Also available as a printable PDF.

Day One: Ten Years of “I Do”

A Story about Love’s Promise
A memorable moment in our marriage was the celebration of our 10th wedding anniversary. Our parish priest had agreed to perform a special blessing and renewal of our commitment to our marriage vows during morning Mass. Following the homily, he called us both up before the altar, facing one another, hand in hand, just like at our wedding a decade before. Unlike our wedding, however, the weight of the words was profoundly different. As a blissfully hopeful engaged couple preparing for the sacrament, we thought we understood “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health” – even perhaps imagining what forms these highs and lows might take. Ten years later, they were no longer words of anticipation but a reality.

Our shared gaze as newlyweds captured the promise of new opportunities that would fade, however, many times over… into job loss and debt through unemployment; into uncertainty as the foundations of our first home gave way to near foreclosure during the housing crisis; into the joy of new life and the disillusionment that came through our daughter’s extended NICU stay and major life changes to support ongoing medical issues; into the hope of growth within our family and the wounds of loss through our first miscarriage.

To bring the whole of ourselves before the altar, not just the joys but also the sorrows, beneath the crucified Christ, and to verbally express our renewed commitment to our vows was a source of strength and a powerful reminder of our sacramental calling as a husband and wife that still ripples through and carries us today. Our family has certainly been blessed with times of great joy, of course, but the things that seemed so overwhelming and difficult to carry at the time, have been the very experiences that knit us closer together.

The “I do” of our wedding should never become an “I did,” it will never be past tense. Our vows, like the covenant God swore to us, are a promise to always say “I do,” to choose the other, in every moment of our lives, the good and the bad. By doing so, the life-giving love of Christ becomes realized within us and we allow grace to heal our wounds and draw us ever closer to His merciful heart.
– Mike and Evie

To Think About
To start this week of reflection, ask yourselves individually and as a couple:

1. Reflect on your wedding day and the vows. How have you seen these lived out in your marriage? Which have new meaning?
2. What are sources of strength in your marriage? Where are possible opportunities for growth?
3. In what ways has your experience of marriage and family life revealed the presence of Christ?

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 One – Marriage: Made by God

Breaking Open the Theme
Despite many variations throughout cultures, societies, and religions, marriage has always been regarded as a sacred bond that expresses a deep, committed form of mutual love. Marriage is not, however, purely a human institution: “the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws … God himself is the author of marriage” (GS, 48).

How is God the author of marriage?

First, “God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them ” (Gen. 1:27). Since man and woman are created in the image of God, who is Love, man and woman carry an innate calling to love. Marriage responds to a fundamental desire and need to give and receive love.

Second, as male and female, God created man and woman with a physical complementarity that is uniquely able to collaborate in His work of creation. The very nature of man and woman is prepared for the possibility of marriage and the welcoming of new life.

Third, Holy Scripture affirms that it is good for a man and woman to belong to one another and form a bond of communion: “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18) …. ” That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body (Gen. 2:24). In the New Testament, Jesus invokes God’s original plan for mankind as an unbreakable union of two lives by recalling the plan of the Creator in the beginning: “So they are no longer two, but one flesh” (Mt. 19:6).

In the divine plan, marriage is the exclusive, indissoluble communion of life and love entered by one man and one woman. Between two baptized Christians, this covenant is a sacrament.

Reflection
As Catholics, an understanding of God’s plan for marriage and family is an essential part of living the call to holiness. Catholic spouses are blessed with the certainty that the sacrament of marriage provides the graces necessary to become sanctified as husband and wife, father and mother. This grace endows the marriage covenant with strength and fortifies it in moments of difficulty. It also carries over into the domestic church, the home, where the family grows and becomes a witness to God’s love for others.

God’s plan for marriage is not restricted to Catholics, however. As explained above, it is rooted in the nature and identity of man and woman created in God’s image. The dignity of marriage with its specific purpose and characteristics is a good to uphold and defend to the benefit of all people.

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

1. What makes marriage distinctive compared to other relationships? Why are love and commitment in marriage unique? What does it mean to say that God created marriage in the very same moment that he created the human person?
2. As a couple, how are we complementary in our needs, desires, and attributes? How does God endow us with different gifts, as man and woman, that contribute to the marriage?
3. How can we, as a couple, bear witness to the beauty and wisdom of God’s design for marriage?

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.

Virtual Retreat Homepage

Also available as a printable PDF.

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)

Virtual Retreat Homepage

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.

Virtual Retreat Homepage

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.

Virtual Retreat Homepage

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)

Virtual Retreat Homepage

Day Four – Marriage: Made for Life

Breaking Open the Theme
“Male and female he created them. God blessed and God said to them: ‘Be fertile and multiply’” (Gen. 1:27-28).

Marriage is the natural human context wherein a child is properly conceived and welcomed into life as the “supreme gift of marriage” (GS, 50). And in this stance of openness and welcoming, meant to mark every aspect of married love, a husband and a wife grow closer to each other. Making a gift of himself or herself to the other as spouses and being open to children is one and the same choice and act. As Pope John Paul II taught, “Thus the couple, while giving themselves to one another, give not just themselves but also the reality of children, who are a living reflection of their love, a permanent sign of conjugal unity and a living and inseparable synthesis of their being a father and a mother” (FC, 14).

In other words, in marriage, love and life are inseparable. This is what the Church means when she teaches that the unitive and procreative meanings of married love are inseparable. In embracing each other, husband and wife embrace their capacity to conceive a child and are called to do nothing deliberate to close part of themselves to the gift of the other.

This does not mean that a child will be conceived from every act of sexual intimacy. Marriage is not a mechanical factory for the mass production of children. The Church teaches couples in their openness to life to practice responsible parenthood by discerning whether or not they have serious reasons, in keeping with God’s plan for marriage, to postpone becoming a father and a mother here and now.

“The fundamental task of the family is to serve life, to actualize in history the original blessing of the Creator – that of transmitting by procreation the divine image from person to person. (…) However, the fruitfulness of conjugal love is not restricted solely to the procreation of children, even understood in its specifically human dimension: it is enlarged and enriched by all those fruits of moral, spiritual and supernatural life which the father and mother are called to hand on to their children, and through the children to the Church and to the world” (FC, 28).

Reflection
Any honest consideration of marriage must think about children, the hope of our future. For millennia, people of every generation and of every culture have understood that the marriage of a man and a woman is the central pro-child social institution and the rock of the natural family. Marriage brings together a man and a woman who unite as husband and wife to form a unique relationship open to welcoming and caring for new life. As the union of husband and wife, marriage is a union open from within to the blessing of fruitfulness. Children are born “from the very heart” of marriage, from the mutual self-giving between husband and wife (CCC, no. 2366). They are the “supreme gift” of marriage and its “ultimate crown” (GS, nos. 50, 48).

Just as plants need the proper elements not only to begin to grow but also to flourish, children need the proper elements as well. It takes a man and a woman, with God’s help, to bring a child into existence. It makes sense that if sexual difference is essential for the beginning of life, it is also vital for the caring of that life. Mothers and fathers matter for the duration of a child’s life.

Marriage is the institution meant to ensure that a child is welcomed as a gift to be nurtured and raised by the uniquely different love that only a mother and a father can give. Just as a seedling needs the presence of soil, sunlight, and water to grow and flourish, so too a child needs the natural foundation of life and love uniquely provided in the loving marriage of a man and a woman open to the gift of a child.

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

(1) How are openness to life and sexual difference related? Why is this important for understanding the meaning of marriage?
(2) How do you understand and embrace the Church’s teaching on the sanctity of human life, including the Church’s teaching on the use of contraception?
(3) In what way can you witness as a couple to the sanctity and dignity of human life and the importance of mothers and fathers in the lives of their children?

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.

Virtual Retreat Homepage

Also available as a printable PDF.

Day Six: Love in Truth

A Story about Unexpected Challenges
We have been blessed in our 42 years of marriage with four beautiful and amazing children. Our children, the source of our greatest pride and joy, have also been the source of our greatest suffering.

With the sudden death of our first son, at only six months old, we experienced our first crucible. The first fruit of our love had withered, testing our own love as a couple. It was a life-changing experience in our marriage, but, fortunately, our grief led us to a deeper commitment to one another and to our faith. This prepared us to meet other challenges that were to come, testing our unity as a couple and family.

While still in college, our daughter announced that she was pregnant with our first grandchild, outside the bond of marriage. Although stunned and saddened by the circumstances, we welcomed the gift of new life that would bless our family. During the turbulent time that surrounded these events, we accompanied our daughter in her struggle to recognize and follow God’s plan. We are proud to be the grandparents of a young man with deep faith who now serves our country overseas as a U.S. Marine.

One day, our youngest son announced that he experienced same-sex attraction and had embraced a lifestyle that was contrary to his human dignity in the eyes of God. The pain of losing our son to the lies of the world is hard to describe.

As our son, we made him know that our love is unconditional. However, we also needed to remain steadfast in truth, as true love warrants. When we did not attend the same-sex union with his partner, a deep hurt was felt on both sides. His departure from any practice of a life in the Catholic faith is our greatest sorrow, which elicits a constant prayer rising from our hearts for Mary to lead him back to her Son.

On our wedding day, we promised each other that we would accept children lovingly from God and educate them according to the law of Christ and His Church. Little did we realize the great gift we were agreeing to receive, nor the tremendous responsibility it entails. We continue to educate our children and grandchildren in the faith, challenging them to true discipleship.

While our work to build our domestic church is not done, we trust that the faith that we set as the foundation of our family will be a reminder to our children of God’s unwavering faithfulness and unfailing love. Even the greatest blessings can blossom in the midst of thorns.
– Christine and Rick

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

1. How have you dealt with the challenges and disappointments experienced in your marriage or caused by your children? Where have you found God’s grace and mercy present in those times?
2. In what ways may God be asking you to give greater witness to truth in love within your family?
3. How have you noticed God’s hand in the midst of suffering and loss?

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)

Virtual Retreat Homepage

Day Five – Marriage: Made for Freedom

Breaking Open the Theme
“Jesus answered them, ‘Amen, amen, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. A slave does not remain in a household forever, but a son always remains. So if a son frees you, then you will truly be free’” (Jn. 8:34-36).The

Dominican moral theologian, Servais Pinckaers (1925-2008), identified two concepts of freedom that are in contrast to one another: freedom of indifference and freedom for excellence.

“Freedom of indifference” means seeing freedom as open and neutral toward all the available options. Every choice, in so far as it is a choice, is equally free. It is the freedom to not be forced to do anything (“freedom from coercion”). If freedom is really unconnected to any other aspect of the person or objective truth, then choosing to murder another person is just as “free” a decision as choosing to buy a meal for a homeless person. Of course, anyone would say that the person helping out another person is “using” their freedom better than the murderer, but is that saying enough? Is it just a question of using our freedom well or badly? Freedom of indifference says yes, those two people are equally free to choose good or evil.

In contrast, if you understand freedom as the “freedom for excellence”, you would say that the murderer is actually less free than the charitable giver. In doing something that is wrong, in acting against the true, objective order of things, the person choosing evil is actually diminishing or losing his (or her) freedom. It is in fact an abuse of freedom. It will not bring him (or her) happiness. Therefore, it is not a truly free choice. The freedom for excellence is the freedom to do good: the freedom to become who you are meant to be.

True freedom then is the capacity to love in truth and to choose the good. This echoes the words of the Catechism: “The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes,” and “true freedom” comes “in the service of what is good and just” (CCC, 1733).

Rightly ordered freedom, which serves true happiness, is service to others. This freedom corresponds to what a person is called to be: a gift for others.

Reflection
Marriage between a baptized man and woman requires the free consent of the will. The two spouses consent freely to make a gift of self to the other. The Catechism clarifies that to be free, the consent “must be an act of the will of each of the contracting parties, free of coercion or grave external fear” (CCC, 1628). By means of the consent, the spouses mutually give themselves to each other and become ‘one body’. The consent of the spouses is received by the priest (or deacon) in the name of the Church, followed by the blessing of the Church.

In many ways, the consent to marry is one of the most profound acts of human freedom. It is an act of freedom for excellence which opens new possibilities of greater excellence and happiness. When exercised together, husband and wife demonstrate a joint effort to become more truly who they are called to be by their sincere gifts of self.

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

(1) How does freedom for excellence correspond better to a Christian vision of the human person than freedom of indifference?
(2) In what ways has freedom been abused in the name of a false freedom and how has this affected marriage?
(3) Marriage in the Church requires a free consent of the will by both spouses. How was your marriage a choice made freely for excellence: in the freedom to become who you are meant to be?

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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