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Marriage and Family

Writer's picture: Profiles in CatholicismProfiles in Catholicism
Jan 7, 20205 min read

Updated: Feb 17

Prayers


Prayer for Marriage and Family


“Lord of the New Wine”

 

Out of the mystery of an unbegotten beginning, you

Turned inward and created outward, a sign of your being

And, from the beginning, you promised your faithful love

To a people, often unfaithful, enabling, eventually, that

You will be able to give yourself to your bride, the Church

“Who” lives out of love for you, her one bridegroom.

 

Lord, you did not consult me about myself, but gave me

To begin through relationship, my parents co-creating

With you who give personal existence, calling me into

Relationship with them and with you: both of whom lead

Me to begin to know who I am and what my life is about.

 

What is will out, while taking in what is about, you gave us

Life from within, unfolding it outwardly, through an inner,

Personal, genealogical history of being who I am and my

Wife being who she is, opening into the past and across the

Present, even as the light of the universe travels, day and night

To an end you can envisage even if, for most of us, it is clearly

Out of sight’s reach: a goal of gathering us wholly into Life.

 

And so we come to my wife and I whom you, Lord, spoke to

Make us one in the making of an insoluble ;ove open to life:

A life both individual and together, both born of a community

And called to be one: An event upon which to thread, as it

Were, our lifelong clinging to each other and to the word

Of beginning to be wed, as the dud and the gem, the joy and

The pain, along with the word which illuminates them and

Makes a history of salvation with us, as each other’s helper.

 

We celebrated the gift of yourself to your Church, as we

Married, taking between us your one gift to both of us:

Communion: A gift ever to help us to go beyond ourselves

In being more like you, the servant,

who calls us to be in the Service of life, whether in action or in word,

drawing on the Word from the wedding feast of

Cana: That even if our wine runs dry yours is ever an undaunted,

plentiful abundance!

 

A woman wed, smiling, beautiful in passing, bringing prayer,

a Red car, memories already of being a sweeping beauty, visiting,

But now bearing our children, ten in all, two of whom passed to

Your Father too soon to be known but not too soon to be noticed,

Named, and remembered,

if not by others certainly by my bride.


And I, a man, wed almost too old to be young, suffering the silent,

subtle strangulation of years of inexplicable weariness and then,

With the work of damp days in a laundry, lying in fitful sleeps

Until, striking with force, the clots cling and combine and block

And undermine the health of one that thought he was still young.

And seven more of the children you have given, each a gift, yet

So from us, and the life we go on living, loving, have come one,

And seven more of the children you have given, each a gift, yet

So different from ourselves, are yet identical: each no less an “I”

Than the other and all called out into life, sharing and helping en Route,

searching out as they go the meaning and purpose of life.

And so over the years, years long and short, the gift of marriage

Shows the wisdom of love to be about calling us out of affliction,

Loneliness, blighted as we were, yet each counterbalancing the Other,

with the practical and the spiritual weaving across our

Differences, creating a whole both textured and beyond our telling

Of living life to the full, as promised, one long past pilgrimage

Across the world ago, followed by many others, taking us out of

Ourselves, announcing the gifts of your faithful Love, ever calling Us to more:

to be vulnerable and, if possible, to help to heal hearts.

Catholic married layman, father of 11, 3 of whom are in heaven and an author.


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