Being Christ to one another

I was just reading an excerpt from Greg Popcak's awesome For Better . . . Forever , and I was struck by how wonderful our theology is.  The Church gets such a bad rap for our attitudes towards sex and marriage, and the fact is that most people, and sadly most American Catholics, don't get what this sacrament is all about.

As spouses, we are called to be Christ to our spouses.  It is our central responsibility--our vocation--to be Christ physically present to our spouses.  Not because our spouse deserves our attention, affection and consolation, or because we feel like it.  But because we vowed to be Christ to the other in marriage:  we promised it, and God himself comes into our presence to help us.  What an honor!  What a high calling!  What a way to grow closer to our Lord and to participate in our salvation.  Together, my husband and I work together with Christ to make him more fully present to each other, to our children, and to the world.  May God bless us in this endeavor.

The beautiful thing is that we aren't expected to do it perfectly from the beginning.  As with all states, we grow in holiness as we learn to embrace God's will for us.  We put aside our own desires, goals and wishes, moving closer to one another.  We work as a couple to become one, participating in the work that He has designed for us.

It sounds good, but man, it's hard work.  It's not easy to lay my own selfish urges aside to work with my husband and with my Lord.  In those times when the good Lord has given me the grace to be selfless and to serve, wonderful things result.  It's like many of the saints say:  they do not do the work, but it is God himself working through them.  I think heaven must be like God living in us without us getting in the way of it.

I'm no saint yet, nor will I be anytime soon.  To claim so high a state means that one's will wholly conforms to Our Lord's will in all things.  How many of us are ready to say that?  I'm still running that race, as St. Paul was when he still lived.  That work--the one of putting aside ourselves for others, and ultimately for God, is never done while we live, and the impulse to seek our own desires is always there.

Thank God for the gift of sacramental marriage, imbued with so many graces pouring out on us to help us as we work together.  Thank God for Blessed John Paul II, for his work in understanding the marital vocation.  Thank God for His daily presence in our lives:  for his gentle urging, for his encouragement, and for his tender reminders of the great sacrifices he made out of love for us.  

May God bless my husband and I today and every day, helping us to move closer to him in our loving kindness for one another, and for our children.