I remember going on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land with a group that included several members of my family. We happened to be at Cana on Valentine's Day, and we celebrated the Eucharist in the church that remembers the wedding feast where Jesus performed His first sign. There were many married couples with us, but that day I noticed my own parents in a way I had not seen them for a long time. They were very insistent on standing together and taking photographs near the altar, so much so that when it was time to begin Mass I had to get them back to their seats. I remember looking at them and seeing an expression of love between them that I had not noticed for a long time.
Valentine's Day makes people speak openly about love. Cards fill the shops, couples make special gestures, photographs are taken and affection is expressed. There is nothing wrong with any of that, but the danger comes when love is restricted to a particular day, a particular celebration or a particular stage of marriage. Love cannot be one small part of marriage. It has to run right through the marriage, because once love is restricted to particular moments, the rest of the relationship can slowly become something merely functional.
Jesus says that from the beginning a man and woman become one flesh, and then He gives the command, "What God has joined together, let no one separate" (Mark 10:2-9). Marriage therefore cannot be treated as something casual or accidental. It is not a lottery in which you later look at what you have received and complain that somebody else got a better deal. If you are to respect marriage, you cannot take it for granted. Yet that is one of the great dangers when two people have lived together for many years. The person beside you becomes so familiar that you stop noticing the gift.
Keep Searching for the Beauty in Your Spouse
When a couple first comes together, everything is new. There is a desire to know more about the other person. You notice expressions, habits, interests and little things that perhaps nobody else notices. The difficulty is that after ten, twenty, thirty or forty years, we begin to think the search is over. We say, "I know this person. I have seen the same face and the same behaviour for years. There is nothing new here." That is when the intensity of marriage begins to disappear.
I would tell every married couple that the search must continue. There is beauty hidden in your spouse that you have not yet discovered. Every day there can be something more to recognise, appreciate and bring out. The day you decide that there is nothing more worth discovering in your husband or wife is a dangerous day for your marriage. Familiarity should deepen our knowledge of the person we love, not make us blind to that person.
I remember a couple who came to me when I was a very new priest, barely a couple of months into priesthood. The husband sat before me and spoke very bluntly about his wife. For fifteen or twenty minutes he gave me a long list of her faults and mistakes while she sat beside him without saying anything. His anger was obvious. I eventually asked him to step away for a moment, and as soon as he left she burst into tears. She told me that there had been serious violence in the marriage. She said that he had been beating her from the beginning of their married life and that when she had spoken to her parents, she had simply been told to continue and hope that things would change.
I was inexperienced, and I did not know how to deal adequately with something so serious. I spoke about love and forgiveness, called the husband back and spoke to him as well, but nothing changed then. In fact, she later told me that when they returned home he became angry because she had spoken to me about what was happening. The counselling itself had not brought the change.
More than two years later I saw them again at another retreat. I remembered the husband immediately because some faces from your first experiences as a priest remain with you. But this time he came in holding his wife's hand. I kept looking at those hands and then at her face, because the woman I had seen before had been filled with fear and pain. Now there was a calmness in her face. The husband began to cry and told me that the retreat had changed the way he understood his marriage. He said he had begun to realise that there was beauty hidden in his wife which he had never bothered to see.
His wife later told me that the violence had stopped and that his behaviour toward her had changed. He had begun to care for her, and he would sometimes point out some quality in her and say, "I never saw this in you before." The marriage had been transformed because his way of seeing had changed. Instead of looking continuously for faults, he had begun to search for what was good.
That story has remained with me because it illustrates something we easily forget. We can train our eyes to look only for what irritates us. If that is what we do every day, we will always find more reasons to be angry. But we can also learn to recognise the goodness, sacrifice, patience and beauty that have been present in the person beside us all along. Marriage should never reach the stage where husband and wife believe there is nothing more to discover in one another.
That is what I mean when I say, never lose the intensity in marriage. I am not speaking merely about romantic excitement. I am speaking about continuing to value the person God has given you, continuing to search, continuing to notice and refusing to allow love to become dry through neglect.
Love Gives the Self
We also have to ask what we mean when we say that there is love in a marriage. St Paul gives us something much more demanding than a feeling. In 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, love is patient and kind. It is not envious, boastful, arrogant or rude. It does not insist upon its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It rejoices in the truth, bears all things, hopes all things and endures all things.
It is easy to say, "Of course I love my husband," or, "Of course I love my wife." But then place your marriage beside those words of Scripture. Am I patient in my marriage? Am I kind? Do I insist that everything must happen according to my way? Have I become irritable with the person beside me? Do I preserve resentment and bring old hurts back whenever there is another disagreement? When Scripture describes love, we should not read it only as a beautiful passage for weddings. We should allow it to examine the marriage we are actually living.
A marriage can continue outwardly while love has gradually been replaced by something else. Husband and wife may provide things for each other, share a house, pay bills, raise children and keep the machinery of family life running, yet still become emotionally absent from one another. We can mistake provision for love. A husband may say, "I work all these hours because I love my family. I give them everything they need." But a wife may be saying, "I barely see him." The same can happen the other way around. We can provide many things and still fail to provide ourselves.
St Paul tells husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her (Ephesians 5:25). The important word there is gave. Christ did not merely give the Church things. He gave Himself. That is the model presented to Christian marriage. Love becomes real when I give my inner self to the other person, not when I simply place material things around them.
I once spoke with a couple where the wife complained that she hardly saw her husband because he was always working. By the time he came home the children were asleep and she was almost asleep. Early in the morning he had already gone. The husband told me that he knew he was not around much, but he believed he had found a way to make up for it. He recorded messages for her and set a CD player to play them automatically in the morning. His wife looked at me and said, "Father, one day I will fall in love with that CD player and not him."
There was humour in the way she said it, but there was truth underneath it. A recorded voice cannot replace the person. Money cannot replace the person. Gifts cannot replace the person. A beautiful home cannot replace the person. We can become so busy working for the family that we slowly remove ourselves from the family we say we are working for.
There has to be time protected for marriage and family life. Work is necessary and responsibilities are real, but if everything else is allowed to take the first place, husband and wife eventually become strangers living around the same responsibilities. Material comfort may give temporary ease, but it cannot create the lasting happiness that grows from a relationship founded in love.
Materialism easily becomes selfishness. Once everything is centred on what I need, what I want, what I earn and what belongs to me, the marriage begins to contain two separate lives. Scripture gives us an uncomfortable example in Abraham. In Genesis 20, Abraham fears that Abimelech may kill him because of Sarah, so he presents Sarah as his sister. His first concern becomes his own safety. He protects himself at the expense of his wife.
Marriage is not about selfishness. Husband and wife are called to protect one another and live for one another. If you wanted to live only for the self, marriage was never meant to become the place where you do it at another person's expense. If you are living single lives in spite of being married, thinking only of yourself while remaining inside the covenant, that is unacceptable before God. It is sin. The two have been bound together in marriage, and the moment the self becomes the centre, the marriage begins to move downward.
You Are Partners, Not Two Separate Lives
Jesus says that the two are no longer two but one. That does not destroy the individuality of husband and wife, but it does change the way married life is approached. There cannot be a constant attitude of mine and yours in which every responsibility, every burden and every sacrifice is guarded as though husband and wife were still two unrelated lives. Everything cannot be reduced to what belongs to me and what belongs to you. Marriage is lived in togetherness.
I have always found a strict fifty-fifty attitude dangerous in marriage. You wash the dishes, I do the clothes; you pay this part, I pay that part; each person measures exactly what belongs to the other. Marriage is not a ledger. It is not about each spouse doing an exactly calculated share while protecting an individual life from the other.
I remember a couple who came to me with exactly this problem. The wife was a lawyer doing exceptionally well, while the husband worked in IT. They had agreed that everything would be divided fifty-fifty, including the bills. She had enough income to meet her part comfortably, but he struggled to meet his. He eventually found a better-paid job in another city so that he could keep paying his share. Then she was crying because he was living away and they no longer had a family life. The arrangement that was supposed to divide everything equally had helped divide the marriage itself.
Genesis 2:18 describes the woman as a helper and partner. A partner gets a share in everything. Scripture does not say that partnership is fifty-fifty, ten-ninety or a hundred-to-nothing. In real married life there can even be periods when one person carries almost everything and the other carries very little. The point is not the ratio. Husband and wife share glory, joy, sorrow, pain and difficulty. They share every part of life because God has given them the strength and grace of facing it together.
The same is true when things go wrong. One of the most destructive habits in family life is the blame game. Something happens with the finances, the children, the home or another decision, and immediately the question becomes, "Whose fault is this?" We can spend more energy proving that the other person is responsible than actually dealing with what has happened.
When mistakes have been made together, learn to take up the blame together instead of passing it to the other person. If a child has gone astray, do not look at your spouse and say, "You should have brought the child up properly." Ask yourself what part you carried. We are very happy to claim the child when something is beautiful: "Look at those eyes, just like mine." When the child does badly, suddenly it becomes, "After all, your son." We want to share the glory and push away the blame. Marriage asks us to share the burden as well.
Second Samuel gives us a painful example in David and Bathsheba. David commits adultery with Bathsheba, has her husband killed, is confronted by the prophet Nathan and repents. Later the child dies. Then Scripture says, "David consoled his wife Bathsheba" (2 Samuel 12:24). The sin is not denied or excused. It has already been committed and repentance is necessary. But in the grief that follows, the movement is toward consolation rather than another round of accusation.
Once a mistake has been made, endless accusation cannot undo it. Do not spend the marriage passing the blame from one person to the other. Learn to console each other, carry the burden and face what has happened together. Share the joy and the glory, but also share the sorrow, brokenness, shame and pain. You are not two separate people prosecuting one another. You are one.
When God says, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner" (Genesis 2:18), He gives us a beautiful understanding of marriage. A partner is not somebody who watches you carry everything alone. A partner enters the life with you. Husband and wife have a strength available to them precisely because they do not have to face every battle separately, and that partnership must include prayer.
Protect Your Marriage With Prayer
A family without prayer and without family prayer cannot be a family of God. A family of God should have family prayer. We have battles in life, and we are meant to face those battles together before God. If husband and wife share the home, joys, sorrows, burdens and future, prayer cannot be the one part of life they insist on living separately.
Tobias and Sarah give us a powerful image in the Book of Tobit. Sarah enters the marriage carrying a terrible history of pain and shame. Seven husbands have died, she has been blamed for their deaths, and her suffering has brought her to despair. Tobias does not stand at a distance and tell her to deal with that burden herself. He kneels down, she kneels down, and the two of them pray it out together. That is marriage facing a battle together before God.
That has always impressed me about family prayer. I consider the strongest form of prayer to be family prayer because it is rooted in the Word. Jesus says in Matthew 18:19 that if two agree on earth about what they ask, it will be done for them by the Father in heaven. Sit in family prayer, protect your marriage and face your battles together. Husband and wife should be able to hold each other's hands and pray as one.
Family prayer can become routine even when we keep the custom. In Kerala, I have joked about the mother saying the Rosary, "Hail Mary, full of grace," and in the middle suddenly calling out, "Daughter, go and check what is on the gas. Is it burnt?" Then she continues, "The Lord is with thee." We can be physically at prayer while half the mind is somewhere else. Do not sit disintegrated, one person in one corner and the other somewhere else, each thinking of different things. Sit together as a family and pray together.
There is also something powerful about the simple human closeness of husband and wife praying together. Hold each other's hands and pray. The touch itself can speak when words have become difficult. Throughout the Gospels we see Jesus touching people whom others would not touch. He touched the leper when nobody else dared to touch him. Let the human hands of a husband and wife be held together. You are not two. You are one, and in prayer you are one.
Marriage needs protection because Satan prowls around looking for an opening. First Peter warns us, "Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour" (1 Peter 5:8). He prowls around marriages, waiting for a small moment when he can enter and destroy. Protect your marriage with prayer. Let the Holy Spirit protect the marriage through the prayer you share together.
One area that especially needs protection is sexuality. It is a gift God has given, and it is a sanctity that must be kept. Do not treat casual flings and flirtations as harmless simply because people around you do. Do not misuse sexuality, abuse it or let what is filthy enter the covenant. Hebrews says, "Let marriage be held in honour by all, and let the marriage bed be kept undefiled" (Hebrews 13:4). Keep the marriage bed undefiled. Protect what God has made holy.
Solomon had intellect, wisdom and knowledge of God, yet he fell because he allowed his relationships to draw his heart away from the Lord. A man of God can fall when Satan prowls like a devouring lion, and you and I can fall easily. If you are in a relationship, fling or situation that you know is wrong, break it off. Do not stand near temptation and imagine that you can challenge Satan indefinitely. Your responsibility is to protect your family, protect your relationship and protect your marriage with prayer.
Casual flirtation and infidelity do not affect only husband and wife. You may not realise how many lives can be damaged. I have seen this week after week in the retreat centre, and there are days when I have wept because children are being wounded by the selfishness and pleasures of adults. The sanctity you keep in your marriage will bless your children, and the betrayal you allow into the marriage can wound them deeply. God will one day ask us what we did with the family He entrusted to us.
Look into your own marriage and ask: what have I made of the gift God entrusted to me? Have I respected my spouse? Have I compromised the values God placed around marriage? Have I desecrated what should have been holy? Your marriage is a temple of God. Have I hurt the person beside me? Have I made my spouse feel cheap, unloved or uncared for? Have I pushed the other person into the background, humiliated them in front of others, treated them like a servant, or been physically present while emotionally absent?
Where there has been failure, there must be the humility to ask forgiveness. Husband and wife are not meant to push one another down. They are meant to hold one another's hands and lift one another up. If your words or actions have made your spouse kneel under humiliation, loneliness, disrespect or pain, be sorry from the depths of your heart. Ask pardon, and then lift the person God has given you. That is what a spouse is meant to do: not become another weight that pushes the other down, but a partner who helps the other rise.
I can go to Mass, pray novenas and attend retreats, but if I do not respect the gift God has given me, I sin against God. I cannot separate holiness from the way I treat my spouse. If I deliberately disrespect and desecrate the marriage God entrusted to me, I make myself an abomination before God. Respect the gift He has given you. Continue searching for the beauty in your spouse. Give yourself rather than only things. Reject selfishness and the blame game. Keep fidelity sacred and pray together.
The years will pass. Children will grow and move into lives of their own. When you grow old, the person who remains beside you is your spouse. That is God's gift to you. Do not dump that gift by the wayside and do not wait until the marriage is broken before recognising its value. Protect your family and protect your marriage with prayer.
Never let love run dry. Ask the Holy Spirit to protect your marriage and keep alive the love, respect and unity God intended when He joined you together. Lord, protect this marriage with Your Holy Spirit and wash it with Your Blood. Mother Mary, intercede for the families entrusted to your Son.