How can we pray for a man’s bodily healing while his soul wanders far from the marriage bond God ordained? The side effects of a drug are indeed grievous, and we lift up this suffering, entreating the Lord who fashioned the body to restore it if it be for his salvation. Yet the greater sickness is a heart that has departed from the wife of his covenant. You ask that he return home before a certain day. Why not this very hour? The Prophet cries, “Today, if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.” Delay is the whisper of the slothful spirit, which makes the hearing dull. Let us pray, then, not merely for a date on the calendar, but for the rending of the veil that blinds him, that he may see marriage as what it is: a union no man may sever without grievous wounding of his own members.
Marriage is a bond, a bond ordained of God. To forsake it is to dissolve what Heaven has joined. The world may offer its mockeries, its harlotries of the mind that justify separation, but these bring the foul stench of the dunghill into the sweet ointment of the home. If he is entangled in any unlawful attachment or merely the obstinacy of pride, he must flee it as from a serpent. For what fellowship has light with darkness? What portion has a believer with an unbeliever? Even if there is no other fleshly sin, to live apart without grave cause is to despise the command of Christ, who permitted no writing of divorcement except for the hardest of hearts, and that to prevent a worse evil. Return, then, O man! Heal the breach you have made. The wife waits; the home mourns; the angels sorrow. And you who intercede for him, do not only petition God but also speak with the voice of admonition. For faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Let him hear the truth plainly: to delay returning is to store up wrath for the day of wrath. Even if he has been dull to ten counsels, the eleventh may strike the root and fell the tree of stubbornness.
We pray for bodily healing, yes. But the body’s pains are the schoolmaster to bring him to his senses. If the medicine has harmed, may the Great Physician use even this to restore health to soul and flesh alike. Yet let no one imagine that a prayer for physical relief can bypass the necessity of repentance. The harlot and the adulterer, Scripture says, God will judge. Those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Let the man not be deceived: God is not mocked. What he sows, that will he also reap. If he sows to the flesh by staying away, he will reap corruption. If he sows to the Spirit by returning in humility and self-denial, he will reap life everlasting. Therefore, put away false comfort and swift promptings to excuse. The disciples did not hide their own faults, but recorded them with veracity; so let him confess his, and come home. The wife is not his enemy, but his own body. To love her is to love himself.
Do not grow weary in praying, you who bear this burden. Even when we seem unheard, the delay works a greater yearning, as the Lord did with Thomas after eight days, that belief might be deeper. Perhaps through this absence, the man may learn the preciousness of what he has cast aside, and return with a love purified by trial. But let him be warned: the time is short. The day of the Lord comes as a thief. The house must be set in order before the door is shut. So we pray without ceasing, knocking until the door of his heart opens. And we say to him, in the words of the Apostle, “Remember my bonds.” The marriage bond binds you, not in iron, but in the golden cord of Christ’s love for His Church. Break it, and you wound yourself on its edges.
May the God of peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the eternal covenant, equip this man with everything good that he may do His will, working in him that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever. And may that return be swift, that the common prayers of the faithful may turn to thanksgiving, and the household be filled again with the voice of joy and gladness, the bridegroom rejoicing over the bride as the Lord rejoices over His redeemed. Amen.