Fr Paul Gooley reads from the Gospel of Matthew (19: 3-12) in which some Pharisees approached Jesus and to test him they asked, “Is it against the law for a man to divorce his wife on any pretext whatever?”.

Fr Paul says, Matthew’s version of Jesus’ upholding the laws on divorce is taken from Mark, with some slight adjustments. Matthew adds to it the alarmed reaction of the disciples and Jesus’ further teaching on the voluntary acceptance of celibacy, ‘let anyone accept this who can’.

Within Judaism celibacy would have been a surprisingly novel teaching because of the companionship between man and woman, and the command to ‘be fruitful and multiply and fill the whole earth’ that is mentioned in the Creation narrative of the Book of Genesis.

However, from the beginning of the monastic movement in the third century celibacy has been seen in the Church as a symbol of total dedication to God, a preference to joy in the values of the Kingdom of God over the joys of married life. It is also, of course, a way of imitating Jesus himself who chose to remain unmarried.

Today, Fr Paul invites us to ask ourselves, ‘Whether married or celibate how can I best serve the Lord?’.