God stepped into the messiness of humanity through His very human family, full of scandalous forebears. This Christmas, let us imitate Jesus and love our family members despite how annoying they may get! The Christmas Vigil Mass features the Gospel of Matthew (1:1-25). Depending on whether you get the long or short version, you might hear the genealogy of Jesus Christ -- a rather long list of the forebears of Jesus, ...
Attentiveness and discipline are keys to listening well. When we take the time to listen to our spouse, we strengthen our relationship like nothing else. One of the most supremely loving gestures we can give another person is to listen to them. However, being heard is a rare experience for many of us. What makes it so hard to give this simple gift to each other? We remember those days so ...
Think about your “I do” and make it a daily one. Ask, what will “I do” for my marriage today? It’s a powerful strategy for both the good times and the bad. At a recent business conference, a speaker made an offhand remark about having to recommit to her marriage vows every day. It was in the context of a discussion about the challenges of change management and how reforming a company ...
It happens all the time: one of us does or says something and the other is triggered, reacting harshly. To break the habit of reactivity, try this mindfulness tool to develop the virtue of restraint. While it is often associated with Buddhist meditation, mindfulness has actually been a feature of many religions under different names, including Christianity. It has also become an essential tool in the field of psychology for helping ...
There are always ample opportunities to forgive others, especially in a marriage. But sometimes we don't know how. Consider three tips to help you forgive more easily in the context of a covenant relationship. We remember those long nights in the first year of our marriage. In the infancy of his career, Byron was often late home from work as he juggled the demands on his time. Initially, Francine was so grateful when ...
The key to building trust in relationships is for both people to make their expectations clear and then commit to meeting those expectations. When we look back on our early romance, we note how quick we were to trust each other, even recklessly so. We dived into the relationship with ready abandon and little thought for the risks of rejection or disappointment. Since then, our trust levels have strengthened in many ...
Many people believe that a good relationship requires equal effort from both husband and wife. And so, if your spouse is unwilling to change or invest more in the marriage then the relationship is doomed to lack-lustre intimacy or even steady deterioration. This is not necessarily the case, however. It only takes one person to tango! While it is certainly ideal to have both spouses fully invested and contributing to the ...
What’s the Difference Between Respect and Cherishment? While everyone experiences love uniquely, some clear gender patterns have emerged through relationship research. In one study, when given the option between the negative choices of being ‘alone and unloved in all the world’ or ‘inadequate and disrespected by everyone’, 74% of men preferred being alone and unloved, compared to only a minority of women.* Further enquiry suggests that this gender pattern is relevant ...
In October a few years ago, the Australian bishops called the entire Catholic community to pray for marriage and family. The initiative was joined by around thirty other Christian churches making it the largest ever prayer campaign in the nation. It raises the question: does prayer really make a difference? Cynics might say that a prayer campaign is just a badly disguised way of making a value statement. It’s certainly true ...
We recently analysed the feedback from 400 participants in our online marriage preparation course. The results to the question, “On which of the following areas would you like more formation/education”, surprised us; the most requested item among eleven options was, ‘Improving Communication’. Communication and Relationships Why the surprise? Everybody knows that communication is foundational to happy relationships. The surprise is that most people we talk to believe that they are already ...
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