Category: Family PrayerPraying With Your Spouse – A Brief Guide – Marriage Spirituality Part 4 of 4I have an admission to make; I (Dan) really like to pray alone. Several of you have indicated the same preference. Because of this and other human factors, a few have also decided that this will always be the case in your marriage. However, if you have followed this series, you know that, in and through As couples lift their voices to heaven as one, they are growing in holiness and their commitment to bear one another’s burdens. As their intimacy grows, so does their ability to forgive each other’s faults, all the while supporting each other every step of the way. Sometimes one will fall back, but the other is there to encourage, forgive, pray, guide, drawing them back to their side along the straight and narrow path. Often, through the beautiful instrument of our spouse, God gives us the healing, support, and strength we need the most. And through it all, love deepens and grows from the original singular love of eros towards a more complete love… a love that increasingly becomes more Christ-like in depth, intensity, and commitment. Assuming that the brave among you are still reading this, we understand that most couples, don’t know how or where to begin this kind of adventure. As well, there are a few pitfalls that are easily avoided as you enter this realm of vulnerability. Human nature and spiritual forces will conspire against your noble commitment to serve your spouse in this way, but thankfully, there are simple ways you can overcome these challenges. Fear: Regardless of the reason (pride, insecurity, past hurts, etc.), fear is a common barrier to spiritual intimacy. To mitigate this, your prayer time together must remain 100% safe 100% of the time. You would never argue or criticize your spouse in adoration or during the Eucharistic prayer at mass; don’t do it during your prayer time together. In the same vein, the time you set aside for prayer is never the right time for preaching, teaching, or correcting (i.e. “Dear Lord, please help my husband see how selfish he is…”). This is a time to share hopes, desires, struggles, joys, failings, and forgiveness with God. Be very careful to protect each other in this sacred space – especially when you are tired and struggling with life or each other. If you struggle too frequently and find the forgiveness topic too difficult to deal with, use a different venue (outside of prayer time) for these discussions. Time: This one is often at the top of the excuse list, but don’t let it be yours – it is very easy to deal with (house full of kids or no). Prayer together only takes a matter of minutes. If you believe differently, set your sights a bit lower and get a little more practical. If you can get up a few minutes earlier or go to bed a few minutes later, you can pray with your spouse. The key here is to make a realistic commitment – once a week – once a day – whatever it is, make it together before God and then resolve to make it work no matter how long or how much effort it takes. Make this a life commitment. Even if you fall 100 times, he is always ready to receive you back again. Never give up on God and his ability to transform or mature your marriage spirituality – he has never, and will never give up on you, or your marriage. Method: If this is new for both of you it is important to do two things: Decide who is going to lead. Community prayer, whether with two or fifty, always requires one person to lead and others to follow. Without this designation, you will find small matters of timing and synchronization to be odd and distracting. From here it is simple, if you are the leader, you always start and your spouse follows at the pace you set (don’t ever rush each another or run ahead because of time – this is also an area that can cause frustration and unnecessary distractions). Use a simple approach. We have included a simple prayer guide below that you can work your way into. Just start with either morning or evening prayer, and take it from there. If you don’t like the wording, or if another sequence works better for you, change it, make it yours. Even better, decide together which prayers work for you and design your own guide. If you read through the prayers here, you will find that they take less than five minutes to say together. If you double that time to add the few minutes it takes to get together and quiet down, you are looking at ten minutes at the most. This should be a very easy start given a reset of the alarm clock and a tiny bit of self-discipline. Before you begin the journey, pray this prayer of commitment together. Merciful Father, out of love and commitment to you and each other, we desire to pray together and to help each other to you. Please fill us with your Holy Spirit, and help us to pray, love, serve, and live as you desire. Help us to learn to pray and submit ourselves to you and to never waiver in our commitment to help each other to heaven. When we fall, please remind us to return back to you and to remember that you will, as you did the prodigal son, always receive us back with joy. Spouses’ Morning Prayer Father all-powerful and ever-living God, we thank you and bless your holy Name, for you created man and woman to be a help and support for each other. Remember us today. Protect us, and enable our love to be the mutual gift of self in the image of Christ and the Church. Enable us to grow old together in joy and peace so we can always praise and thank you in our hearts through your Son, in the Holy Spirit. Amen. - Our Father – Hail Mary – Glory Be - Spouses’ Evening Prayer Prepare for a moment by thinking back on your day (examination of conscience). What were the best moments? What were the worst moments? In simple conversational prayer, talk with God as you would a good and holy father. With your spouse and God, thank Him for the highlights of your day and ask forgiveness for areas where you have fallen short of God’s best for you. - Our Father – Hail Mary – Glory Be - Visit this house, we beg you Lord, and banish from it the deadly power of the evil one. May your holy angels dwell here to keep us in peace, and may your blessing be always upon us. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen. It is just that simple! As you make this level of commitment, you will deepen your relationship with each other and with God fulfilling the ultimate purpose of your calling to marriage, to become one in Christ. May your journey be one of many returns to God, many discoveries of His grace, and a deeper relationship with your spouse than you could ever have imagined. Seek Him – Find Him – Follow Him – Together Dan and Stephanie Series Links Are you helping your spouse to heaven? Marriage Spirituality Part 1 of 4When my wife and I were going through marriage preparation our mentor couple said something to us that we have never forgotten, “your primary role in marriage is to help one another to heaven.” It was a striking comment that seems so obvious now, but at that time, it was a completely new thought.
The good news for us is that we started our relationship out on the right foot. When we entered into the discernment process for marriage we purposed to pray with one another daily. Though we both instinctively committed to do this, the idea was daunting because of the level of intimacy it required – the level of unique exposure that only prayer with someone whom you care about causes. Regardless of the initial discomfort, we set out on the course and have maintained it unwaveringly (yes, even after arguments). Our mutual spiritual commitments are in fact, the most powerful source of the strength in our marriage. It has carried us through a few very difficult periods and has resulted in Christ remaining at the center of our relationship even when he was not always in the center of our own hearts. So, we leave you with this question. Are you specifically, purposefully, and regularly helping your spouse to heaven? Yours in Christ, Dan and Stephanie PS: We thought we would update and re-post this series for you as we approach St. Valentines Day! Enjoy Marriage Spirituality – Book Recommendation
“I like these but is there a prayer that encompasses more of the life and responsibilities spouses share together such as parenting, etc.” So – this prayer book recommendation is just for you Rachel! Please purchase from us HERE to support this site. Here’s a summary: Couples marry intending to share everything. But what about prayer? Do you share your conversations with God? Prayers for Married Couples helps you do just that. It contains over seventy-five prayers that express the hopes, the concerns, and the dreams of today’s married couple. With this book as your guide, the two of you can share, aloud, prayers reflecting a rainbow of circumstances, including: • Let Us Learn to Love as You Do As author Renee Bartkowski says, “This is a book that can add a new and deeper dimension to marriage. It can draw couples closer together into a stronger, more spiritual union with God and into a more intimate, perceptive relationship with each other.” Renee has been happily married for many years. She has written several books for children. She wrote Prayers for Married Couples because, even after enjoying many fulfilling years of married life, she and her husband still found it difficult to pray together regularly and needed a book to guide them. Seek Him – Find Him – Follow Him – Together Dan and Stephanie Burke How can I teach my children to pray?
A: Thank you for sharing this brief testimony, which reminds all of us that we live in a fallen world, but that God’s grace is active and powerful in redeeming that world. I can’t help whispering a “thank you” to our Lord for bringing your son back to a path of hope. It is not an easy path, but it is a good one. Keep praying for your son! Your questions is a good one. How do we teach other people to pray, especially our children? In general, it is easier to do when the children are younger, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible when they are older. If your children are mature adults living on their own, the best way would probably be to invite them to parish activities where prayer would be happening, or to recommend some books on prayer – though they may not respond as generously as you would like to these invitations. In any case, I will offer three suggestions, which, I hope, can be adjusted to children of any age. The Acorn Doesn’t Fall Far from the Tree By far, the most important factor in teaching your children to pray is your own example. By far. By far. Let me say it again: by far. This is common sense, but it is also supported by an abundant and still-accumulating amount of psychological research. The most influential factor in children’s development, even through and out of adolescence, is parental example. This is how we are made: to learn behavior from our parents. This is why the cultural attack on the natural structure family life is so threatening to our society. But I digress. If you pray regularly, and your children know this and see this, they will find it much easier to weave prayer into their own lives, and, what is even more important in the long run, to consider prayer an essential part of being human. This doesn’t mean that you should pray in order to be seen by your children. That can smack of Pharisaical hypocrisy. But it does mean that if you don’t have a regular, heartfelt, maturing life of prayer, it will be extremely difficult for you to teach your children to pray. Along the same lines, your children need to see that your relationship with God affects positively your daily life. This doesn’t mean that they expect you to be perfect – even saints lose their tempers, fall into bad moods, and sometimes say the wrong thing. Certainly, as we grow spiritually and come closer to Christ, that will happen less frequently and less violently. But in the meantime, the way we show that our religion matters, that our prayer life is relevant, is by recovering quickly and humbly from our temper tantrums and self-pity parties. Apologize, make reparation if necessary, brush yourself off (spiritually speaking), and get back in the saddle. This example of humility and confidence in God is powerful, and it will build trust with your children. The Relevance of Jesus The mere fact that you pray, and that your prayer impacts your life (helping you gradually grow in virtue and wisdom), is the first and most essential way to teach your children to pray. But it doesn’t stop there. This example has to teach them not only the importance of prayer, but the method of prayer. Prayer is more than saying prayers. Prayer is a way of living out a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Your children need to see in you a living friendship with Jesus Christ. One effective way for you to model this for your children is by praying for them, out loud, in your own words. If your children are young, you can do this while you put them to bed. After you tuck them in, you can sit on the bedside with your hand on them, and ask God to bless them, guide them, and protect them. This teaches your children that God is not an abstract force that has to be propitiated by going to Church or rifling through the Rosary, but that he is a real person, caring and present, with whom we can speak about what matters to us. Another way to teach them that prayer is a living relationship with God is by going off to pray at moments of tension or conflict. Cut off the heated argument (if it’s getting heated it’s not going to do any good anyway) and let your children know that you feel a need to go and pray about this. The message? God is relevant, present, active in your life. The Domestic Church Finally, don’t be afraid to establish family traditions with regards to prayer. Pray together as a family on a regular basis. Even if your children are older, and you have never had these kinds of traditions, start them and invite your children to join in them. They don’t have to be complicated, but if you pray together, you are teaching your children to pray. Grace before meals, a short prayer when you start a trip or go out the door, prayers before bed or morning prayers – why not do these together, as a family, involving everyone? Every Catholic family is called to be a domestic church, an outpost of Christ’s Kingdom. By praying together as a family, you raise this awareness. Some families create a prayer room or prayer corner where they pray together, replete with candles, holy images, and even a small altar. Special prayer intentions for family members, relatives, or upcoming events can even be writing down and placed on the family altar… These kinds of traditions may strike us as exaggerated, but think about it for a minute: are they? Only if the normal thing in life is to exclude God from our daily lives – and the fact that practices such as these disorient us at first glance shows that our secularized society has contaminated our world view. Again, the point isn’t to turn every Catholic household into a monastery. Rather, the point is to make prayer as normal a family activity as eating – after all, it is as necessary for our soul’s health as food is for our body’s. It may not be immediately clear how you can apply these ideas to your particular family situation. But don’t worry. God wants your son to learn how to pray even more than you do. He is already at work in your son’s heart. Whatever effort you make, however clumsy or small it may appear to you, will be turned to eternally good use by the Lord. Yours in Christ, Father John Bartunek, LC Please join us in reaching thousands for Christ with authentic Catholic spirituality! Would you consider a donation? No gift is too small. |
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Q: Dear Father John, I have prayed for days and months for my son, who, thanks be to God, has finally begun rehabilitation from his drug addiction. I feel that many of my prayers have been answered, but I now feel a burden on my heart to teach him to pray. How can I do that?
