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Day Two: Christ in Our Midst

A Story about Home Life
Pope Francis often speaks about the importance of having an encounter with Christ, especially for a Christian’s journey. He never tires of repeating the words of Benedict XVI: “Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” (EG, 7)

Our prayers always begin with gratitude for the visible signs of Christ’s presence in our lives. Encounters with Christ often come when we least expect them, through the little people who provide us unique challenges: our kids.

Like most Catholic families, our home life celebrates the beauty of the liturgical year with traditions. We read stories about the saints and celebrate their feast days. We light the Advent wreath and set up the nativity figures at Christmastime. These moments are the highlights of our year as we live the seasons of the Church in our own home.

On any given day, however, our home life is also messy and frustrating (not unlike the history of the Church!). Spaghetti stains on Sunday clothes, sticky kitchen floors, pouting and tears before bedtime or endless requests for stories that try a weary parent’s patience.

Every day God enters and encounters us in the brokenness of this world and in the messiness of our families. Even when our kids adeptly put our misery on display, we are being offered the opportunity to welcome humility and holiness into our midst. Our own parenting failures allow God’s love and mercy to meet us right where we are.
– Ramie and Jake

To Think About
Choose one or more of the following questions to reflect on with your spouse:

1. How can you affirm, respect, and connect with your children or spouse as you go through your daily routines together?
2. Think back to a recent loss of temper you had with your child. Could that situation have been a moment of encounter with Christ?
3. How quickly and easily do I grant forgiveness and show mercy to my child/spouse? How quickly and sincerely do I ask for forgiveness from them?

Prayer to the Holy Family
Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
in you we contemplate
the splendor of true love;
to you we turn with trust.

Holy Family of Nazareth,
grant that our families too may be places of
communion and prayer,
authentic schools of the Gospel
and small domestic churches.

Holy Family of Nazareth,
may families never again
experience violence, rejection and division;
may all who have been hurt or scandalized
find ready comfort and healing.

Holy Family of Nazareth,
make us once more mindful
of the sacredness and inviolability of the family,
and its beauty in God’s plan.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
Graciously hear our prayer.
Amen.
(AL, 325)

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Day Two – Marriage: Made for Love

Breaking Open the Theme
Marriage between one man and one woman responds to the deepest longing of the human heart for love and belonging. We yearn to be loved and to receive love. The same can be said of family life: in a family, children are received to be loved and to love in return.

Despite human shortcomings, the married couple and the family are reflections of God who is three divine persons in a communion of love. In marriage, the man and the woman become “one body” (Gen 2: 24), a communion of love that generates new life. In a similar way, the human family becomes a communion of love by the exchange of giving and receiving love between its members.

Marriage and family life are schools of love. They teach us how to reach a communion of love within the context of daily life: full of joys, sacrifices, trials, and hopes. In all of this, love is purified and perfected, made authentic and complete. As Christ’s sacrifice on the cross exemplified, love is laying down one’s life for another. Spouses and family members are called to do the same, each and every day.

Reflection
Despite our best efforts to love faithfully and unconditionally, marriage and family life can be difficult and challenge our ability to love continually. The marital love that is blessed by the sacrament of marriage is fortified and sustained, however, by a unique grace intended to “perfect the couple’s love and to strengthen their indissoluble unity” (CCC, 1641). By virtue of this grace, the couple helps one another to attain holiness.

The source of this grace is Christ. “Just as of old God encountered his people with a covenant of love and fidelity, so our Savior, the spouse of the Church, now encounters Christian spouses through the sacrament of Matrimony” (GS, 48). Christ dwells with them, gives them the strength to take up their crosses and so follow him, to rise again after they have fallen, to forgive one another, to bear one another’s burdens, to “be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ,” and to love one another with supernatural, tender, and fruitful love” (CCC, 1642).

To Think About
(Choose one or more of the following questions to reflect on by yourself and/or with your spouse)

1. What makes the love of man and woman unique, especially within the marital relationship? What makes the love of family members a communion of persons?
2. How are our marriage and family schools of love? As a couple and family, do we demonstrate a communion of love that is self-giving, pure, and sacrificial?
3. As a couple, how do we rely on the grace of the sacrament of marriage to assist us in moments of challenge and difficulty?

Prayer of Married Couples
Almighty and eternal God,
You blessed the union of husband and wife
so that we might reflect
the union of Christ with His Church:
look with kindness on us.
Renew our marriage covenant.
Increase your love in us,
and strengthen our bond of peace
so that, [with our children],
we may always rejoice in the gift of your blessing.
We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

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Also available as a printable PDF.

Day Three: The Mystery of Marital Faith and Its Fruit

A Story about Adoption
Faith is the willingness to set off on a journey, without knowing exactly where we are going or how we are going to get there. If there is anything resembling certainty, it is in the companions we choose to share our journey.

Saint Paul speaks of husband and wife becoming “one flesh” as “a great mystery” (Ephesians 5:32), a mystery that mirrors Christ and his bride, the Church. Part of the mystery, we think, is that God makes our hearts capable of letting go of our past relationships, however beautiful or broken, in order to enter freely into the shared hope that our marriage will be life-giving.

In our experience, that fundamental faith of husband and wife – setting off on a journey together – has also come to mean faith in what God is doing to knit our family together. Ours started as a common story: boy meets girl, wedding bells … but, the baby carriage… it took a while. We waited year after year, eventually going through all the invasive and heartbreaking testing that accompanies infertility. Yes, God was with us through it all, and sustained us with extraordinary graces which, in retrospect, were often exquisitely timed. But He does not always spare us from suffering. Instead, we have found that God draws near to share our suffering.

Going to that place of suffering with God was what opened our hearts to the seed that God had planted—the seed of adoption. Once it began to bear fruit, wonderful things began to happen. There was new hope, discernment of possibilities, and new discoveries. After much struggle, we brought our oldest daughter home from China, slowly discovering that a place on the other side of the world could begin to feel like another home. Three years later, we brought our second daughter home. And surprise of surprises, nine years later we returned to China and brought home our son.

Every year, we celebrate three adoption days in addition to three birthdays, so we have constant reminders of how odd and yet beautiful our journey with God has been. Seldom has the road ahead been clear, and still we draw courage from the faith that God will lead. “I do not ask to see the distant scene,” wrote St. John Henry Newman, “one step enough for me.” That has been our experience.
– Tim and Sue

To Think About
Choose one or more of the following questions to reflect on by yourself and/or with your spouse

1. Where has your marriage proven fruitful in ways you least expected?
2. What are new forms of fruitfulness that God may be calling your marriage to bring forth?
3. When has God drawn near to share in your suffering as a couple?

Prayer to the Holy Family
Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
in you we contemplate
the splendor of true love;
to you we turn with trust.

Holy Family of Nazareth,
grant that our families too may be places of
communion and prayer,
authentic schools of the Gospel
and small domestic churches.

Holy Family of Nazareth,
may families never again
experience violence, rejection and division;
may all who have been hurt or scandalized
find ready comfort and healing.

Holy Family of Nazareth,
make us once more mindful
of the sacredness and inviolability of the family,
and its beauty in God’s plan.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
Graciously hear our prayer.
Amen.
(AL, 325)

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Day Three – Marriage: Made for Each Other

Breaking Open the Theme
God created man and woman together and willed each for the other. “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suited to him” (Gen. 2:18). The woman that God ‘fashions’ from the man’s rib elicits from the man a cry of wonder, an exclamation of love and communion: “This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 2:23). This beautiful account from the book of Genesis of the creation of Eve from Adam’s side demonstrates how woman was created specifically as a helper, companion, and suitable partner for man. Unlike any other created being, man discovers woman as another ‘I’, as sharing the same humanity (see CCC, 371).

“Man and woman were made ‘for each other’ – not that God left them half-made and incomplete: he created them to be a communion of persons, in which each can be ‘helpmate’ to the other, for they are equal as persons (“bone of my bones…”) and complementary as masculine and feminine” (CCC, 372).

Because they are equal as persons in their humanity, but complementary in their differences as masculine and feminine, man and woman contribute unique gifts to the marriage, especially the physical differences of their bodies which allow for the transmission of human life. Only through sexual difference can a husband and a wife give themselves completely to one another.

True marital union, therefore, is not possible without sexual difference; for this reason, sexual difference is essential to marriage. Sexual difference is the necessary starting point for understanding why protecting and promoting marriage as the union of one man and one woman isn’t arbitrary or discriminatory. Rather, it’s a matter of justice, truth, love, and real freedom. Only a man and a woman—at every level of their identity: biological, physiological, emotional, social, spiritual—are capable of authentically speaking the language of married love, that is, the language of total self-gift, open to the gift of the other and the gift of life.

Reflection
Our maleness or femaleness is essential to our identity as persons. Our gender is not something that is pasted onto us as an after-thought, or that is an incidental part of who we are. Male and female are two different ways of being a human person, body and soul. When we deny our identity as sexually differentiated beings, we diminish our humanity.

A conjugal or marital union comes about only through sexual difference. Only a husband and a wife have the space or capacity to truly receive each other’s distinctive sexual gift, and only a husband and a wife can make a gift of their selves to the other in that way. The beauty of the Church’s teaching on marriage, grounded in this anthropological foundation, sheds light on the responsibility of man and woman to collaborate with God in His plan for the human race.

To Think About
(Choose one or more of the following questions to reflect on by yourself and/or with your spouse)

(1) How do reason and faith not conflict when it comes to marriage? In other words, how does the sacrament of marriage, which is between a baptized man and a baptized woman, build upon, and not detract from, the basic and reasonable truths at the heart of every marriage?
(2) Do you think sexual difference, man to woman and woman to man, is understood and appreciated today? Why or why not?
(3) As a couple, how can you help others reflect on the importance of sexual difference and complementarity?

Prayer of Married Couples
Almighty and eternal God,
You blessed the union of husband and wife
so that we might reflect
the union of Christ with His Church:
look with kindness on us.
Renew our marriage covenant.
Increase your love in us,
and strengthen our bond of peace
so that, [with our children],
we may always rejoice in the gift of your blessing.
We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

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Also available as a printable PDF.

Day Five: The Tree that God Grows

A Story about Perfect Imperfection

This past Advent I started a Jesse Tree. I was tempted to go all in, DIY style, with the help of more seasoned mommy crafters who host their annual Jesse Tree swap in town. But, the temptation wasn’t strong due to my complete lack of skill and patience to deal with anything calling for glue, paint, or toothpicks. Instead, I was lured by the beautiful display of perfectly hand-painted wooden disks portraying each symbol of the Jesse Tree that I found at a local gift shop. For a few dollars I could opt out of the messy affair of gooey toothpicks and paint-smeared fingers; it sounded like a glorious plan.

Later at a White Elephant Party, I happened to notice a simple but radiant little Jesse Tree on the hostess’s piano. It was decorated with homemade symbols of different proportions, colors, and textures. It was multi-dimensional and dynamic; it made my Jesse Tree seem flat and uninspiring.

As I behold my children – each unique and exquisite in their own way – I’m reminded of the homemade Jesse Tree. Each branch held a symbol sculpted by a different person’s hand, bearing the stamp of the crafter’s creativity and cleverness. Each child bears the mark of the Creator and bears His image in a unique way. Each child is a blossom upon my family tree or a young sapling that needs to be cultivated, watered, and pruned. But, like the challenge of the Jesse Tree, I often feel inadequate before the challenges of raising these young saplings. My craftiness isn’t tested, but my calmness is. My inner Etsy isn’t tested, but my self-control is!

Part of the great parental privilege is that God provides His grace, and it suffices. It is enough to rely on His gracious help to assist us in every challenge. Yet, with social media awash in images that deliver a message of external perfection – so much so that “Instagrammable” is a new word – it is hard not to feel inadequate and insufficient. It is hard to admit that I am not ‘the Etsy type’ and my children’s nursery is not ”Instagrammable.” Likewise, it is hard to admit time and time again in confession that I have failed to be patient and forbearing with my children.

Time and time again, however, with the grace of God, as a couple, we are reminded to simply love each of our children well and to recognize that He is the Crafter of our tree, our little domestic church, and of each of its blossoms, and He will make it grow.
– Julia and Francis

To Think About
Choose one or more of the following questions to reflect on with your spouse:

1. In what areas of your marriage or family do you feel inadequate or incapable?
2. How can you and your spouse or family establish greater trust in God’s grace?
3. Think about a present challenge in your life. How will you and your spouse meet this challenge with the help of God?

Prayer to the Holy Family
Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
in you we contemplate
the splendor of true love;
to you we turn with trust.

Holy Family of Nazareth,
grant that our families too may be places of
communion and prayer,
authentic schools of the Gospel
and small domestic churches.

Holy Family of Nazareth,
may families never again
experience violence, rejection and division;
may all who have been hurt or scandalized
find ready comfort and healing.

Holy Family of Nazareth,
make us once more mindful
of the sacredness and inviolability of the family,
and its beauty in God’s plan.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
Graciously hear our prayer.
Amen.
(AL, 325)

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Breaking Open the Theme
“It is a love which is total—that very special form of personal friendship in which husband and wife generously share everything, allowing no unreasonable exceptions and not thinking solely of their own convenience. Whoever really loves his partner loves not only for what he receives, but loves that partner for the partner’s own sake, content to be able to enrich the other with the gift of himself” (Humanae Vitae, no. 9). To love another for his or her own sake requires selfless seeking of the other’s authentic good. This selfless form of friendship takes on new qualities and responsibilities in marriage when our own happiness also depends on it.

Marriage is a school of love because it demands the gift of love each and every day. The source of our love for one another lies beyond ourselves, it is rooted in the love of God: “The order of love belongs to the intimate life of God himself, the life of the Trinity […] Love, which is of God, communicates itself to creatures: ‘God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us’ (Rom 5:5)” (Mulieris Dignitatem, no. 29). When drawing from the love of God, we can transform our marriages into true friendships of authentic self-giving.  Moreover, marriage is “an ‘affective union’, spiritual and sacrificial, which combines the warmth of friendship and erotic passion, and endures long after emotions and passion subside” (Amoris Laetitia, no. 120).

Reflection
Friendship can take many forms, between men and women, gals and pals, and brothers and sisters. The friendship that exists in marriage, however, is an unrepeatable form of friendship that combines both philos (friendship) and eros (attraction), allowing it to take on new dimensions of intimacy and involvement. It can sometimes be difficult to draw the line between what we share with our best friends and what we share with our spouse exclusively. It is important to define ‘friend boundaries’ as couples and recognize that however close we may be with others, there is always something unique to the friendship we cherish with our spouse.

To Think About
(Choose one or more of the following questions to reflect on by yourself and/or with your spouse)

(1) How do you and your spouse nurture your unique friendship?
(2) Are there any friends who get in the way of your own bonding time?
(3) How can friends of one or the other spouse become friends to both spouses and enrich rather than detract from your marriage?

Holy Couples – Saints Isidore the Farmer and Maria de la Cabeza

Prayer of Married Couples
Almighty and eternal God,
You blessed the union of husband and wife
so that we might reflect
the union of Christ with His Church:
look with kindness on us.
Renew our marriage covenant.
Increase your love in us,
and strengthen our bond of peace
so that, [with our children],
we may always rejoice in the gift of your blessing.
We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

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Breaking Open the Theme
“The matrimonial union of man and woman is indissoluble…” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1614). Marriage is a sacred covenant, a bond “established by God himself” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1640) that is permanent. From the beginning of time, God intended it to be this way, such that “when ‘a man shall leave his father and mother and is joined to his wife, so that the two become one flesh’, there remains in force the law which comes from God himself: ‘What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder’ (Mt. 19:6)” (Mulieris Dignitatem, no. 12).

Following from the permanency of marriage is its faithfulness and exclusivity: “Married love is also faithful and exclusive of all other, and this until death. […] Though this fidelity of husband and wife sometimes presents difficulties, no one has the right to assert that it is impossible; it is, on the contrary, always honorable and meritorious. The example of countless married couples proves not only that fidelity is in accord with the nature of marriage, but also that it is the source of profound and enduring happiness” (Humanae Vitae, no. 9). “The lasting union expressed by the marriage vows is more than a formality or a traditional formula; it is rooted in the natural inclinations of the human person” (Amoris Laetitia, no. 123). Moreover, the sacramental grace received in marriage between the baptized is available to the husband and wife to assist and strengthen them at every moment—times of joy and times of pain, sadness, and need.

Reflection
Every couple will experience at some point in their marriage times of pain and dissatisfaction. It is to be expected that imperfect people lead to imperfect couples. Perfection and impeccability are not what make for good marriages. A good marriage is one in which husband and wife continue to try and try again. They don’t give up on themselves or on one another (or on God!). Marriage is a lasting commitment to be tenacious in this ongoing relationship to one another. The ability to forgive and start again is the most eloquent expression of faithful love.

In a “throw-away” culture of hook-ups, co-habitation, and pre-nuptial agreements, the commitment to anyone “until death do us part” can be perceived as irresponsible at best or terrifying at worst. Many people desire lasting commitment but at the same time fear it or fear rejection and failure. The Christian way of life challenges us to embrace the grace of God, which makes all things possible and satisfies the innermost desire of men and women for love that lasts.

To Think About
(Choose one or more of the following questions to reflect on by yourself and/or with your spouse)

1. Name one or two examples of tension or difficulty in your marriage. How have you worked through these times or plan to?
2. In what ways, if any, is your fidelity to one another challenged? How can these challenges be met?
3. How does forgiveness play a part in your marriage? Are there areas that still need to be forgiven?

Holy Couples – Saints Gregory and Nonna

Prayer of Married Couples
Almighty and eternal God,
You blessed the union of husband and wife
so that we might reflect
the union of Christ with His Church:
look with kindness on us.
Renew our marriage covenant.
Increase your love in us,
and strengthen our bond of peace
so that, [with our children],
we may always rejoice in the gift of your blessing.
We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

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Breaking Open the Theme
For those called to the vocation of marriage, it is a school of life. Marriage teaches us about ourselves and others, how to make and maintain good relationships, how to develop character and virtue, and how to love those whom God gives us as family. The unique relationship between husband and wife is a privileged place for this journey of life where a couple learns how to become the man and woman they are called to be together in a union of life-giving love. Sanctified and fortified by the matrimonial covenant, husband and wife assist one another in “a partnership of the whole of life” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.1601). Marriage shows in a special way how men and women are made for each other.

In His divine design, God has established marriage as an “intimate community of life and love” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.1603; see Amoris Laetitia, no. 67). As a community of persons, it reflects the shared life and love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Moreover, the indissoluble union of husband and wife in Christian marriage “is a sign of how much Christ loved his Church in the covenant sealed on the cross” (Amoris Laetitia, no. 73).

Reflection
In our technological age, it can be difficult to put aside the cell phone and laptop to spend some quality time living side by side with those who are most precious to us. Marriages can become strained by the constant ringing and dinging of our devices, which increasingly demand our attention, and life can quickly pass us by without our noticing or being present to those around us.

Marriage demands a far greater commitment of life than an occasional glance in the direction of our loved one. In order for a marital relationship to grow and deepen, it needs to be watered and nurtured, cared for and tended to like any delicate form of life. It requires our undivided attention and devotion. All married couples to some extent experience a certain learning curve in marriage. It takes time and repetition to learn the lessons that make marriage a school of life.

To Think About
(Choose one or more of the following questions to reflect on by yourself and/or with your spouse)

1. What are a few lessons that you have learned at the school of marriage?
2. How could you improve your ability to learn from one another as a couple?
3. In what way can you and your spouse improve your “partnership of the whole of life”?

Holy Couples – Saints Louis and Zelie Martin

Prayer of Married Couples
Almighty and eternal God,
You blessed the union of husband and wife
so that we might reflect
the union of Christ with His Church:
look with kindness on us.
Renew our marriage covenant.
Increase your love in us,
and strengthen our bond of peace
so that, [with our children],
we may always rejoice in the gift of your blessing.
We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

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