Many married Christian couples are troubled by Jesus’ interaction with the Sadduccees when they tried to entrap him with the riddle of the woman who had 7 deceased husbands. They wanted to know who her husband would be in The World to Come. The important issue is that the Sadduccees didn’t believe in the Resurrection and The World to Come. They were simply playing games to entrap Jesus with an improbable scenario to demonstrate, in their minds, the ridiculousness that there is life after death.
First Jesus confounds them by revealing that we are not given in marriage in The World to Come, but are like the angels. The interaction concludes with Jesus demonstrating that God IS the God of Jacob (not was) to prove that our souls are eternal. The proof of the eternality of our souls is not our focus here but it was the point in Jesus’ interaction. I expect if you are reading this you have already been graced with the hope of the Resurrection.
To gain more insight in matrimony after death we need to highlight the additional commands of Jesus that fulfilled the Torah. One of these was the prohition of divorce. In the Mosaic law divorce had been permitted, and with little reason needed according to some sages. Jesus clarified that there is no divorce and that new intimacies outside of the first marriage were adultery.
In Jesus’ law the woman of the riddle with the string of deceased husbands, although improbable, is not really an issue where eternity is concerned. St. Paul recommends widows remarry. Thus the unthinkable Resurrection becomes, to their eyes, even more what they could not fathom. Remarried spouses are joined in communion with deceased spouses—and the other spouses. It is not polygamy because the time and need for consumation has passed. As perfected beings, the passions have been refined in holiness and no longer are quick to jealousy, envy and lust. All the sacramental spouses will be in communion.
The troublesome idea that we are going to be seperated from our spouses in eternity is therefore incorrect. Those in a sacramental marriage become one flesh and remain so. They become a kind of fractal of the trinity. The man person and woman person are bonded by the Holy Spirit of love—as if a third person. This One Flesh has generative power (bestowed by God) to beget new life.
Jesus tells the Sadduccees we are like the angels. The angels are neither male or female. The One Flesh is neither male or female because they are both. The One Flesh has been joined together by God. They cannot be “put asunder” even by successive (sacramental or natural) marriages in the case of the woman of the riddle.
If we are anxious about being seperated from our spouses in The World to Come by Jesus the Judge, I don’t think we will be. Jesus is the Godman. What God has joined together let no man put asunder.
What’s key to understand is the context of Jesus’ interaction as well as the eternal nature of sacramental marriage. Catholics do not say “Til death do us part” because we have become one being and one body of two persons bonded by love. We will be one with our sacramental spouse for eternity in both body and spirit.
It’s a little harder to fathom what this means for sacramentally remarried widows and widowers. However, it need not be compliated. They all remain united in the Resurrection. We can’t say more beyond that because our natural hearts are still enumbered with appropriate earthily concerns like desire and jealousy which will one day be cleansed.
Personally, perhaps because of these earthly encumbrances, I feel if my spouse went first I would not remarry if I could manage. I know that’s a selfishness and jealousy I will no longer have in the World to Come. But as I do live in the world, I have it now and that’s where I’ve landed.
Matthew 22
23 That day there came to him the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection; and asked him,
24 Saying: Master, Moses said: If a man die having no son, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up issue to his brother.
25 Now there were with us seven brethren: and the first having married a wife, died; and not having issue, left his wife to his brother.
26 In like manner the second, and the third, and so on to the seventh.
27 And last of all the woman died also.
28 At the resurrection therefore whose wife of the seven shall she be? for they all had her.
29 And Jesus answering, said to them: You err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God.
30 For in the resurrection they shall neither marry nor be married; but shall be as the angels of God in heaven.
31 And concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read that which was spoken by God, saying to you:
32 I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
Mark 10
2Some Pharisees came to test Him. “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” they inquired.
3“What did Moses command you?” He replied.
4They answered, “Moses permitted a man to write his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away.”a
5But Jesus told them, “Moses wrote this commandment for you because of your hardness of heart. 6However, from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’b 7‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,c 8and the two will become one flesh.’d So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”
10When they were back inside the house, the disciples asked Jesus about this matter. 11So He told them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. 12And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.”
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Jewish/Christian marriage is a sacrament. Whatever came after with subsequent husbands may be considered natural, non-sacramental marriage. Natural marriage is not sinful. It is the moral natural law for non-Christians and non-Jews (and divorce is permitted by God in natural non-Christian/sacramental marriage).
