How the seasons of your marriage can help you grow in holiness

Just as the earth transforms with each season of spring, summer, fall and winter, so too does a couple’s marriage relationship experience its own seasons. We begin married life with excitement and expectation for what’s to come. As newlyweds, our hearts are similar to spring buds as we form a new life together. Summer months are the fun-filled activity era, laying the ground work ahead as we move into fall and winter, with its own sets of challenges.
 
A few years ago, Pope Francis wrote a beautiful apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, or The Joy of Love. In this beautiful letter to the faithful, Pope Francis offered some heartfelt advice for married couples involving everything from accepting each other’s faults to how to disagree respectfully. He also wrote on the importance of spending time together. He wrote:
 
“Love needs time and space; everything else is secondary. Time is needed to talk things over, to embrace leisurely, to share plans, to listen to one another and gaze in each other’s eyes, to appreciate one another and to build a stronger relationship.”
 
My husband of more than 30 years, Tony, and I, have participated in many marriage enrichment workshops, date nights and encounter weekends. Each experience has led us deeper into our understanding of our vocation as husband and wife. Though we are not perfect when we marry (nor during our married life), we do always strive for perfection in our call to be one with each other, regardless of the trials, tribulations and unexpected life situations. Our eternal destiny is the sacramental bond as husband and wife and our shared promised goal of helping each other get to heaven.
 
And while praying and worshipping together are important aspects of this promised goal, so is, as Pope Francis advises, “time.” Similar to our annual gardens and flower beds, marriages need to undergo renewal. The summer months, regardless of whatever season your marriage may be experiencing, are a perfect time for reconnection, rekindling and renewal.
 
Reconnection: Take this summer to revisit a favorite shared activity — maybe you both cheer for the same sports team or enjoy long walks or bike rides. Reconnect with each other as you did when you were first dating and discovering how much you liked being together.
 
Rekindling: Sharing life together comes with many responsibilities and a mile-long “to do” list. Take the summer to slow down, put the lists on hold and spend time with each other. It can be an impromptu picnic on the beach or revisiting a romantic spot that holds special meaning.
 
Renewal: This summer, I have the joy to celebrate our son’s wedding. I won’t be able to help remembering the same joy I felt more than 30 years ago as a young bride. Whether you have a wedding to attend, or not, take some time to renew your promises to each other.
 
Married life is a lifetime love affair and roller-coaster ride that changes as the seasons. And those of us called to live this vocation are privileged to experience a little foretaste of the heavenly banquet that awaits us all as we journey home to the Father.
 
 
Additional Resources:
 
Sacred Marriage
BY GARY THOMAS
 
Thomas explores how marriage is intended to make us holy more than to make us happy. Marriage can help us to grow in our service, obedience, character, pursuit and love of God. Marriage calls us to a new and selfless life.
 
Discovering Our Deepest Desire
BY GREG SCHUTTE
 
There are seven key habits that are critical for transforming a surviving marriage into a thriving marriage. In this seven-week journey, also known as “Building a Eucharistic Marriage,” couples learn the importance of developing not only a deeper relationship with each other, but also about the importance for building a deeper connection with Christ, through the Mass.
 
Marriage as a Path to Holiness: Lives of Married Saints
BY DAVID AND MARY FORD
 
The lives of more than 180 married saints from the times of the Old Testament through the 20th century are featured.