Can communion help you love your spouse even more?

Attending Mass and receiving the Eucharist helps fortify your marriage for the long haul.

Loving each other for a lifetime … no matter what difficulties come your way: getting married and staying married is a challenge for many couples. Christian couples are fortunate to have many sources of support for this daring adventure, which can help nourish marital relationships. Geared to both older and younger generations, there are resources for Catholic couples as well as their parents. But conversation groups and summer courses are not miracle solutions. If Christian couples (facing the same adversities as other couples) “slide less off the rails” it is because their love is built on the rock of the Church and nourished by the sacraments. Living the sacrament of marriage faithfully day-to-day is the challenge of the modern Christian couple.

Continuously immerse yourself in the Source of your commitment

No time to go to Mass? With our hectic days we quickly end up relegating the sacraments to the last in line of our priorities. Yet human conjugal love is not easy for the long haul and that is why it is necessary to continually re-immerse ourselves in the true origin of our commitment.

Perhaps you are one of the many couples who chose for their wedding day the text from St. Paul: “Love is patient, love is kind …” There were no dark clouds in the sky of your love, and you likely had no doubt about attaining the high ideals proposed by St. Paul. However, the path to great heights is not a smooth one, and those words may now seem unattainable. When the difficulties of everyday life thus tarnish the initial impetus of our conjugal relationship, the reality of Christ’s presence bursts forth in the sacraments.

The Eucharist, a place of resurrection

The Eucharist is the foundation and life blood of our married life. “The Eucharist is the source of love, it gives each member of the home the riches of Christ’s sacrifice. The Eucharist forms the home, it completes and vivifies the union of the spouses in the sacrament of marriage,” assures Fr. Henri Caffarel, who founded the Teams of Our Lady in 1964.

These revitalizing words remind us of what we experience each time we receive the body of Christ in communion: our love, a hundred times wounded, a hundred times renewed. The Mass, because it is the realization of the Paschal mystery, is a place of true resurrection. Let us not miss this vital appointment.

Anne Gavini