Your Vows Aren’t Stagnant
Your wedding is a day, marriage is a lifetime. Those words are so true, but we can easily forget the words that are exchanged. It can be easy to leave the events of the day in that day. To live an authentically Catholic marriage, we must bring the words and prayers of the Nuptial Mass to life.
Most of my pre-wedding knowledge came from popular culture. In most Hollywood movies, the couples write their own vows. Each story seemed to be the same. The man would labor over the vows, trying to make them unforgettable and impactful. It seemed pretty stressful. I was delighted to find that the Church provides two versions of vows to use.
She gives us two choices for a simple reason. Your wedding vows aren’t nice things to say to your wife. They aren’t supposed to be engineered to bring a single tear to the eye of the Maid of Honor. They’re designed to be the roadmap for your marriage. No matter where you go, or what you do, your vows are the lighthouse. They guide your decisions. They guide your life.
The Church provides the vows because they adequately reflect the Church’s understanding of what marriage is. They spell out clearly the Church’s understanding of the married life and the role of husband and wife.
The vows are promises. They are beautiful. They are final.
The great thing about the vows is that you can use them as a plumb line. In any situation in your married life, when you reach a decision point, you can reference your vows and know if you are out of bounds or not. It’s wonderful.
The vows are certainly words that we speak, but they’re intended to be brought to life. When I promised to take care of Alison in good times and in bad, I’m supposed to translate that into action. When we’re flat broke, I’m still there for her. When we’re rich beyond our wildest dreams, our marriage hasn’t changed.
It’s a refreshingly absolute promise in this world of flakiness.
The vows are one of the critical elements of the Nuptial Mass, but they’re intended to have a much greater use than to just confer the Sacrament.
Managing Family Time
We are living in a new era of working families. With many families having both parents working, it’s becoming harder to have time together.
I work full time and Alison is wrapping up Medical School. While my job is flexible in the time that I work, I have a lot of mandatory evening meetings. Alison is almost 9-5. I arrive home around 9 and then its almost time for bed. The problem we face is that we have to intentionally work to find time to spend together.
Too many marriages are portrayed as a utilitarian business contract. He changes the oil, she does the laundry. He mows the lawn, she cleans the kitchen. The drudgery of domestic life is out there, there’s little doubt. However, that doesn’t mean its time to surrender! Along with the normal are chances for the extraordinary.
Even the smallest changes in your routine can make your marriage spark! Taking over one of her chores or taking her out on a date can be unbelievably refreshing! That won’t happen, however, if you don’t manage your calendars.
I have two pieces of advice for you to help manage your time with your family.
First, have a shared calendar that everyone has access to. Anytime an event is happening that applies to everyone, put it on there. You then have a centralized location for your events.
Second, have “sacred time.” Pick a time once a week where you and your wife won’t schedule anything. That is your time to be together to do whatever. It may be a meal, a movie, or just being in the same room.
If you don’t control your schedule, it will control you. Don’t let it.
The Holy Family Reflection
Merry Christmas!
As we celebrate and reflect on the birth of our Lord, I had a unique thought. I’d like to share it with you on this great feast!
Jesus was born into a family. Mary and Joseph, living in the marriage covenant, provided the stability He needed as He grew, developed, and learned. Jesus was like us in all things except sin. As I hold my own son, that thought blows my mind.
There was a time when baby Jesus couldn’t hold up His neck. Then came the day that He started smiling and cooing. It is extraordinary that He was just like my son is today.
In that way, I’m living the experience of St. Joseph. A new dad, experiencing the miracle of life. A new dad, shepherding a child’s heart.
The beautiful truth that comes out of this is that we, as married men, reflect the Holy Family. We go through the same difficulties, challenges, and struggles. We, like Mary and Joseph, have access to the same graces to help us live out our vocation.
So as you celebrate this Christmas with your family, remember, your family is a reflection of the Holy Family. Bound in love, united in truth, and together for the greater glory of God!
From myself, Alison and our son Benedict, Merry Christmas!
Couple Friends
The relationship between a husband and wife is both exclusive and complete. By its design, it can meet almost all of the emotional needs of the spouses, but that can be difficult.
One of the challenges for young people is their first exclusive dating relationship.
A major challenge for young people in their first exclusive dating relationship is managing that exclusivity.
The young couple is enthralled with each other and find more and more of their emotional needs met in their relationship. A great danger is for the couple to segregate themselves from their friends. The danger comes when they lose sight of their healthy need to engage in relationships outside of their dating relationship. Marriage can have a similar pull.
Being a husband, you should find the vast majority of your personal fulfillment in your wife and the activities that you enjoy together. You share a life with this woman, you share everything. From the moment you wake up until the moment you go to sleep, you are living in total, complete connectedness. This is even more true if you are raising children together. Your life is full of communication and connection.
While your wife is able to meet most of your needs, and she, yours, it is wise to actively seek out other couple friends. Having relationships with people in a similar state in life can be a tremendous benefit to your marriage and it can also provide many mutual benefits.
First, you have a sounding board. When you have a difficultly at work, you probably turn to your wife to see if you are wrong. When you and your wife have a disagreement, her objectivity could be called into question. If you have some really close couple friends, you could bring them in and get some outside advice. They might have also been in a similar quarrel and could share some tips as to how to successful navigate the situation.
Next, they can provide quality relational interactions. If you’ve ever babysat for a young child, you know just how draining giving your full attention to a single person can be. With couple friends, you don’t have to overwhelm your wife with your emotional needs. Perhaps one of your needs is to go to a sports game or watch a war movie. If you have great couple friends, you can arrange for the husbands to hang out and the wives to hang out and do something they each enjoy.
Finally, good couple friends can provide opportunities to share the joys and challenges of the married life with. Being married is hard, especially being happily married. You may find people trying to pull you down because they are envious. Having great couple friends can reaffirm the good of marriage and remind you that there’s nothing wrong with living an authentically Catholic marriage.
In order to find good couple friends, you must be proactive. Engage in Church activities and local young adult outings. When you find them, hold on tight. You’ll both be glad that you did.
Saying Sorry
Masculine pride will tell you that apologies are weakness. It will tell you that the person who apologizes first, loses. Masculine pride has also gotten you into a few tight spots before, hasn’t it?
My wife and I learned something very important early in our marriage. We’re bad at fighting. I would withdraw because I wouldn’t want to make her more mad. She’d shut down because she needed more time to think. What we had was a failure to communicate. Over time, we’ve gotten better. Thankfully, I learned a few things along the way.
The biggest threat to your marriage doesn’t come from the outside. It doesn’t come from her catty cousin or your bumbling friends. It comes from unresolved arguments. Like a festering untreated wound, it only causes more and more marital discord. When you refuse to treat the wound, you let it get out of hand. It will completely destroy your marital peace.
By time you get to the point of an argument where you assign blame, it’s usually pretty deep into the discussion. You may be in so thick of a forest that you can’t really remember what this fight is all about. Even if you aren’t the original person at fault, you probably hurt your wife by mishandling the process. After all, is there really a correct way to handle a fight?
The important thing to know about apologies is that they are almost like ice breakers. When one side concedes fault, it makes it easier for the other party. Then they can feel secure enough to apologize and the situation can be resolved. I’m not saying that men are always wrong, but I am saying that we don’t have to peacock with our wife. We can lead well by readily acknowledging that at some point in the process, we injured her, though we didn’t want to.
Most importantly, apologies can’t be fake. Don’t say “I’m sorry” to just resolve the fight. It won’t work. Trust me.
Marriage is give and take. We can give her a great gift by taking responsibility first.
Family Prayer Time
Prayer is the bond that keeps the family together.
If you think about some of the strongest families you know, there is at least one common characteristic that they all share in common. They are a family that makes time to pray together.
Prayer in community dates back to the earliest days of the Church. The faithful would gather in each other’s homes and pray. It is a ritual that is both spiritually rejuvenating and essential in the Christian life.
Yet, we struggle to find the time. Part of the reason for me was that I was nervous about praying out loud. When I pray privately, in my head, the words flow so smoothly. It’s a different story when I pray out loud.
At the same time, Alison and I recognize how important this practice is. A family gathering together to offer prayers of adoration, petition, penance and thanksgiving is a powerful event. The gathering of the domestic Church to recenter itself in God is essential to the health and growth of the family.
As Benedict was going through the Sacrament of Baptism, Alison and I promised to raise him in the faith. We promised to make it our “constant care to bring him up in the practice of the faith.” At the conclusion of the Rite, the Priest prayed over his ears and mouth saying, “The Lord Jesus made the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak. May He soon touch your ears to receive His word, and your mouth to proclaim His faith, to the praise and glory of God the Father.”
While listening to those words, it became clear in my mind again how important weekly, if not daily, family prayer time is.
When setting up a prayer routine, it’s important to frequently change the type of prayer that you engage in. For example, you may pray the rosary together, the Liturgy of the Hours, or maybe even have a Scriptural Reflection. Prayer is a conversation, so make it lively!
I hope that you’ll consider incorporating family prayer time into your family life. In the words of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, “The family that prays together, stays together."
The Genius of Marriage
The place of marriage in society is something that is being fiercely questioned in our world today. What is marriage? What is its purpose? Why do we give married couples certain benefits? As Catholics, it is quite clear. Marriage is both unitive and procreative and benefits are granted by the State because the State has a vested interest in the regeneration of its population in stable homes.
While some make the argument that marriage is based solely on “love,” my experience as a new dad tells a different story. My experience has illustrated quite clearly that the genius of the architecture of marriage is the gender differences.
As a man, I think quite differently than my wife. We can approach the same problem with two different solutions. It’s during the times when we take advantage of our different approaches that we really succeed.
A few days after bringing our son home, he was crying inconsolably. Since I have never really been around young kids, I didn’t know what to do. My wife, however, tapped into her maternal instincts and put some sugar water on his pacifier and he calmed right down. My solution was to hold him, hers was to medicate. One or the other may not have worked, but together, they both did and he calmed right down.
There is something special in our gender differences. Neither of us is better than the other, but together, we are better than alone. Our thought processes, our emotions, and our intellects meld together to create the best possible outcome. The diversity of thought provides the best chance for the right solution.
When we turn the world selfishly towards us, we neglect the innate architecture that makes it so powerful, so beautiful. Sometimes it’s best to realize that God has the bigger picture in mind, and we know that things end better when we place our trust in Him.
Why Culture Isn’t Prepared for Us
Culture only wants boys.
Culture tears down men.
Culture celebrates immaturity and selfishness.
Culture celebrates boys who neglect their family for their own wants and desires.
Culture is weak.
Culture is wrong.
Culture isn’t prepared for us.
We are strong.
We are steadfast.
We stand up for our beliefs.
We fiercely protect our family.
We put others before ourselves.
We enter into decisions thoughtfully.
We accept the consequences of our actions.
We live in the light.
We are men.
Understanding Christ’s Wounds
Living in Western Society today, we can easily have a sterilized view of Christ suffering and dying for our sins. For the most part, our experience with the death penalty is very clean. To the best of the ability of modern science, those who are condemned suffer very little, and do it mostly in private.
This was not the death that Jesus suffered.
Based on the advice I was given before getting married, I make regular use of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. As a part of the Sacramental process, I started reflecting more deeply on how my actions today are the direct cause of the brutal torture that Christ suffered. It was an incredible moment of clarity for me.
Our sins today are what caused the necessity of Christ’s suffering. Since God is outside of time, He only needed to redeem us once, and could do so at any point in the spectrum of time in which we exist.
One of the reasons why sin can be so easy is because we often can’t immediately see the damage they inflict. Sin is usually private and personal, and so it feels distant. By reflecting on the wounds of Christ, we can take that power away from sin. We can make it stand in the light and show us its true self.
Sin wounds the Body of Christ. Sin wounded the corporal body of Christ, but also His body in the Church. When one member suffers, we all suffer. Yet, at the same time, when one finds strength and forgiveness in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we all rejoice.
Contemplating Christ’s suffering as a direct result of our actions can help us to make better choices. By understanding that my sin affects me, my wife, my family, my community and Christ Himself, I can gain perspective to help me in moments of temptation. I can use this tool to do good and to avoid evil.
Sin likes to lurk in the shadows. Sin likes to shame you into more sin. Don’t give it the chance. Bring it to the light in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
Children are Truly the Fruit
My son is rapidly approaching the one month mark and the experience for me, as a father, has been something truly amazing.
As I was preparing for his birth, many people gave me lots of advice. They’d joke about their days as new parents or even try to drop some helpful tips, such as “sleep when he sleeps.” What no one mentioned was how children truly strengthen your marriage and amplify the love you have for your spouse.
It’s truly sad that there is a strong undercurrent that pushes young people, and even young marriages, to avoid bringing a child into the world at all. Why would we rob ourselves of the joy of sharing our lives with our family?
We are selfish. We think that anytime we have to give something, we are going to be unhappy. We think that the reduction in disposable income, the loss of some sleep, and the loss of some freedom that a new baby causes is going to lessen the enjoyment we get out of life.
I haven’t found that to be the case.
My wife and I communicate even more now than we did before he arrived. Some of it is about him, but most of it is just about our life as a family. I will often look at him and be reminded physically of my intangible love for my wife.
Yes, there are things that are hard to deal with. The sound of crying isn’t the most pleasant, but it’s more like the alarm clock for love. When he makes that crying noise, he needs me. It’s my time to tend to his needs and thus, my time to love him.
I can also find ways to love my wife through him. For example, on Black Friday, I gave Alison the day off. She got to go shopping in peace without having to worry about his needs and I was able to take him with me to a museum. Had he not been here, we may have just spent the day apart with no real act of love rendered.
Plus, he’s just so dang cute.
Don’t believe the myth that you have to “childproof your marriage.” Change your paradigm and see your child as a new way to love your wife.