grace-full

Today in Sacramentality of Marriage (class) Padre talked about the grace received in marriage (both in the ceremony and throughout the lives of the spouses). He said that when the spouses freely will to love one another in Christ that Christ takes up that love into his own offering of love for the Father. The Father then takes up that love of the Son, fully receiving what is truly and uniquely the subjectivity of the spouses love, and offers an overabundant gift of His love in response. That gift IS the Holy Spirit. That gift IS communion.

"In marriage the Holy Spirit grants to the spouses something of His own mode of being a communion of persons." Cardinal Marc Oullette

So the spouses then not only signify the love of Christ for His Church but they participate in that same trinitarian love in a very real way. That, my friends, is the grace that is given in marriage. That is the grace denied in radical ways everyday by couples. The gift of the Holy Spirit who is the union and fruitfulness of marriage. Kicked to the curb.

I've been waiting a long time for that grace, though the profundity of it hit me a little harder today. Hubby to be and I have talked and prayed so much about what it means to be 'open to life' even when you discern that there might be a serious reason not to conceive. That has weighed heavy on my heart for a long time and little by little I see God lifting the weight and putting peace in its place. I think continually being vulnerable to this gift of the Spirit....that's got to be what it means to be open. To allow God himself to permeate every area of your marriage, of your being; God's spirit who is himself fruitfulness...

It's all too much.

Padre also talked today about how the Holy Spirit is not just present at the ceremony. We have to see how from the very beginning of the spouses relationship with one another; how they met, how their friendship developed, how they fell in love etc., is all saturated with the Spirit. Human preference, he said, is more than just the attraction and interest in the other, it is God calling us to himself through the other person...from day one.

I couldn't help but smile to myself when he said this. Many many memories came flooding back to me at that moment. I'm not sure why God has given me the grace to see this but from the very beginning I've known that God was calling me to a deeper relationship with Him through hubby to be, even when we were just friends. He is the first man that I really allowed myself to see, in a sense. He was the first man I saw pray with fear and total love in his eyes and then he called me to do the same. He had no idea what he was doing. As our friendship grew, I felt closer and closer to God and as a result I wanted to be closer and closer to HTB. Even in the years when I had such strong feelings for him and, as padre said "there was no echo on the other side" he never ceased to draw me closer to God in subtle yet persistant ways. Our story is flooded with signs of the Spirit and it's totally obvious, yet I still manage to impede grace everyday.

Lord, help me to be open.