Once I met a woman who had worked for years in fashion and modeling. Unsurprisingly, she was strikingly attractive.
She was accompanied by her teenage daughter who, by contrast, was rather unremarkable to look at, maybe even a plain-Jane.
After spending time with them, I began to sense that the mother, whose life had largely revolved around her appearance, seemed to look down on her daughter, perhaps unconsciously, because of her average appearance.
In a recent column, David O’Brien, the associate director of religious education for lay ministry in the Archdiocese of Mobile, Ala., recounts the story of Agnes and Jake, devout Catholics who conceived and delivered four children during the first five years of their marriage.
Agnes described how Jake, “wanted to be a good father and husband, and he couldn’t see how that could happen if we continued to have more children. In short, he was getting a vasectomy.”
Agnes had a strong Catholic formation, and understood that married couples should not engage in sexual acts that have been intentionally blocked or “rendered infecund.” She struggled with Jake’s new stance, and dug her heels in.
She wondered how she could possibly be an authentic witness to the Gospel “if within my marriage, I was no longer open to life? How could I minister to other women and encourage them to be bold in their faith if I wasn’t living it myself? And what do I teach my children about marriage and sex when their father and I weren’t aligned?”
Married Catholics today often struggle to understand the moral difference between using contraceptives to avoid a pregnancy and using Natural Family Planning (NFP).
NFP relies on sexual abstinence during fertile periods in a woman’s cycle, as assessed by various indicators like cervical mucus or changes in body temperature.
To many, the Church’s prohibition of contraception seems to be at odds with its acceptance of NFP because in both cases, the couple’s intention is to avoid children. That intention, however, is not the problem, as long as there are, in the words of Pope Paul VI, “serious motives to space out births.”
As soon as I heard my wife burst out the bathroom door that sunny spring day, I knew she was pregnant. I hadn’t yet opened my eyes but I didn’t need to. Her footsteps told me everything.
My wife didn’t have any particular reason to believe she was pregnant. But after a couple years of praying for a second child, I’d grown accustomed to Laura taking random pregnancy tests — hoping against hope that somehow that second pink line would appear. This time it did.
The days ahead were as joyful as any we’d experienced in our life together. We beamed when friends who knew of our struggle with secondary infertility congratulated us and we devoured all the fetal development materials we could find, eager to mark every last milestone in our baby’s nascent life.
“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” is the familiar cry of Jesus on the cross.
In our own lives, we may also sometimes feel abandoned, with hope seeming to disappear. As we cope with the serious illness of someone close to us. As we face economic challenges, perhaps even the loss of our job. In the gray loneliness that follows the death of a beloved wife or husband.
And yet, in the midst of our darkness, we remember that God did not abandon His beloved Son and the suffering of Good Friday transformed into the hope of our Lord’s Resurrection. God does not abandon us.
A small church once had an inspiring wedding tradition. After the wedding, the pastor would invite the newly married couple to pull on the rope that rang the church bells and share the good news of their wedding with the town.
First the bride pulled on the rope with her beautiful hands, but the bell did not ring. Next the muscular groom tugged mightily, but the bell did not ring. Then the bride and groom pulled together and, lo and behold, the bells rang out the good news of their marriage.
Upcoming marriage enrichment opportunities in the Madison area:
