GOSPEL REFLECTION, FRIDAY, 19TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME, 14 AUGUST 2026, ST MAXIMILIAN KOLBE

Matthew 19:3-12.  Jesus and his disciples have now just left Galilee to make the long journey south around the Sea of Galilee on their way to Jerusalem.  Large crowds followed them and they would meet many more people on the way with a variety of requests and questions.  Some Pharisees approached them and asked Jesus in order to test where he stood on the question of divorce and remarriage.  The Greek word ‘to test’ here implies ‘testing with malicious intent,’ hoping Jesus would reply in a way that could lead to serious charges against him.

Jewish tradition had at least two main strands of thought on the subject: the school of Rabbi Shammai which held a very strict view on the matter; and the school of Rabbi Hillel which had a much more lenient view.  The Pharisees belonged to the Hillel interpretation.  If Jesus answered in the way they did not accept, he could be charged with heresy.  The liberal interpretation of the question depended largely on a quotation from The Law, based on Deuteronomy (24:1-2).  It stated, “suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her, and so he writes her a certificate of divorce, and puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house; she then leaves his house to become another man’s wife.”  This verse is within ‘the Law of Moses;’ if Jesus condemned it and the liberal position based on it, was he saying Moses was wrong?  Then the Pharisees would be able to charge him.  The other position, on which Shammai’s understanding was based, was also in the ‘Law of Moses,’ but the Pharisees rejected it (see Genesis 19:3-9).  Where did Jesus stand?  Was he going to take sides within this debate?  Would he choose the ‘wrong’ side?  What then?  Yet Jesus answered in terms that satisfied neither of these positions; his was a ‘counter-cultural’ position in terms of his preaching of the Kingdom of God.  We face the situation where we, now, are in a counter-cultural position opposing secular society’s various liberal positions favouring easy divorce and remarriage.

Jesus replied to the Pharisees that while not everyone could accept his position, it was the position of those who accepted in faith his teaching on the Kingdom of God.