Marriage and Sanctity

Marriage is a sacrament. God offers and imparts grace to you and your spouse so that you will be able to live the life of fidelity, fruitfulness and unity as you bring each other to God. Your wife is a means for your sanctification and you are a means for her sanctification, but sanctity requires that you open yourself up to God. Can your marriage survive if one of you refuses to attend Mass and practice your faith? Yes, it will survive. But ask yourself, is it enough to survive or would you rather thrive; to be the best you can be? Do you want to survive the cut and be the last person on the football team or do you want to be the star, someone who is integral to the victory week in and week out? Do you want to watch the quarterback win the game or do you want to be the quarterback who wins the game? The church wants to not only help your marriage to survive, but she gives you the opportunities to have a relationship that thrives so that you and your spouse may live a life of complete and utter joy, even in the midst of the trials and sufferings that go with being human. A happy, healthy and holy marriage is one that helps you to love as Christ loves, to overcome self-absorption, egoism and the pursuit of one’s own pleasure and to open yourself up to the other for her pleasure, her sanctity and mutual aid and self-giving. In effect, it is to die to self and to live for the other in every area of your life, whether the other spouse deserves it or not.

Critical Speech

On this Feast of the Holy Name of Mary, we are reminded that the names of Jesus and Mary are sacred and holy, to be treated with reverence and respect. Critical speech, gossip, detraction are grave sins and one of the most prevalent sins in our country today. Yet it does not have to be. Language, speech, words, these are weapons that can kill, but they can also be remedies to a soul that is hurting. Imagine someone getting angry with you and yelling, screaming hateful words. What happens in your soul? Now, imagine how you feel when you hear tender words, words of love and kindness. Words can be that salve for you.

Within marriage especially, words can violate trust and rip asunder that union that you created on your wedding day. Our faith teaches that husbands and wives are united in one flesh and that this union is a mystery, a great mystery, as St Paul says, between Christ and the Church. Christ died for his bride. Husbands are called to die for their wives as well. Just remember how you felt on your wedding day. The heart is pumping, the joy is swelling, the mind is racing to try to comprehend the mystery that you are about to celebrate. The tender words that are spoken to your beloved on that day. Tender words that are loving and fruitful. These are the words that bring joy to your beloved.

Let joy reign in your hearts. Let the love of Christ transform you into a new creation so that you can be holy as your heavenly Father is holy. And bring your beloved to the heart of Christ so that you and your beloved may know the power and majesty of mercy, forgiveness and compassion.