We are about to celebrate National Marriage Week. Have you thought about what you can do to celebrate your marriage and thank the good Lord for bringing you together in the first place? Whether you’re engaged, giddy newlyweds, or an experienced married couple about to mark a milestone anniversary, how much time do you spend as a couple focused on God? There’s no time like the present to re-focus on your relationship with Jesus and each other.
Speaking from experience, setting some time aside daily to pray with your spouse, read Scripture, or study a faith-based book together can make all the difference in your marriage. Deacon Dom and I are reverts to the Catholic faith, and we came back into full communion with the Church, through a non-denominational Bible study. As we turned the pages of the Bible, we recognized the Catholic Church in God’s Word and we never looked back. From that Bible study we developed an extremely healthy spiritual habit of reading Scripture together every day, in the form of the Daily Mass Readings. That was nearly 30 years ago and our healthy habit you could say, has developed into what we call a happy holy hour or our happy hour with a holy twist. Although we might miss a day or two here and there, for the most part we have been able to keep it up. And by the way, that happiness, does not come from the beverage we may be drinking during our prayer time.
Then again, you can make this happy holy hour uniquely yours. Pick the time of day that best works with your schedule. And stick with it. Instead of turning on the TV when you’re home together, curl up with a daily devotional such as the Magnificat or The Word Among Us. As you begin simply ask God to continue to bless your marriage and guide you in applying His Word to your life. You’ll also find that these devotionals as well as many Catholic websites including the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) home page, include written or video reflections, sometimes both. These summaries of the Scriptures will, over time, help you develop deeper insights as well as fruitful discussions on how you see God working in your lives. Hopefully, this will lead to more reading of additional faith-based material. For example, “Intimate Graces: How Practicing the Works of Mercy Brings Out the Best in Marriage,” which offers reflection questions after each chapter, might be an easy way to get those happy holy hours underway.
So, morning, noon, or night, decide as we enter National Marriage Week, 2021 to do something for your marriage. Grab that coffee, iced tea, or vino, and begin a new tradition. That happy holy hour with a twist, could turn a good marriage into a great one. As they say in Italy, “cin cin.”
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