Liturgically we may still be green, yet harvest colors dominate the scene as nature goes somber—and the rest of us with it. Sunday observance eclipses Our Lady of the Rosary this year, but that’s no reason to neglect the beads during Rosary Month. The church observes Respect Life Sunday (7), World Mission Sunday (21), and Priesthood Sunday (28).

The original covenant of love was initiated by God. God made that covenant with our spiritual ancestors and commits to that covenant with each one of us today. Commitments and relationships and connections are at the heart of the questions posed in this week’s readings.

Is this “divorce Sunday”? I used to think of the occasional emergence of this set of readings in this way, a kind of Scriptural Open Season on all those who made the mistake of marrying the wrong person (or people, God help us).

Pharisees came up, intending to give him a hard time. They asked, “Is it legal for a man to divorce his wife?”

In a dusty box in the corner of an antique store that itself was old enough to be considered an antique were hundreds of faded, torn, and forgotten photographs. Most were taken with handheld cameras that recorded the memories of many an American family over the decades, each one a story.

It is impossible to imagine a time in history when one group or another wasn’t being abused, exploited, or denied the rights and dignities deserving of any human being—think of Africans and the slave trade, Native Americans and land grabbing, sick and disabled people and unregulated medical experiments, women and lack of access to power, and children and forced labor.

I’ve been married dozens of times—all to the same woman. In any relationship you have to keep committing and recommitting as times and circumstances change and you come to know more about your partner and yourself. And so a marriage is not a wedding day but a series of decisions to be for and with the other person “for better or for worse.”

We ask for blessing from the one for whom and through whom all things exist.

It is a lovely thing to have a husband and wife developing together and having the feeling of falling in love again. That is what marriage really means: helping one another to reach the full status of being persons, responsible and autonomous beings who do not run away from life.