Category

Marriage Enrichment

Apr 25
0

Learning to Bring Comfort and Healing

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In marriage, loving as Jesus means being aware of each other’s needs and pains and helping one another carry our burdens. One of the early challenges couples experience in marriage is the feeling of drifting apart and the anguish that comes from it. Dr. William Doherty writes that getting married is like launching a trip on the Mississippi River with a canoe. Unless the couple paddles to resist the currents, they will be carried downstream to places they did not intend to visit. Dr. Doherty writes in his book Take Back Your Marriage that after a few months or years of marriage, spouses tend to let their relationship shift into “automatic pilot,” and they drift apart. John: What’s Wrong with Us? The young lady sitting in my office looked distraught. Valerie and John had been married barely six months. They married dreaming of a blissful life together. Now, however, Valerie…

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Apr 25
0

Tools for Enduring Pain and Suffering in Faith

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Our Attitude Makes a Difference John: I Say “White”; He Says “Black” A few years ago I visited my sister and her husband who live in Italy. During a quiet moment when she and I were alone on her balcony overlooking the garden, she said with a frustrated tone in her voice, “How can I go on? He is driving me crazy.” She was referring to her husband. “There are days I cannot stand him. I say ‘white’; he says ‘black.’ I say, ‘Let’s go right’; he wants to go left.” Then, after a long pause, she added, “I guess this is life. We are different. He is my cross, and I am his.” She continued, “John, don’t misunderstand me. There are many good days, and I am grateful for them. I love him. But when things get tough, I pray a lot for peace, and then I carry on….

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Apr 25
2

What the Anointing of the Sick Teaches Us about Marriage

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God’s compassion and comfort touches us today in the sacraments of the Catholic Church, and in a particular way in the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. In this sacrament, Christ embraces us with his forgiving and healing love. He joins our pains to his suffering on the Cross and in so doing gives meaning to our distresses and gives us hope because of his resurrection. Christ’s healing is felt today, through the power of the Holy Spirit, by those who receive the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. In one of the letters to the early Christians, James prescribed the ancient practice of anointing the sick when he wrote, “Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord” (Jas 5:14). The sacrament of the Anointing of…

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Mar 28
3

Tools for Building a Strong Marriage

By | Communication, Finding Joy, Marriage Enrichment, Meaning of Marriage | No Comments

Married life is full of conflicts. The tools we explore here are twofold: the communication skills needed for resolving conflicts and the power of prayer to help us grow in mutual respect and overcome our natural tendency to self-centeredness. Teri: War and Peace One summer, while sailing on a local lake, I saw a boat with a name that caught my attention: War & Peace. Someone told me that the boat belonged to an older couple, members of our parish. Weeks later when I saw them at a parish function, I said to them, “There must be a story behind the name of your boat.” Doris and Ken are a delightful pair. They looked at each other with a smile, and then Doris explained that early in their marriage they were looking for a way to spend fun time together. “We discovered that we both loved being on the water…

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Mar 28
1

Making Love or Having Sex: What’s the Difference?

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The Catholic Church regards marital intercourse as the most intimate gift of one person to the other and sees it as more than just “having sex,” which is having intercourse for self-gratification. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “In marriage the physical intimacy of the spouses becomes a sign and a pledge of spiritual communion” (CCC, 2360). Making love involves a mutual surrender that unites body and spirit and that is the source of pleasure and joy. The Catechism reminds spouses that the physical pleasure of sexual intercourse is a gift from God to be enjoyed (CCC, 2362). It is in sexual intercourse that spouses celebrate their being a communion of persons. In that communion, they place their fertility at the service of God. For Catholics, sexual intercourse is always intimately tied to God’s creative power. Chastity and Tenderness in Marriage The virtue of chastity must guide you in…

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Mar 28
1

What the Eucharist Teaches Us about Marriage

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In Christian marriage, Jesus invites us to be generous and to give our­selves to our spouses as he gives himself to us in the Eucharist. The fol­lowing are some of the similarities between the Eucharist and Marriage. The Eucharist is a sacrament through which Christ gives himself totally to us. Marriage is a sacrament in which the spouses give themselves totally to each other. The Eucharist is a sacrament of communion and intimacy. In the Mass Jesus shares himself with us, he makes himself vulnerable to us, and through our reception of him we grow in communion and intimacy with him. Marriage is also a sacrament of commu­nion and intimacy. Through the spouses’ mutual sharing of their lives—dreams, feelings, thoughts, material possessions, finances, and bodies—they make themselves vulnerable to each other; when such gift is respected and accepted, they grow in union and intimacy. The Eucharist is a sacrament of…

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Feb 22
0

Common Obstacles to Forgiving and Reconciling

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Anger, resentment, and violent behaviors are all obstacles to reconciliation, and their presence destroys a marriage. There are other obstacles that are less explosive but just as deadly to the relationship because they foster an attitude of hostility. Researchers at the Seattle Marital and Family Institute have identified four types of behaviors that hurt relationships. They are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. Gottman’s research team calls these the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” because they are the harbingers of death to the marital relationship.  The Four Horsemen  The first of the Four Horsemen is criticism. Criticism is blaming one’s spouse for something that has happened. There is a difference between criticism and complaining. A complaint is often a disagreement that can be stated in a respectful manner. We can express our opinion or feelings in a way that is not intended to hurt. Criticism, instead, contains the sting of condemnation…

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Feb 22
1

What Reconciliation Teaches Us about Marriage

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Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.  —Ephesians 4:32    In Marriage Christ invites us to forgive our spouses as he forgives us in the sacrament of Reconciliation. Because forgiveness heals relationships, there are similarities between the sacrament of Reconciliation and Christian married love.  For the sacrament of Reconciliation to be effective, it requires that we are sorry for the sins committed and that we promise not to repeat them. The same is true in marriage. For forgiveness and healing to take place, the offending spouse needs to express sorrow for the hurt caused, with the promise not to repeat the offense. To be forgiven in the sacrament of Reconciliation, the penitent is required to make amends for the harm done. This is called penance, and it can be a prayer or a work of mercy, depending on the seriousness of…

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Jan 27
1

Praying Together

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Even when we realize the necessity of praying together as a couple, many of us are unsure how to go about it. We may have insecurities and anxieties about praying out loud. We may not even know what to say or how to say it. We may even wonder if our prayers are being heard. But it is relieving to know we don’t have to rely on ourselves to learn how to pray. The scriptures assure us that the Holy Spirit lives in us and is already interceding for us in our weaknesses (Rom 8:26). Jesus himself is also praying for us (Jn 17; Rom 8:34). We can be assured he is praying for our spiritual unity, because this was the focus of his personal prayer for all of us in the Upper Room before his Crucifixion: “I pray . . . that they may be one, as we are…

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Dec 22
0

Live Life Fully

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You are forgetting how to move to the music of your soul. You can hardly even hear that inner music over the clamor of all your obligations. ~ Mirabai Starr   As a gate opens to the new year, three words beckon: Live life fully. My aging self urges, “Don’t waste a year on the foolishness of needless concern or any attempt to control the uncontrollable. Be attentive to every fragment of joy, each revelation of nature’s splendor however small, and to the integrity residing in people who touch your life.” An expression of St. Irenaeus of Lyons has been passed down through the ages: “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.” I have cherished that notion of engaging life with enthusiasm. Unfortunately, I have often set this conviction aside, becoming lost in too much work or in absorbing situations requiring acceptance rather than useless worry. That…

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