By: Francine & Byron Pirola

The power of Matrimony for renewing the Church and society rests in the very nature of the sacrament. Matrimony is the vocational sacrament within which the vast majority of adult Catholics live, and yet its capacity for teaching, renewing and leading the Church is largely overlooked.

All Sacraments reveal and witness to a dimension of God and our relationship with him. Matrimony witnesses in a very concrete way to the passionate, intimate love of Jesus for his bride, the Church. St Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians (5:21-33) spells it out very clearly. After describing how husbands are to love their wives in imitation of Christ, and wives are to regard their husbands as they regard the Lord, he quotes Genesis: ‘“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh”. This is a great mystery, and I am applying to Christ and the church.’ (Eph 5:31-32).

In commenting on this passage of St Paul’s, Pope John Paul II noted that the Sacrament of Matrimony had a ‘bidirectional’ nature. “As one can see, this [spousal] analogy works in two directions. While it allows us, on the one hand, to understand better the relationship of Christ with the Church, it permits us, on the other hand, to penetrate more deeply into the essence of marriage to which Christians are called.” (John Paul II, TOB 90:4) In other words, not only can couples look to the example of Christ to learn how to love each other well, they as a couple can teach the Church about how Christ loves the Church, and how we as his bride, are to respond to him.

Thus married couples are called to teach the Church about the nature of Christ’s love; through the example of their relationship, all married couples are called to be leaders, offering inspiration and prophetic witness in their parish communities.

Couples teach the Church that God’s love is as intimate as it is benevolent, and that his Kingdom is more relational, like a family, than legalistic. Like a passionately ‘in love’ couple, Jesus’ love for us is urgent, personal and intimate. He longs to be close to us, to be one with us, to be in communion. The ‘one flesh’ union of husband and wife is not just a physical joining of their bodies for brief and occasional moments. Nor is it their compensation for having to endure the difficulties of marriage and family life! No, their sexual union is a sacred gesture and is instrumental in what Pope John Paul II called ‘a communion of persons’ — the interpersonal communion of body and soul between two persons in a mutual self-gift.

The passionate married couple thus illuminates and images the Eucharistic communion — Jesus gives his body and sheds his blood in a total outpouring of love for his bride, the Church. When a couple make love, they too give their bodies and shed their blood (ie lay down their life in service) to each other in the image of Christ. And just as husband and wife become ‘one flesh’ in sexual communion, so also do we, the bride of Christ, become one flesh with Jesus in Eucharistic communion.

Sexual communion is a sacred rite; a deeply holy and sacramental act for the married couple. It is no accident that sexual union is considered essential to the establishment of the Sacrament of Matrimony when the couple marries. “In fact, the words themselves, ‘I take you as my wife/ as-my husband’ do not only refer to a determinate reality, but they can only be fulfilled by the copula conjugale (conjugal intercourse).” (John Paul II, TOB 103:2)

Married love is indeed a powerful witness and teacher. It images and makes real the profound mysteries of our faith and is thus worthy of contemplation and reverence.

Credit to  Francine & Byron Pirola and MarriageResourceCentre.

By: Dr. Gregory Popcak

Sociology professor, Pepper Schwartz, has a rather depressing piece in CNN titled,  Lifetime Marriage a Crapshoot.        It reflects on the fact the the biggest percentage increase in divorces is among  people over 50.  It used to be that people felt that if you made it to 25 years, you were home free.  Not any more.  Althought the divorce rate is significantly lower among longer-marrieds than among those married fewer than 10 years, it isn’t unusual for couples to divorce after 25, 40, even 50 years.   Schwartz writes,

Lifetime marriage is turning into a crapshoot for many people, especially  Baby Boomers. Maybe holding on till “death do them part” is least likely for Hollywood stars whose work takes a hard toll on their relationships and whose exit from marriages is not generally impeded by financial concerns. But really, no marriage is immune against what seems to be an epidemic of marital unraveling.

She’s right.  No marriage is immune.  Not any couple.  Not anytime.

Crisis or Opportunity?

It would be easy to get depressed about this, but I tend to think of it as empowering because the key to lifelong marital satisfaction is actually hidden  within  the fact that no one can  count  on marriage lasting a lifetime.  What do I mean?  In my experience, when we say we can “count” on something, we usually mean “I don’t have to be concerned about it.”  ”I don’t have to take care of it.”  ”I don’t have to attend to it.”    I don’t know about you, but I can’t afford to adopt this attitude toward my lawnmower much less my marriage.  Seriously,  what if you saw an article that said, “‘Neglected, 40-yo Lawnmower Breakage At All Time High’ Study Says”  would you be surprised?   Of course not.  Then why do we  tsk-tsk  so much about articles that essentially say the same thing about marriage?

No Such Thing As “It”

I note in my book,  For Better…FOREVER!    that one of the most important attitudes couples have to develop about their marriage is that there is no “it.”    Couples often claim, “It just died.”  ”IT just didn’t make sense to stay together any more.”  ”We couldn’t save IT.”   There is no “it” in marriage.  There is only you, your spouse and what you create together by asking yourselves what you can do to take even better care of each other today than you did yesterday—everyday for the rest of your lives.   If you do this, you will have a happy marriage that lasts a lifetime.  If you don’t, you won’t. Period.  As a friend of mine says, “It aint rocket surgery.”

The Answer: Intentional Loving

I understand that the ins and outs of taking care of your relationship can be a challenge.  Prioritizing your marriage in the face of work and life pressures, developing the self-control that it it takes to not lash out at your partner when things get tough, and learning to love your mate more than your comfort zone are all hard work, but assuming you intentionally commit to taking care of each other everyday, you can’t help but learn these things.  In fact,  although it gets a little lost among the paragraphs of hand-wringing, Dr. Schwartz makes this same point, herself, in her article when she writes,

[W]e have to be intentional about our relationship every day, year, and decade we are together. We have to aim high, have a lot of fun, work hard at being each other’s lover and friend and always do everything we can to repair problems along the way.

And that’s good advice whether you’ve been married 5 days or 50 years.

Resources You Need to Succeed

For more information increasing the likelihood of you and your spouse making it to happily ever after, check out  For Better…FOREVER!  A Catholic Guide to Lifelong Marriage,  The Exceptional Seven Percent:  Nine Secrets of the World’s Happiest Couples,   and  Just Married: The Catholic Guide to Surviving and Thriving in the First Five Years of Marriage.

By: Francine and Byron Pirola

Men and women experience love in different and complementary ways. However, a woman will generally express love the way she experiences it, not the way her husband does. Most women primarily experience love through gestures of cherishment, while men experience love most powerfully through the medium of respect.

Here are five ways you can nail it in the love department for your man this Father’s day (or any day of the year).

1. Cut the criticism

Nothing makes a man feel more disrespected and unappreciated than being criticized and put down, especially when it’s in front of others. This applies also to the way we speak about our man when he’s not present.

2. Avoid Nagging

Not only is nagging almost never effective in bringing about the desired reform, most men will dig in and resist all the more forcefully when they feel nagged. If you need a behavior change, make a respectful and unemotional request.

3. Express Admiration

Identify the virtues and strengths of your man and tell him! It’s great for him to hear it, and it’s good for you to remind yourself as it’s all too easy to focus on what is lacking and overlook the many ways he gives without you even noticing because it is so constant.

4. Wait Till Asked

Whether it’s driving the car, finding your way without a map or assembling the furniture without the instructions… butt out! Let him drive, navigate and create without your constant suggestions. You may think you are being helpful, but if he wants your help, he’ll ask for it.

5. Give him the Benefit of the Doubt

It’s common practice when we feel wounded by our husband to make assumptions about his motives; every little gesture and word is interpreted as proof of his mean-spiritedness, selfishness, carelessness etc. So when he does or says something that upsets you, suspend judgment and make a choice to assume loving, generous motives rather than negative ones.

Credit to Francine and Byron Pirola of CathFamily.  

By: Francine and Byron Pirola

Too many marriages suffer from insufficient time. In fact, it’s possibly the single biggest contributor to marriage breakdown. There might be an affair or a falling out of love, but usually, these triggers are preceded by a chronic neglect of the relationship and it’s need for time and attention from both husband and wife.

Whether it’s the demands of career or family, couples need to prioritise their marriage by protecting their time together. Here are some tips to help:

1. Daily Connection Ritual.  Craft a simple daily connection ritual that works for you. We like to take a brisk walk around the block (weather permitting). Others will take their coffee together while kids wash up the dishes. Some connect by phone several times a day to keep each other in the loop. It  doesn’t  matter what it is as long as it helps you connect and can be done regularly.
2. Seize the moment!  We call them ‘date-claimers’ — those spur of the moment opportunities to do something together, like picking up a child from a party or dropping off the dry cleaning. We do it together and ‘claim’ the chore as a date.
3. Date nights. It can be dinner, movies, the gym, flashy outings or simple picnics. Whatever it is, have a regular date night where the romance can flow. If childcare is a problem, there are a number of babysitting cooperatives that are an inexpensive solution.
4. Invest in the long term.  Do something intentional to strengthen your bond; go on retreat, do some marriage enrichment, read a relationship book together, do an online relationship course.
5. Schedule it.  If time together is important, don’t leave it to chance, put it in the diary and don’t let it get bumped.

Credit to Francine and Byron Pirola of CathFamily.

By: Francine and Byron Pirola

It is often difficult for a couple to share their personal faith experiences with each other. This is so for couples of different faith traditions, but is also true even if they are of the same religion.
We are trained to avoid talking about religion and politics in polite company because these topics are laden with strong feelings. Precisely for this reason, it is very important, for a couple who wants to be close, to trust one another with these feelings and to be open and accepting of the other’s deeply held beliefs and personal experiences.

Sometimes, people think that faith does not really matter to them because they are not overly religious. But even if they have no formal religious training, their concept of God and how they view themself in relationship to God, is central to their personhood and powerfully impacts their behavior and attitudes. If they simply avoid sharing that which is so central and foundational, they run the risk of their relationship becoming shallow and vulnerable to a great deal of misunderstanding.

Tension can arise because couples have sometimes been taught different things about what is right or wrong. They may even hold deeply seated misconceptions about the other’s faith traditions or experiences. Sharing faith can overcome this formation and draw a couple closer together whether or not they choose to practice their faith in the same way.
It is a great act of generosity to free the other to be themselves by sincerely encouraging them to reveal their feelings and experiences in their relationship with God.

Credit to Francine and Byron Pirola of SmartLoving.