Homily of Bishop Mark Davies at Mass for the Annual Diocesan Celebration of Marriage, St Columba’s Church, Chester, 14 October 2023.

We have come together from across our diocese today to give thanks to God for the gift of marriage. As couples, as families, as friends and as parishioners, we come to give thanks for the generous love that has shaped our lives together.

The Scripture readings we have heard today remind us that marriage is not simply a human institution or a legal contract. From the very beginning, God designed man and woman for each other. “It is not good that the man should be alone,” the Lord God said. And so He gave Adam Eve as his partner and companion, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh.

In today’s Gospel, the Pharisees try to draw Jesus into a debate about divorce. But Jesus cuts through their legalistic questions to remind them – and to remind us – what marriage was always meant to be. He takes them back to the beginning, to that first marriage when God himself joined husband and wife together. “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.”

These words are not simply a rule or a prohibition. They are a description of what is truly happening when two people exchange their marriage vows. At that moment, God himself is at work, creating something new, something that has not existed before – a covenant, a bond of love that mirrors and participates in the love of God himself.

This is why the Church has always treasured and defended the institution of marriage. Not out of rigidity or a failure to understand human weakness, but out of reverence for the beautiful and awesome reality that marriage truly is.