Marriage as vocation, humble intercession, and the Holy Spirit who sustains the home
By Fr Antony Parankimalil VC
After retreats and healing services, people often come to me carrying rosaries, medals, photographs, documents and all kinds of articles for blessing. Even when something has already been blessed, many people will bring it again as soon as they see a priest. During my ministry in Nairobi, Kenya, I began to notice a contradiction. People were very eager to have their possessions blessed, yet some had never brought the deepest covenant of their lives under the sacramental blessing of the Church. I started telling them, with some urgency, that blessing articles was not enough. They also needed to bless their marriage.
One woman answered me with wonderful honesty and humour: ‘Father, if my husband were an article, I could carry him and bring him. He will not permit me to come and have the marriage rectified.’ Her reply made the difficulty very clear. We can place an object in a priest’s hand, but a marriage involves two free persons, two histories and two wounded hearts. Still, the invitation remains. We must not ask God to bless only our houses, vehicles, documents and devotional objects while leaving our promises, relationships and family life outside His grace. A marriage needs more than good intentions, financial security or emotional compatibility. It needs to be entrusted to God.
Marriage Is a Vocation
Saint Paul asks, ‘Wife, how do you know whether you will save your husband? Husband, how do you know whether you will save your wife?’ (1 Corinthians 7:16). I do not understand this as permission for one spouse to control another person’s conscience or to imagine that conversion can be forced. Salvation belongs to God, and every human being remains responsible for his or her own response. Yet the verse gives marriage an eternal horizon. A husband and wife are not joined only to share a home, income and social life. They are called to pray for one another, speak truth with love, forgive, encourage repentance and help their children learn the way of Christ.
This is why I compare marriage with priesthood. A priest receives a vocation to serve the salvation of souls. In a corresponding way, a married man is called to seek the spiritual good of his wife and children, and a married woman is called to seek the spiritual good of her husband and children. We cannot simply drop one another along the road when the vocation becomes costly. Every sacrament is an invitation to receive grace and become an instrument of grace for others.
I once asked the congregation to imagine that, three months after preaching to them, they heard that I had abandoned the priesthood. Many would be shocked. They would ask what my conviction had been, whether I had misled people and how I could walk away from a sacrament after speaking so strongly about it. I wanted married people to recognise that their sacrament is not inferior to mine. Priesthood is not a higher class of Christian commitment while marriage is merely an ordinary arrangement. Both are sacred callings, and both require fidelity, sacrifice, repentance and grace.
Someone once asked whether I telephoned my mother and then told me, ‘God loves your mother more than you do.’ At first I resisted the phrase because God’s love is perfect and without discrimination. Later I began to understand the point. Jeremiah says that before we were formed in the womb, God knew us (Jeremiah 1:5). Before a child enters the world, God has already entrusted that life to a mother and a family. In that sense, the family comes before the priesthood that may later emerge from it. The Church receives priests, religious, parents and lay disciples from homes where faith is either nourished or wounded.
Psalm 11 asks, ‘If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?’ (Psalm 11:3). For many years I preached frequently about healing and other spiritual needs, but I did not give the same attention to marriage and family. In prayer I came to understand that if I spoke about many parts of Christian life while neglecting the family, I was trying to build a house without attending to its foundation. Saint Paul bows before the Father ‘from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name’ (Ephesians 3:14-15). Family is not merely a human invention. It receives its deepest meaning from the Father.
Pray a Blessing, Not a Complaint
The Nairobi incident became more serious when another woman approached me carrying a file and asked me to bless it. I asked what it contained because people often bring documents connected with employment, promotion or a visa, and I wanted to know the intention for which I should pray. She drew me aside and whispered that it was a divorce petition. I could not simply bless the file. I reminded her of Scripture’s severe warning about the breaking of the marriage covenant, including the familiar words of Malachi 2:16, ‘I hate divorce, says the Lord.’ She immediately answered, ‘Father, you must listen. My case is different.’
She then described a marriage marked by alcohol and grave violence. She said that her husband pulled her hair, choked her and could kill her if the situation continued. She also said plainly that her life and safety mattered. Without denying the seriousness of what she described, I asked whether she desired her husband’s destruction or his conversion. Ezekiel reveals God’s heart: He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but desires that the wicked turn from their ways and live (Ezekiel 33:11). Jesus also says that the Father does not desire even one of the little ones to be lost (Matthew 18:14). The Christian hope is not that wrongdoing will be ignored, but that the sinner will repent, the wounded will be protected and evil will not have the final word.
The question then became one of intercession. She told me that the more she prayed, the more her husband drank and the more violent he became. I spoke to her about the prayer of the humble that pierces the clouds and does not rest until the Most High responds (Sirach 35:21). Humility does not mean accepting blame for another person’s violence, and forgiveness does not erase accountability. It means refusing to let hatred become the master of the heart. We can ask God to expose sin, protect the vulnerable, bring truth into the light and convert the person who has caused harm.
I gave her a prayer from Tobit 8:17, the blessing Raguel prayed over Tobias and Sarah: ‘Be merciful to them, O Master, and keep them safe. Bring their lives to fulfilment in happiness and mercy.’ I asked her to place her husband’s name into the prayer: ‘Be merciful to my beloved husband, Joseph, O Master. Keep him safe. Bring his life to fulfilment in happiness and mercy.’ The power of such a prayer is not in counting words as though prayer were magic. Its power lies in bringing a real person, with all his sin and woundedness, before the mercy and judgement of God.
As we spoke, she recognised that her husband had grown up with deep insecurity and rejection after losing his father and being raised by a stepfather. Those wounds did not excuse the violence he inflicted, but they helped her understand that alcohol and aggression had not appeared from nowhere. The wounded child had become a wounded adult who was wounding others. I invited her to pray for the healing and conversion of that person, not merely for the removal of the inconvenience he had become to her.
About a month later, after a service at our Vincentian Prayer House in Lavington, a man approached me. He said that he had been a drunkard and abusive, and that he did not understand what he did when intoxicated. He also said that he had been touched by grace and was becoming a new person. As he spoke, I saw a woman at a distance waving to me. She was the woman who had brought the divorce petition, and she was indicating, ‘That is my husband.’ He also told me that he had seen a change in his wife and that she was now praying a blessing over him rather than speaking only from anger. They understood what was happening as an intervention of grace. I recount their testimony as a witness to the power of prayer, not as a formula that guarantees the same outcome or timetable in every marriage.
I then asked the husbands in the congregation whether they remembered the names of their wives. With a little humour, I told them that a sincere prayer for a wife was worth more than precious jewellery or a million dollars. I asked the wives the same question about their husbands. Pray by name: ‘Be merciful to my beloved wife, O Master. Keep her safe. Bring her life to fulfilment in happiness and mercy.’ Pray by name for your husband in the same way. Complaint may describe what is wrong, but blessing places the person before God and changes the posture from which we speak.
The Prayer of the Humble Pierces the Clouds
Prayer is not a technique for manipulating God or forcing another person to become what we want. Psalm 66 says that if we cherish iniquity in the heart, the Lord will not listen (Psalm 66:18). Before we construct a case against our spouse, we must also allow God to examine our own impatience, contempt, harsh speech, neglect, pride and self-centredness. This does not make every conflict equal or transfer responsibility away from the person committing serious harm. It simply recognises that intercession becomes purer when we stand before God truthfully and ask, ‘Lord, sanctify me. Teach me how to love, how to speak and how to act in the light.’
Saint Monica is one of the great witnesses to this kind of persevering prayer. Her husband Patricius was not a believer, and their son Augustine wandered far from the faith. Monica could not manufacture their conversion. She prayed, wept, humbled herself and remained faithful over many years. Christian tradition remembers that Patricius eventually received baptism and that Augustine became a priest, bishop, saint and doctor of the Church. Her prayer did not operate like a machine, but it became part of the mysterious way grace entered an entire household.
Saint Paul writes that the unbelieving husband is made holy through his wife and the unbelieving wife through her husband, otherwise their children would be unclean, but as it is they are holy (1 Corinthians 7:14). We should not turn this verse into a guarantee that one person’s devotion will automatically produce another person’s conversion. Rather, it tells us that holiness is never merely private. A believing spouse can become a channel through which prayer, truth, repentance and Christian example enter the home.
This matters especially for children. I have met adults who hesitate to marry because the conflict, separation or divorce of their parents destroyed their confidence in family life. One woman told me that the lesson she had absorbed from childhood was that marriage should be avoided. The wounds of a marriage rarely remain contained between two adults. Children learn from the way parents speak, forgive, argue, pray and take responsibility. When a husband and wife seek holiness, their children become beneficiaries of that grace; when hostility becomes the atmosphere of the home, the next generation often carries the fear.
Guard the Foundation for Future Generations
We live in a culture that strongly emphasises individual freedom, personal space and financial independence. These are not evil in themselves, and healthy boundaries are necessary. The danger comes when independence is made the highest good and a spouse is judged only by whether he or she satisfies my present needs. Christian marriage asks a different question: how can this covenant become a place where both persons grow in truth, holiness and love? The answer is not domination or the suppression of personality. It is mutual conversion under God.
Sirach says that the Lord takes pleasure in three beautiful things: agreement among brothers and sisters, friendship among neighbours, and a wife and husband who live in harmony (Sirach 25:1). Harmony is not the same as never disagreeing. Someone once told me that he and his wife were an excellent couple because they never fought. I asked how that was possible, and he answered, ‘Father, I live on the first floor and she lives on the third.’ Distance may silence an argument, but it does not create communion. God desires more than two isolated lives under one roof.
Scripture also reveals that harmony is opposed. Wisdom says that through the devil’s envy death entered the world (Wisdom 2:24), and Proverbs names the person who sows discord in a family among the things the Lord hates (Proverbs 6:16-19). We should therefore recognise that marital conflict has a spiritual dimension. The enemy exploits resentment, pride, secrecy, addiction and repeated accusation because division weakens the home. Spiritual warfare, however, is not an excuse to blame every problem on the devil while avoiding counselling, repentance or practical responsibility. It is a call to resist lies and choose the truth with the help of grace.
In personal prayer I sensed the Lord pressing this conviction upon me: if I did not preach about marriage and family, I had preached about many rooms while neglecting the foundation of the house. Family life is under immense pressure, and the effects appear in court cases, custody disputes, estrangement and the wounds of children. I beg married people not to become passive before forces that slowly normalise contempt. Guard the words spoken at home. Guard fidelity. Guard the prayer life of the family. Seek help before a wound becomes a pattern and a pattern becomes a hardened way of life.
What My Parents Taught Me
I speak about marriage not as someone who fell from the sky without a family. My parents celebrated seventy years of marriage. They raised ten children, and four of us became priests. The year of their fiftieth wedding anniversary was the year I was ordained. When people hear those facts, they may imagine a home without strain, but life was not easy for them. Their holiness did not consist in having identical temperaments or never becoming frustrated.
I saw my father and mother argue, not with their hands but with words. My mother often felt that my father was not responsible enough, especially when she looked at the needs of ten children. My father, as I described him with affection, was ‘Mr Cool’. Very little seemed to disturb him, and that calmness could irritate my mother even more. They were two genuinely different people. Their marriage did not survive because their personalities naturally fitted together without effort.
What I remember most clearly is their daily prayer. Every evening, roughly from 7.30 to 8.30, they prayed the Rosary, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, litanies, Scripture and prayers to the Sacred Heart. Prayer did not erase every disagreement, but it kept returning them to the same Lord. Sirach says, ‘If one is not steadfast in the fear of the Lord, his house will be quickly overthrown’ (Sirach 27:3). My parents taught me that a family survives not by pretending differences do not exist, but by placing those differences before God again and again.
A marriage brings together two histories, two family backgrounds, two sets of expectations and two personalities formed by different parents. In that sense it is not something that works automatically. It requires the daily martyrdom of selfishness, the surrender by which each person learns to serve rather than demand. This language of sacrifice must never be twisted into permission for abuse or immediate danger. Christian self-giving is ordered towards truth, dignity and holiness. It does not baptise violence. In the ordinary strain of family life, however, love matures when spouses learn to die to pride, forgive, ask forgiveness and begin again.
The Holy Spirit Holds What We Cannot
The lesson I received from my parents leads directly to the Holy Spirit. Wisdom declares, ‘The Spirit of the Lord has filled the world, and that which holds all things together knows what is said’ (Wisdom 1:7). A husband and wife may differ in almost everything: upbringing, temperament, habits, tastes and ways of responding to stress. Yet if both have received the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit is the deepest reality they share. He is able to hold together what human strength alone cannot sustain.
Saint Paul says that God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Romans 5:5). Christian spouses are not expected to manufacture an endless supply of patience and affection from within themselves. Human love becomes tired. We become disappointed, defensive and exhausted. At that point the prayer is not, ‘Lord, make my spouse easier for me to manage.’ It is, ‘Holy Spirit, pour the love of God into my heart. Heal what has been wounded. Give me patience, truth, kindness, courage and wisdom.’
My dear brothers and sisters, invite the Holy Spirit into the actual places where marriage is difficult: the conversation you keep postponing, the resentment you rehearse, the financial pressure, the interference of relatives, the struggle with addiction, the wound of betrayal, the fear carried by a child and the loneliness that can exist even in the same house. Prayer is not an optional decoration added to family life after every practical effort has failed. It is the humble recognition that without God we cannot love as Christ asks us to love.
For some couples, beginning again will mean returning to the sacraments or regularising a marriage within the Church. For others it will mean establishing a simple shared prayer, going to confession, asking forgiveness, seeking sound marriage counselling or accepting professional help for addiction and trauma. Where there is abuse or immediate danger, beginning again must include protection, specialist support and clear boundaries. God’s blessing never conceals sin or removes responsibility. It gives grace to tell the truth, repent, make amends and walk towards what is good.
Bless your marriage. Do not be content to have every object in the house blessed while the relationship at the centre of the home remains untouched by prayer. Place your spouse by name before Jesus. Ask the Lord for mercy, safety and fulfilment. Seek your own conversion as earnestly as you seek the conversion of another. Guard the family as a foundation for the generations that follow, and invite the Holy Spirit to hold together what you cannot hold by your own strength. A family becomes strong not because it never experiences conflict, but because its members repeatedly return to the One from whom every family takes its name.
Pastoral note: Christian teaching on the permanence of marriage must never be used to pressure a person to remain in immediate danger. Prayer, forgiveness and hope for conversion do not excuse violence, coercive control, sexual abuse, threats or stalking. A person facing abuse should prioritise safety and seek appropriate emergency, legal, medical, safeguarding and professional pastoral support. Physical separation may be necessary for protection while the Church continues to uphold the marriage bond and discern the situation carefully. The testimony recounted in this article should not be treated as a universal procedure or a substitute for specialist help.
Adapted and edited from a homily delivered by Fr Antony Parankimalil VC at the Healing Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Bayswater, during the July 2026 Divine Australia programme.