Category

Family Life

Nov 29
1

Begging for Union

By | Communication, Family Life, Finding Joy, Holidays, Marriage Enrichment, Spirituality | No Comments

By Christy Wilkens  In a perfect world, a husband and wife lay down their lives for each other as Christ lays down his body for us in the Eucharist. Both marriage and Holy Communion are sacrament and sacrifice, examples of how dying to self produces life-giving love.  We do not live in a perfect world. Every individual, and every marriage, bears the mark of the Fall in unique and exquisitely painful ways. Stress. Infidelity. Disease. Addiction. Misunderstanding that festers into resentment.  For hope in these dark moments, when love seems lost and our human powers of reconciliation fail, let us draw upon these words: “Never permit me to be separated from You.”  That line is from the Spiritual Communion prayer of St. Alphonsus Liguori, a prayer that allows us to commune fully with Jesus in God’s mysterious space-time while we are apart in our own. This humble prayer can also unite us with our spouses across emotional distance. Our marriages…

Read More
Jun 28
1

Love

By | Communication, Family Life, Marriage Enrichment | No Comments

This I command you: love one another. —John 15:17 Although love is the most important fruit of the Holy Spirit, it’s also the least understood. If you put the word “love” in an internet search engine, the results will probably include the words “feeling,” “desire,” or “romance.” According to advertisers, we express love for others by buying expensive gifts. According to the media, celebrity couples fall in and out of love every day. We speak of loving everything from sports to chocolate cake. In Matthew 22:36–39, Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment is to love God and the second greatest is to love our neighbor. This brings us to an important question—what exactly is love? According to St. Thomas Aquinas, “To love is to will the good of another.” Contrary to what the world believes, love is not a feeling. While it is true that affection often accompanies love,…

Read More
Apr 26
1

Crafting Your Couple (or Family) Mission Statement

By | Communication, Family Life, Finding Joy, Marriage Enrichment | No Comments

By Mark and Melanie Hart It’s vital for couples to have a common vision of what success looks like at home and not just view parenting as a shared workload. This is one reason we believe so strongly that every couple should have a mission statement for their marriage and family. It should be something you can craft together, live by, and, as the kids get older, introduce to your children. Every couple’s mission statement will look different, but here are some priorities that you may want to consider: Putting your marriage relationship first. Incorporating your Catholic faith. Committing to serving others as a family. Practicing hospitality and having a home open to visitors. Making healthy lifestyle choices. Teaching your kids about the faith. Fostering prayer and virtue within the home. We recommend taking this project to prayer and asking the Lord to guide you as you write down what…

Read More
Apr 26
1

Thank God for Mothers

By | Family Life, Finding Joy | No Comments

By John Bosio  To the poets, May is the month of flowers; for the Church, it is the month of Mary; and for all of us, it is the month to celebrate our mothers. In honor of Mother’s Day, I share with you Pope Francis’s message to mothers in the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, The Joy of Love.  Motherhood begins with pregnancy and the Pope recognizes that pregnancy is difficult at times, but also rewarding. “A mother joins with God to bring forth the miracle of new life.” He encourages mothers to ask God for the wisdom to know their children and to accept them as they are. “It is important for a child to feel wanted. He or she is not an accessory or a solution to a particular problem.” (127)   The Pope is very specific with his advice to mothers. “With great affection, I urge all future mothers: keep happy and let nothing rob you of the interior joy…

Read More
Mar 24
2

Sacramental Blueprint for a Happier Marriage

By | Catholic Weddings, Communication, Family Life, Marriage Enrichment, Romance, Spirituality | No Comments

By John Bosio  A few years ago I read in our Catholic newspaper an interview with a couple who attended the annual wedding anniversary Mass presided by the local bishop. The reporter asked the wife to share the secret of their successful fifty-year marriage. The wife responded that they had found great strength in their shared faith and in their participation in the Church’s sacraments.    If we were to ask a hundred Catholic couples how their faith helps them persevere and grow in their relationship we would likely hear a hundred different answers. But in these answers we would find a common theme: their understanding of what love is. Catholic couples learn the qualities of Christian love when they gather around the Eucharistic table and when they participate in the sacraments. When gathered as a community in prayer, they hear Jesus’ message: “Love one another as I have loved you.” (Jn 15:12)  And as…

Read More
Feb 23
2

Celebrating the Joy of Love in the Family

By | Communication, Family Life, Finding Joy, Marriage Enrichment | No Comments

By John Bosio  In 2014 and 2015, the Catholic Church experienced an unprecedented event: a Synod of Bishops that spanned two years. The topic of the synod was the family. In preparation for that event, Catholics around the world were asked about the needs of families.  Families and their importance in the life of the Church were on the minds of the bishops as they debated how to support and care for them. In 2016, Pope Francis—responding to the recommendations of the synod—issued the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love). Francis tells us that the Church is a family of families; therefore if families are strong, the Church is strong. Both St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI also believed that the future of the Church and of society depends on the wellbeing of the family. Unfortunately, many families today are struggling because of the social and economic damages caused by the pandemic and other disasters.  On March 19, the feast of St. Joseph, Pope Francis will launch a year of activities…

Read More
Nov 23
0

Celebrate Your Story 

By | Communication, Family Life, Finding Joy, Marriage Enrichment, Romance | No Comments

By John Bosio    I have never met a couple, regardless of how long they have been married, who did not cherish sharing memories of their beginning and of the key moments in their life together.  Every couple is a unique story. You and your spouse are a story. I invite you to celebrate the journey you have traveled thus far together by recalling your story.  The song from the movie The Love Story. sung by Andy Williams, comes to mind: “Where do I begin to tell the story of a love…”  If I asked you to tell me your love story where would it begin? Would you start telling your story from your wedding day or would you go back to a time when you first met, or even to a time before you ever knew each other?   Each year for the past seven years, when I go to Thailand on business, I am reminded…

Read More
Oct 30
0

I Would Be Happy If . . .

By | Catholic Weddings, Communication, Family Life, Marriage Enrichment | No Comments

 By John Bosio   During a recent visit with my sister and brother-in-law who are adjusting to the retired life, each of them complained to me about the other. She was saying: “Retired life would be great if he was not so stubborn. When he sets his mind to do something, he does it, and either I go along with it or we fight. The house is a mess. He starts a project, then another, then one more, and never finishes any one of them. His presence at home 24 hours-a–day drives me crazy.”   I heard a similar litany from her husband: “I retired first and I had my own comfortable routine at home during the day. Now she is at home and we get in each other’s way. She criticizes everything I do, including my favorite hobbies. For years I enjoyed tending to our garden. When she was working she had no interest in it. Now she is telling me what to plant and when to…

Read More
Sep 28
0

Extraordinary Love

By | Communication, Family Life, Marriage Enrichment, Spirituality | No Comments

By Nicole Rodriguez  Have you ever noticed that God likes to work outside of our paradigm? He loves to do the unthinkable and the unimaginable in our lives. With the most ordinary of circumstances, he creates the extraordinary. Such as with the simple question posed to me many years ago: “How many children do you want?”   My story begins with a desire to have children in the beautifully ordinary way. After losing our first child to miscarriage, my husband, Lance, and I waited six long years before discovering with delight that I was pregnant again. Our excitement and joy for Thomas, our second baby boy, were understandably tempered with anxiety, and within just a few short weeks, our hopes were dashed.  We were both heartbroken. Instead of turning inward in our suffering, we made a choice to turn to God and our prayer community. As our community gathered around us to share in our suffering and to pray with us, one friend asked…

Read More
Sep 28
1

Patience, a Virtue for Our Time

By | Communication, Family Life, Marriage Enrichment, Meaning of Marriage, Uncategorized | No Comments

By John Bosio  After months of a pandemic, with physical and social restrictions, most of us feel the effect of chronic stress. This manifests itself in our homes through arguments about money and bills, disagreements about managing the children, spats about whose turn it is to do a task in the home, and disconnects in other aspects of daily life. If you find yourself having difficult and tense conversations with your spouse and with your children, it may be helpful to pray for an increase in patience and tolerance, and to consider the following suggestions gathered from marriage experts:  Pick your battles—Not every conflict needs to turn into a battle. John Gottman, a respected researcher on marriage, points out that 69 percent of conflicts in a marriage are recurring; they are not solvable. Couples need to learn to live with them. He and other psychologists point out that patience and compromise are essential virtues in marriage. 2. Control how you respond—Many conflicts with our spouse or our children are not…

Read More