Category

Spirituality

Feb 22
1

What Reconciliation Teaches Us about Marriage

By | Marriage Enrichment, Meaning of Marriage, Spirituality | No Comments

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

By | Communication, Marriage Enrichment, Spirituality | No Comments

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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Nov 29
0

First Week of Advent – Wednesday

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

By Fr. John Burns Think of the steps of St. Joseph’s greatness. He began by the pure love of a spotless virgin. Gradually, as the mystery unfolded itself, the earthly love turned to enraptured veneration, and Mary became to him a trust from the God of his fathers, a divine treasure to be guarded from every shadow of ill.  James J. McGovern, The Manual of the Holy Catholic Church  To See with Eyes of Faith  As we observed in the introduction, Wednesdays are traditionally devoted to St. Joseph, and we invite him in a special way into our movement toward the manger throughout Advent.   St. Joseph learned in a privileged way what it means to live in the presence of God and to be moved by the beauty of God’s grace. He was granted the singular gift of marriage to the greatest jewel of all of creation, the Blessed Virgin Mary.  …

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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…

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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…

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Sep 28
0

Extraordinary Love

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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…

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Aug 27
0

Enthronement Offers a New Beginning in Your Marriage

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

By Emily Jaminet More than seven years ago, my family welcomed Jesus in a special way through the enthronement of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. On that day, my husband and I were joined by our six children and my parents for this momentous occasion. At the time, we felt like “life was good” and marriage was “fine,” but we soon discovered that the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus was offering us so much more! The enthronement allowed us to hit the pause button as a couple amid our very busy lives and pray that our Lord would come into our lives in a new way. Over the years, I have realized that every other significant spiritually impacting experience took place on retreats, at conferences, at our church, and in Holy Mass. The enthronement was the first time where as a couple and a family we were strengthened in the…

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Aug 27
1

The Marriage Matrix

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

By John Bosio With the release of the film trilogy The Matrix, a new word entered our popular vocabulary. The word “matrix” is actually an old word, according to the Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary. It dates back to the sixteenth century and has its roots in Latin. Matrix means “something from which something else originates”  and “form or mold, and pattern.” Matrix is a word that describes well God’s relationship with humanity and our relationship with God. He is our matrix; the source of our being and of our life. God is the pattern in the likeness of whom we were made. The prophet Isaiah proclaimed, “O Lord, you are our father; we are the clay and you are the potter: we are all the work of your hands.” (Is 64:8) Marriage is not an institution invented by humans: God created it. When God made the first man and the first…

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Apr 17
1

Married Couples Called to be Part of God’s Mosaic by John Bosio

By | Catholic Weddings, Communication, Marriage Enrichment, Meaning of Marriage, Spirituality | No Comments

In the spring of 2004, as Bishop Edward Kmiec of Nashville celebrated the Sacrament of Confirmation with the candidates at St. Stephen Catholic Community in Old Hickory, Tennessee, he compared God to an artist creating a beautiful mosaic. Kmiec explained that a mosaic is a work of art, a picture made with thousands of tiny colored stones and gems placed next to one another to form a splendid design. Each one of us, he said, is like a colored pebble, a precious stone in the hands of the Artist. God sees the good and the beauty in each one of us, and places us in his mosaic as he calls us to play a unique role in his work of art. Our Christian vocation is not a call to become rich and famous, but to become people who shine with the goodness and the beauty of God wherever we are…

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Feb 15
2

“Love Letters for Lent” by Fr. Joshua J. Whitfield

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“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” is my favorite John Donne poem. Written in 1611 for his wife as he was on his way to France, the poem was a gift meant to ease their parting. Before the world became so immediately digitally connected—before things like FaceTime and texting—lovers often bound themselves together with letters and poems written from the heart. Donne’s words were beautiful. Their love, he wrote, was holy. Sustained not by mere physical presence or material things or by mere carnal attraction, their love was “so much refined” that it could not be ruined or weakened by absence. Though separated, they should “make no noise,” he wrote, no “tear-floods,” no fuss. Rather, in knowing that by marriage and love their two souls were one, they “endure not yet a breach” and suffer no real separation. Their love is built upon something more transcendent, more spiritual, and more real. It’s…

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