Episode 6: Our Marriage as a Pillar
This episode explores why and how our connection with our spouse forms a strong pillar for Catholic parenting. A strong marriage not only provides a positive environment for our children to flourish in, but also shows and teaches our children what it means to love as God loves, as a communion of persons made in the image and likeness of the Holy Trinity.
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In the previous episode we saw how the Church, as the first of three pillars for Catholic parenting, serves as a wonderful and efficacious channel of Christ’s love, graces, truth and power. We also saw how we as a community of believers can and should support each other on our journey.
In this episode, we will discuss why and how our marriage will form the second pillar; the third being our connection with our children.
Trinitarian Icon of Love
Why is our marriage an important pillar for Catholic parenting?
Because the union of husband and wife is an icon, an image, of the eternal exchange of love, the Holy Trinity.
As St John Paul II said, through this mutual gift of self to each other in our marriage, we become a “sign… that efficaciously [or effectively] transmits in the visible world … the mystery of divine life.” (Theology of the Body 19:40)
By being that visible sign of love, we will be able to help our children flourish according to God’s wonderful plan for them.
How?
- Teaching them by word and example;
- Providing a positive atmosphere of love, virtue and respect; and in so doing,
- Helping them discover their vocation in life, whether it is in the vocation of marriage or in living celibacy for the Kingdom of God.
Grace and Mercy
Of course, we are not perfect, and I will be the first to admit how much I have messed up over the years, how much I have hurt my wife through the things I said and did, and probably even more through what I did not say or do for her.
But I’m just so thankful for the immense mercy He has shown us over the years, and my wife’s mercy too, that we were able to forgive each other and allow the Lord to heal our hurts. Thus, as we have said before, never forget to tap on the abundant graces and mercy that Christ wants to pour upon us. Be not afraid. He will never abandon us when we turn to Him.
Single Parents
I would like to acknowledge that some of us on this journey may be single parents, often due to circumstances beyond our control. I know it is not easy. Perhaps you can turn to trusted family members, relatives and friends who can support you on this journey, maybe even helping to be another role model as well.
Whatever the case may be, do remember that Jesus loves you so, so much, and wants to be with you on this journey. Let Him in. Let Him heal, let Him guide. And let Him calm the storms that all of us must face at various points of our lives.
As St John Paul affirmed, “it is also proper to recognise the value of the witness of those [single parents] who… too give an authentic witness to fidelity, of which the world today has a great need.” (Familiaris Consortio, 20)
Nurturing Vocations
In conclusion, let us recap what has been discussed in this episode:
- Our marriage is an icon of the Holy Trinity
- It shows our children Whom God is, provides them with a positive environment to grow in, and helps them realise that their vocation, and fulfilment in life, is to love as He loves.
- Through this realisation, they will gradually discover and discern their vocation in life, whether it is in the married life or in living celibacy for the Kingdom of God.
In other words, our marriage serves as a wonderful and efficacious channel of Christ’s love, graces, and power in the flourishing and happiness of our children.
In fact, the best scientific literature to date suggests that children fare better physically, academically, and emotionally when their parents have a healthy marital relationship.
For our reflection at the end of this session, let us ask ourselves: “How open are my spouse and me to attending a marriage enrichment program to make our marriage even better?”
With this, we are ready to move on to the third pillar of Catholic parenting – the connection with our children. We will discuss this from the next episode onwards.
Resources
Marriage Enrichment Programmes
Taken from FAMILIARIS CONSORTIO
Jesus Christ, Bridegroom of the Church, and the Sacrament of Matrimony
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The communion between God and His people finds its definitive fulfillment in Jesus Christ, the Bridegroom who loves and gives Himself as the Savior of humanity, uniting it to Himself as His body.
He reveals the original truth of marriage, the truth of the “beginning,”[27] and, freeing man from his hardness of heart, He makes man capable of realizing this truth in its entirety.
This revelation reaches its definitive fullness in the gift of love which the Word of God makes to humanity in assuming a human nature, and in the sacrifice which Jesus Christ makes of Himself on the Cross for His bride, the Church. In this sacrifice there is entirely revealed that plan which God has imprinted on the humanity of man and woman since their creation[28]; the marriage of baptized persons thus becomes a real symbol of that new and eternal covenant sanctioned in the blood of Christ. The Spirit which the Lord pours forth gives a new heart, and renders man and woman capable of loving one another as Christ has loved us. Conjugal love reaches that fullness to which it is interiorly ordained, conjugal charity, which is the proper and specific way in which the spouses participate in and are called to live the very charity of Christ who gave Himself on the Cross.
In a deservedly famous page, Tertullian has well expressed the greatness of this conjugal life in Christ and its beauty: “How can I ever express the happiness of the marriage that is joined together by the Church strengthened by an offering, sealed by a blessing, announced by angels and ratified by the Father? …How wonderful the bond between two believers with a single hope, a single desire, a single observance, a single service! They are both brethren and both fellow-servants; there is no separation between them in spirit or flesh; in fact they are truly two in one flesh and where the flesh is one, one is the spirit.”[29]
Receiving and meditating faithfully on the word of God, the Church has solemnly taught and continues to teach that the marriage of the baptized is one of the seven sacraments of the New Covenant.[30]
Indeed, by means of baptism, man and woman are definitively placed within the new and eternal covenant, in the spousal covenant of Christ with the Church. And it is because of this indestructible insertion that the intimate community of conjugal life and love, founded by the Creator,[31] is elevated and assumed into the spousal charity of Christ, sustained and enriched by His redeeming power.
By virtue of the sacramentality of their marriage, spouses are bound to one another in the most profoundly indissoluble manner. Their belonging to each other is the real representation, by means of the sacramental sign, of the very relationship of Christ with the Church.
Spouses are therefore the permanent reminder to the Church of what happened on the Cross; they are for one another and for the children witnesses to the salvation in which the sacrament makes them sharers. Of this salvation event marriage, like every sacrament, is a memorial, actuation and prophecy: “As a memorial, the sacrament gives them the grace and duty of commemorating the great works of God and of bearing witness to them before their children. As actuation, it gives them the grace and duty of putting into practice in the present, towards each other and their children, the demands of a love which forgives and redeems. As prophecy, it gives them the grace and duty of living and bearing witness to the hope of the future encounter with Christ.”[32]
Like each of the seven sacraments, so also marriage is a real symbol of the event of salvation, but in its own way. “The spouses participate in it as spouses, together, as a couple, so that the first and immediate effect of marriage (res et sacramentum) is not supernatural grace itself, but the Christian conjugal bond, a typically Christian communion of two persons because it represents the mystery of Christ’s incarnation and the mystery of His covenant. The content of participation in Christ’s life is also specific: conjugal love involves a totality, in which all the elements of the person enter- appeal of the body and instinct, power of feeling and affectivity, aspiration of the spirit and of will. It aims at a deeply personal unity, the unity that, beyond union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul; it demands indissolubility and faithfulness in definitive mutual giving; and it is open to fertility (cf Humanae vitae, 9). In a word it is a question of the normal characteristics of all natural conjugal love, but with a new significance which not only purifies and strengthens them, but raises them to the extent of making them the expression of specifically Christian values.” [33]
