Joined Hands

Sorry for the hiatus — it’s been a crazy stretch. As I was preparing for a talk I gave recently, I came across a lovely letter I received back in 2006 from a couple that went to a workshop I, and a marriage and family therapist, gave on sacramental marriage and healthy relationship habits. I felt inspired to share part of that letter (which they had given me permission to do after I got it, as I asked them, seeing it was so remarkable). Please excuse any mistakes in the text as I typed it out myself from the handwritten letter I received:

…My wife and I want to share with the two of you the impact of
your workshop on marriage held last Saturday on my wife and me.
Honestly, we came to this workshop as a sort of last-ditch effort at saving our marriage
which had been slowly crumbling over the last several years.
We’d lost sight of each other. You know, got caught up in work and kids
and our own personal pursuits. They were easy distractions from our marital issues.
…We really loved the counseling perspectives, they were so helpful…
But it was as we listened to the Catholic idea of what marriage is in God’s plan.
That rocked our world. It was something we honestly had never heard before.
Were we sleeping in CCD?? We came to understand that marriage is not just something
[my wife and I] do ourselves, a personal project.
I mean, for us marriage was just a way to pursue our personal happiness together.
But when you said marriage is something we receive
from God in our open and joined hands
and then offer back to God in thanks. That shook us.
We realized that the heart of our love is not us
but Jesus’ sacrificial love that helps heal our crap
and allows us to allow each other become saints.
Helps our children to become saints
or other people become saints. That was REALLY new.
Everything changed seeing this.
For the first time in our marriage
we knew our marriage was so much bigger than us
and that we cannot save our own faltering marriage. It’s not OURS.
It’s His, and so only Jesus can repair what is His.
The truth is, we had never once asked Him, ever,
individually or together
or even thought of it.
Yeah, Jesus was a good example of loving or a generic savior.
But we had no idea that He was
as you said on your handout
“the fire of sacrificial love that is celebrated
at the heart of every sacramental marriage.” We were missing the fire!
We’d asked friends and even a counselor to save us.
But soon we would have asked lawyers to rid us of our promises, as nothing did the trick.
We would have tossed out the “Holy Communion” we were supposed to be
holding together in our open hands. What an image.
Our hands had been closed and gradually separating over the years.
And we almost dropped the Sacrament on the floor…
Thank you for sharing with us a new way of seeing life and marriage
we had never known.
It gave us hope to trust that love was still possible.
And most amazingly, that day of the workshop
Jesus gave us back the joy of our first love. But better…
God bless you….

At that retreat, I had used an image that came to me once in prayer. Here’s what I had in my notes:

Think of your love as a couple as two hands joined, one from each of you crossed over the other — as one would hold hands to receive Holy Communion. Now think of your covenant of marriage as a Consecrated Host, the Sacrament Christ has placed on your joined hands. With what care you would hold that Gift, so careful that your every step and move are in harmony to hold this Gift worthily.

On the day of your wedding, you both consented to co-receive this Holy Communion. With your hands always firmly joined, you are tasked with carrying Christ out from the sanctuary into the world. Like St. Christopher, you are asked to carry Christ together across a raging river safely to the Other Side of Paradise.

Never allow your hands to separate! Imagine the communication, the cooperation, the sacrifices and intentionality needed to make it to the Other Side! And while you imagine it is you that carry him, you come to realize eventually that is he who carried you. But you must beg Christ all along the journey to hold you together in unity: God brought you together, only he can keep you from tearing apart and drowning!

Remember also, you carry Christ- in hands joined in the form a cross, to remind you that people and events, forces and tempters, work and children, burdens and trials, demons and distractions will do all they can to rip your hands apart, to introduce dissonance and divorce your crossed hands. Let Christ transform the contradictions and tensions of that cross into a symbol of victory: so that all those tempests make you stronger, purify your love, strengthen your faith and hope in God.

At the end, when death comes, lift your hands together on High and offer back to God the Host and the spouse whom He gave you. In Eternity, he will join your hands again.