful circumstances, we lived together for 4 and 1/2 years then, because of difficulties between him and my son, I had to send them away from our house; we no longer saw each other for 1 year and 1/2, but we have never forgotten each other.

Now, after we met by chance,  we would like to resume a serious and conscious relationship at his place.

I spoke about it in Confession and the priest, who follows me, surprisingly told me that even by not living together, if there were intimate relationships, I can no longer receive Holy Communion; I would greatly suffer of that, I thought there was no problem without cohabitation  and instead it is a mortal sin.

I keep C. waiting, he is longing for my decision, a decision that affects my whole life and his, with relative suffering, therefore  not easy at all. I have found myself facing a choice between God and him, my head and heart are completely lost in a never imagined chaos. Truly, the priest must follow the law of the Church, but I think it would not be wrong to keep the human perspective in mind.

What do you think about this topic?

Thank you for your answer.

Best regards.

M.

The priest’s answer 

Dear M.,

1. Marriage is not a form of common life, just as cohabitations -de-facto or civil unions.

Through marital consent the two spouses give each-self up to the other.

In some way they expropriate themselves and, in the fullness of love, they say to each other: “I no longer belong to me, but I belong to you. I am yours forever. Indeed, I am exclusively yours.

I promise to love and respect you for life.”

The marriage celebrated in Church sanctions this union afore God.

The spouses are happy to hear on that day: “what God has joined together, no human being must separate” (Mt 19:6).

2. Therefore, although you went through a divorce, and your husband made a greatly wrong deed to you, and God will judge him for that, you still belong exclusively to him. And he belongs exclusively to you.

If your husband is with another woman he lives in a situation of permanent adultery.

And you too commit adultery by joining with another man who is not your husband.

3. This is the reason why the priest could not absolve you: because you live in a status of permanent adultery.

The priest also has a conscience and knows that he must answer afore God for his deeds.

If he tells a person that extramarital sexual relations are permitted, he commits a mortal sin, and if he continues to celebrate Mass, he commits sacrilege.

4. Even before his faithfulness to the laws of the Church, the priest must be faithful to God whose minister he is.

What may he tell you to help?

5. First, he should verify whether the marriage celebrated at the time was a valid marriage.

Eventually, a case would be initiated in the ecclesiastical court for declaration of nullity of the bond.

Then you would again be able to get married.

At the same time, you need to check whether the man you intend to marry can do so. Because if he too is divorced, he continues to belong to his wife and cannot give himself to you.

6. You say that the priest should also consider the human perspective.

Yes, that is true. That is why the priest should not settle by only telling the faithful that he cannot give absolution. Pastoral care must be appropriately established for people who live in a status of irregularity afore God and in the Church.

However, the priest must be close to the faithful as a priest, that is as one leading those entrusted to him for the ways of God, for the ways of sanctification.

This is his primary task.

7. As you can see, I led you back to the reality of the wedding you celebrated.

That marriage did not end in God’s view.

On that day a man was handed over to your care for his eternal life.

That man has freed himself from you, but he continues to remain yours.

Your task of guarding him for eternal life is not over. In fact, all must still be achieved.

8. Just as God does not abandon a man when he is unfaithful, but He continues to follow him  in secret ways to bring him back to Himself, and, as Jesus Christ also does the same with the Church because He does not abandon it even if many are unfaithful, so Christian spouses are called to do so as well.

9. By sacramental marriage, Christian spouses agreed to be for each other a visible sign of the faithful and exclusive love of God for mankind and of Jesus Christ for the Church.

They draw their mutual sanctification by imitating the ever-faithful love of God for men and of Jesus Christ for the Church.

Sometimes this imitation is an authentic martyrdom. But, did not Christ obtain our redemption by martyrdom?

10. Christian spouses must always keep in their minds what God tells them by Paul: ‘Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So (also) husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.

“For this reason a man shall leave (his) father and (his) mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church’ (Eph 5:25-32).

The same deeds that husbands must do for their wives, wives must do for their husbands.

11. “This is a great mystery.”

Mystery means: hidden reality.

The hidden reality that Christian spouses must try to live and manifest is precisely God’s way of loving and Jesus Christ’s way of loving. It is in this way that they obtain their specific sanctification.

I am aware that these words perhaps might move you into a crisis even deeper.

Nonetheless, this is the Gospel about marriage that must be announced.

I gladly assure my prayer for you.

I wish you all the best in Christ and I bless you.

Father Angelo