St. Louis Parish Podcast
Discussing the current happenings of parish life, as well as relevant topics to parishioners to help strengthen and guide their spiritual lives.
St. Louis Parish Podcast
Episode 55: How Couples Can Grow in Their Faith (feat. Fr. Jerome Magat)
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Fr. Jerome Magat shares his tips on how married couples can not only grow in their Faith, but also pray together. Often times spouses can have their own individual prayer routines, but lack the practice of praying with one another.
Click below to purchase Fr. Magat's books:
Honoring the Covenant Vol. 1:
https://www.amazon.com/Honoring-Covenant-Meditations-Married-Couples/dp/B0CNNZHMTB/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5VWLXHHJ1U70&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.p2O2rdzDMqoIe6-m5cXBWGxw8P4dxCix7lLAJBQ9elQCXvvux6AU1jkWkP3ZIYGSvirY_WMupnLs4beExC39KLQmFXNR0v_RyENck2b3Ziyt_-nd7seDHikiqozS9Q9QflGVDEi1AYvXCzjn6jIz8Qk6oe97KHoXFM3ipQxmg5x6BSwq0oOMwKICRy3ePKtP4oRrGA_XHGbBY4CwLSkMnI0ryMqLDRt33FSGMr2DFEk.1IFExOYogPW1VqLlorifJBcaGrZWWKgH7kL8RW9oKqo&dib_tag=se&keywords=honoring+the+covenant&qid=1783974083&sprefix=honoring+the+covenan%2Caps%2C131&sr=8-1
Honoring the Covenant Vol. 2:
https://www.amazon.com/Honoring-Covenant-Solemnity-Meditations-Married/dp/B0DWLHCXHN/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2O7CZWDEC25DT&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.p2O2rdzDMqoIe6-m5cXBWGxw8P4dxCix7lLAJBQ9elQCXvvux6AU1jkWkP3ZIYGSvirY_WMupnLs4beExC39KLQmFXNR0v_RyENck2b3Ziyt_-nd7seDHikiqozS9Q9QflGVDEi1AYvXCzjn6jIz8Qk6oe97KHoXFM3ipQxmg5x6BSwq0oOMwKICRy3ePKtP4oRrGA_XHGbBY4CwLSkMnGIq-hu4-MymRstjbvSdh_0.uMWs23bSZapwmkZh3tX8WQu09axlUX13rQcZxVR1hVc&dib_tag=se&keywords=honoring+the+covenant&qid=1783974233&sprefix=honoring+the+covenant%2Caps%2C117&sr=8-2
Welcome back to the St. Louis Parish Podcast. My name is Andrew Lane, the Director of Communications here at St. Louis, and today I'm joined by Father Jerome Magat, Professor of Moral Theology at St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, California, visiting here on campus. Father, good to be with you. Thanks, Andrew. Great to be with you. So, Father, let's get straight to it. I want to know how can married couples, couples preparing to be married, couples that have been married for a long time, deepen their faith? What are some good tips and strategies for these couples?
SPEAKER_01I find a lot of couples that are engaged in the faith have no problems praying alone by themselves. Like they have their own regimens of prayer that they probably brought into the marriage, or even since they've been married, have developed. So one area that I find it tends to be lacking is couples rarely pray together, other than let's say maybe they do grace before meals with the kids or just by themselves, or maybe they'll play pray a family rosary once in a while, even regularly. But this idea that the husband and the wife pray together, uh, and by the way, they're probably very happy to pray for one another in private, but the actual exercise of praying together is an element of their spiritual lives that is not usually cultivated. And just analogously, for instance, um, you know, I teach in the seminary, and the seminary has three mandatory times of communal prayer. So the seminarians and the priests and the faculty all pray individually at different parts of the day, ostensibly. But we actually have three times a day. We have morning prayer, we have midday mass, and then we have evening prayer when we come together as a community and pray together. And that's very as much a part of the seminarian's experience. But there's nothing to say that lay people can't experience the same thing, especially as they're living out their sacrament. So I think that the idea of couples praying together has been uh undercultivated, underdeveloped in most couples' lives. And I think it's super important because, you know, as we know, couples are incredibly busy. I mean, even retired couples can be quite busy. I remember um my mother retired. She said she felt busier as a retiree than she did when she was working. Because when she was working, she had a very set schedule. It's very sort of predictable. But when she was retired, she had all this discretionary time to be able to go and do all kinds of different things that she didn't have the routine down. She had to really force herself to sort of get that kind of discipline down. So, as we know, couples of all ages are incredibly busy. You know, if you have a family, you know, you're between homework and baths and practice and you know, driving from this point to that point and doctor's appointments, and I mean everything that goes into parenting these days. And, you know, that's all well and good. So by the time that you the couple has a time as a moment to spend together in prayer, I mean, a lot of times they're just on fumes. And they're just, you know, it's sort of like not exactly their best time of the day, right? So, you know, for instance, if you analogously think of people who are really committed to exercise regimens, they'll tell you, I gotta get it done first thing in the morning or right after work, or else it doesn't get done. Like if I just sort of put it out there as like an indeterminate time, indeterminate activity, which I'm gonna do at an indeterminate time, it does not get done. That's true for most of us for anything that's not super priority, right? So for instance, um, you know, the couple's prayer might be something best cultivated uh immediately after dinner. Right? So immediately after dinner. It's not even before the dishes. Just you stop eating and then you know you send the kids off to wherever they need to go, or they they you know, they they can be put in a particular situation where they can just be on their own for a little bit. And then you know, you as a couple can say, okay, right after dinner we're gonna do this. And you don't want to wait too long after dinner because some people start getting f sleepy. You know, it just food food coma sets in, just life. Okay. So I mean something like that. So um, you know, and so that's that's one thing is uh prayer time as a couple. Yeah. All right. And then the other thing too I would say is a corollary to that is at least once every two weeks, so twice a month, setting aside a date night where the couple you know gets a sitter or someone to watch the kids uh if they have kids and go out on a date. Okay. Right? Because that that relationship is primordial to the family. Yeah. Right? So that relationship preexists in the family relationship. So it's important for couples to reconnect on an adult level. And you know, I mean what they do and what they talk about, I mean doesn't matter to me, but the fact that they're actually spending time together apart from the children, yeah just to kind of reconnect and to um, you know, touch base. Um they don't again make the time for it. So a lot of couples I know who do this, like Wednesday night is a very popular night because you're not competing against Monday night football, you're not competing against Thursday night football. Wednesday is sort of like the middle of the week. Yeah. And generally speaking, for instance, restaurants or movie theaters, if that's part of the you know, the evening, are not full. Yeah. You know, and um so I would say, you know, if I wanted to bookend two things, I would say sort of couples prayer together and then maybe you know a date night at least twice a month. And then and just schedule it, you know, as if it's not well, we'll try to do it this a month. No, it's just it's scheduled and you don't you don't uh commit yourself to stuff because I though I already have a an appointment that evening, I'm not available. Yeah, you know, and you sort of say that's a commitment. Because um after a while, what I find with a lot of couples, especially those who are raising children, is they're really only living their marriage sort of through the lens of everything that the kids are doing.
SPEAKER_03Sure.
SPEAKER_01Which is, I mean, fine in in in insofar as I mean, they're obviously engaged parents, which is great, but they're not actually uh connecting as husband and wife apart from the kids. And again, I don't mean I don't mean to set the children and the parents against each other, but you know, adults need adult time, right? Just like kids need kid time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um so to carve that time out, I think is a sign of health and and really being intentional and deliberate about staying connected. Yeah. You know, so I think that's really um a very, again, underdeveloped, under um utilized dimension of marital life that I see a lot of couples struggling with. And then um so I I think it's something that could really be um you know given some focus and some attention.
SPEAKER_03I love the simple answer of schedule your prayer time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, just put it on put it on your calendar. Yeah. You know, I mean I I I mean we do it in the seminary, you know, like we we have scheduled times of prayer, but I know for myself, like I have to just basically say I'm not available for an appointment or for a meeting this time to this time, because that's prayer time. Now, I mean, okay, there are exceptions. I mean, there are moments when I have to like yield because of emergencies and things like that. And and I and I think most people would just instinctively understand that. But just as a rule, I have my designated prayer time daily where I know that I just need to be quiet with the Lord and I'm not running off to this and to that, you know. And also I think helps slow life down a little bit. Yeah. Because we tend to really live at a very frenetic pace. So we tend to schedule things one thing after the other after the other. And there's no sort of buffer time or like allowance time, and then things can really start to snowball because now you now you're late for this, which means you're gonna be late for the next thing, and on and on and on.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, so I think that sort of slowing down the pace of life actually requires intentionality. You can't just hope it happens. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03The practicality of spirituality, I feel, at least for me, those two spheres are not something that I would often connect. But it makes perfect sense. We have to schedule everything else. Yeah. The fitness uh regimen is a perfect example. If you have I play pickleball with my buddies every Tuesday night. Yeah. Great, very similar there. There you go.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And by the way, I just as a corollary to that, the date night, um, I also think it's very healthy, you know, one night a week, if possible, or one every, you know, every two weeks, for um the missus to have an activity with her girls. Yeah. And same for the husbands. Because, you know, and I know in the particular case of men, you know, men need their tribes. Sure. You know, they need their bros to kind of hang out with. But women too. I mean, those are different kinds of dynamics where they can, you know, connect with other moms or like other, you know, just friends. I mean, regardless of where they know each other from. Um, and again, you know, our obviously, I'm assuming here, proper discernment about the kinds of relationships those are, and are those good, healthy relationships that are leading uh to, you know, human fulfillment and you know, and and holiness. Um but yeah, I think it's important that we have breaks from our normal because it that it does take it does um require us to sort of step back from it and then you come back to it with renewed eyes and hopefully some renewed vigor. Yes, you know, or some gratitude. You know, you start talking to your friends about what they're doing or what's going on with them, and maybe you're really consumed with your particular problems or challenges, and then talking to others say, well, one, I'm not alone. And two, well, shoot, I thought my problems were bad. That sounds a lot worse than me. You know, so there's a little element of gratitude there too, right? So I think that um, you know, we're we're often really given to this idea that we have to be together or with each other all the time. But I think there is something to say that you know absence can make the heart grow fonder, even if that absence is two hours. Something like that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. You know, uh my wife has a funny joke or phrase that she says after one of these outings, she comes back, she says, Man, I I feel like a person again.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's good. Yeah, because you know, like for instance, especially if you have young children like you do.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean, you know, when you when you're dealing with young children all day, I mean, you're you you have you intentionally have to speak at a level that is at like kid level. Yeah. And and it's fine, I mean it's good. I mean, and you know, and it's it's it's beautiful to see that, you know, to see parents engage their children on that level. But then, you know, um the opportunity to kind of have adult conversations or about adult topics, um, and maybe to speak beyond a level of like a three or four-year-old, I mean, I think is important. It's it's good, it's a it's a good stimulus, yeah, you know, and it's I think it's a sign of health.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_01So again, all of these things are not intended to be competitive one with the other, but they're all supplemental one to the other to sort of provide a modicum of spiritual and mental health, which I think has um you know become a very vogue topic among couples today, you know, sort of maintaining sort of some balance and equilibrium. So I I'm a big fan of sort of slowing down a little bit and taking on less, but just being more grateful and appreciative of just the the less I do, as opposed to constantly having to churn feeling like you have to keep up or churn out, or I we've got to try this or we've gotta try that. I Yeah. I mean, okay. People can do that, but I don't necessarily think people who do that are ultimately happier.
SPEAKER_03Sure.
SPEAKER_01Busier.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, more it doesn't always mean better.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right. Yeah, and and they're busier. And if that if b if I mean if if our culture equated busyness with happiness, we'd be a lot happier culture. And we're not. Right. So something's not connecting there.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I find that, especially with good parents, they have an issue or they feel guilty taking these breaks or achieving this balanced kind of structure. Right. If because time that I take for myself is time that I'm away from my children, and so they almost wrestle with this guilt, this internal guilt. So it's very nice to hear you say, no, that's important. You should go take care of yourself. I mean, reasonably, of course. Yeah. We don't want to swing too far the other way. Right.
SPEAKER_01But Right And so I it's why people I mean, for instance, you know, um, as priests and religious, especially, um, we are f I mean pretty much required to go on retreat every year. Well, that's a week where we're not working.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But that's a necessary week to make the other fifty-one weeks uh more Christ-centered, okay, grounded, and you know, fundamentals. So um or I mean it's even why we traditionally have regarded Sunday as a day of rest. Because it's an opportunity to stop, recreate, which is what the word recreation recreation comes from, right? Because it's like it's like the reset of the week, right? That's where recreation comes from, is recreate and sort of like it's a kind of renew and then start over. It's why people go on vacation, right? Or they should. And um, you know, we're I mean, this is this is actually very theologically rich insofar as you know, God models this in Genesis. I mean, He himself, who doesn't need to rest, took rest. Right. Right? Like God doesn't get tired or burnt out. Like I've never heard, like, you know, you know, after the fourth day, God said, you know, I need a mental health break. You know, I need a I need a sabbatical. It's like it's only been three days, okay? I mean, like, you know, so um I think it's deep deeply theological to say if we're made in the image and likeness of God and God takes rest, then we need to take rest. And by the way, those little you can take many Sabbaths during the week. You know, so I'd say your Wednesday's date night, or your Tuesday's your pickleball night. I mean, I mean it's not the whole day. You're just going for a couple hours, no big deal. Um, and I also think it too reminds you that, I mean, okay, yes, your children are dependent upon you, but I mean, they'll be okay for a few hours without you. Yes. Like it's not the end of the world. Like they're not going to be underdeveloped, you know, Cro Magnons b because you weren't there for three hours while you were, you know, doing book club with your with your gal pals. Yeah. You know, something like that. Not not at all. And I think, again, if you're doing all of those things with the intentionality of really take of self-care so that you can make yourself a gift to your spouse and your family, then not only are you doing something good, but your intentionality is properly ordered. And therefore, that's what we would call a virtuous act. So that's a good thing, right? Yes. So, um, yeah, I mean, for instance, you know, I I used to joke friends of mine who are really, really big into exercise, and they would kind of try to exhort me to join them. And I mean, I would do some, but after a while I was like, you know, I teach bioethics in the seminary, so I used to joke that I think some of this exercise is an extraordinary means of prolonging life. Okay, like it's other it's like okay, I'll do some exercise for health, but like I I don't really intend to live forever. Right. So, you know, I'm kind of conceding that at some point this is all going to, you know, end. Yeah. And I'll I'll have to meet the Lord, you know, for judgment, etc. So um, you know, but but by the same token, I think it's important um, you know, when you do exercise, for instance, I mean, you you're most people are motivated for exercise for a number of reasons, right? I want to feel better, uh, some people want to look better. Um, you know, some people might say, like, you know, a young father like you might say, I want to be stronger and more fit so that I can do my work of fathering and my work at the you know in the at the parish better. Okay. And it's it's better for it's if I'm better, then hopefully people around me will benefit from my being the better version of myself. Well, we truly say that about exercise, physical exercise, and I think we should at least make an analogous, similar provision for the spiritual life.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Wow. Very yeah. Couldn't have said it any better.
SPEAKER_01Yes. You have to schedule it. I mean, there's so many other things we schedule, by the way.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Right? So the schedule the stuff that's priority, right? Get scheduled. Get scheduled.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So if it's a priority for you, then it would make sense to schedule it. How can couples pray together, besides maybe praying a rosary together or prayers that can be recited? What what are some ways that couples can can do this?
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, this is sort of a shameless promotion, but um I I set you up. Yeah, exactly. Um I so I wrote a book series, it's just two books.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_01Um and I know you'll post this up on the on the screen. Um so the books are called Honoring the Covenant, and volume one is daily mass gospel meditations for busy married couples. And volume two is the same title, Honoring the Covenant, but this one's Sundays, Feast Days, and Solemnities. Okay. These are meditations for busy married couples. So what I what I did is uh when I was doing the ordained back in 2002 with Father O'Hare, uh in my first assignment, I was assigned to chaplain an apostolate called Teams of Our Lady, which is a ministry in the church. It's actually worldwide. And the a team, a team of Teams of Our Ladies, is about five or six couples. They meet monthly for a dinner, potluck, prayer time, and then sort of a sharing of like how their journey as a married couple is going in Christ. Okay. And so it occurred to me in working with the with the Teams of Our Lady that a lot of the couples struggled to have a tool where they could pray together.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So what I decided to do, and this is based on meditations I wrote as a seminarian preparing for priesthood, and I would write a daily homily in my journal, in my book. And so what I did is I compiled all these homilies, but I retooled them and re-resort recalibrated them for couples. So the idea being is that every day of the year, every liturgical day of the year, um Monday to Saturday for daily mass, and then obviously Sundays, Solemnities, and Feast Days of the other volume, you um there's a gospel, and then um at the top of the page there'll be a the gospel citation, and then I wrote a very brief meditation, maybe two paragraphs, and at the bottom of the page, and again, each day is only one page, so it's not this is not inordinately long. You could do the whole exercise in ten minutes. Yes. Again, designed for busy married couples. And at the bottom, it has either questions for discussion or a prayer for the couple. And and the discussion, I mean the questions for discussion can be quite point-pointed, you know, like they're a little bit, they can have a little bit of an edge to them, you know. Um not that I'm trying to, you know, cause problems, but just the idea that, you know, they're very realistic, let's just say. They make you reflect. Yeah, yeah. And the other thing that I found with feedback from my beta tester couples is that they the ones who are not married to Catholics, let's say they're married to uh a non-Catholic Christian, they have they're they're very at ease opening the Word of God, because you have to you need to do this with a Bible next to it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And um find the citation in the Bible that's cited for the Mass Gospel. I mean, I suppose you could use like a tool like Magnificat or an app, whatever. But the idea being is that you know the Protestant will usually read the scripture and then the Catholic will read the meditation and the questions, you know. So it's it's um in part to perhaps a tool for getting Protestant spouses married to Catholics to think about like well, Catholics are actually very scriptural because we often get criticized as not being scriptural. So um you can do that every single day of the year. So for daily mass, the gospel's the same whether you're in year one or year two in the liturgical calendar. And if you're on Sunday cycles, it's A, B, and C. So for every week, I have three different meditations depending on what the gospel is, because they are different. Yeah. So even though there's more days Monday to Saturday for daily mass, it's actually a thinner volume because it's the same gospel for both years.
SPEAKER_03Ah, okay.
SPEAKER_01So the Sunday Solemnities and Feast Days ended up being a thicker volume. So I produced uh the Daily Mass Readings volume first, and then um, based on its success, was encouraged to finish it out and write out the Sunday Solemnities and Feast Days as well. So yeah, it's been a fun project because it it's it's edifying to know to tell or have couples tell me and give me feedback and say, yeah, we're on vacation. And and the and the books are available on Amazon. They're they're in electronic form through Amazon uh Kindle Direct Publishing, or you can buy the hard copy. And a lot of people prefer the hard copy just to have like it's like people like physical books. Yeah. Um but if you want to do it on Kindle. So I have friends who have it on their phone, and so when they travel, it's just part of their regimen that they keep up even when they're on vacation and they're doing you know, um meditate they're doing prayer time even on while they're on vacation.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you know, so I've gotten
SPEAKER_01Pictures of people with their copy on the balcony of a cruise ship. I've had others, you know, in front of like a monument in some European city. You know, so it's been it's been a really good project, really. Um and I it's been very rewarding to see couples benefit from an opportunity to have a tool to pray together. Yeah. So they can't say, well, what do we do now? Right. Well, here it is. And of course, it's funny because I joked, husbands don't really like me very much because they can't make the excuse it's too long or it's too tired. It's like it's a page. Like we you can make a page. Right. You know, and I know, you know, people get like, you know, as you know, as a busy parent, end of the day, it's like you're just on fumes, just struggling to make it, yeah, you know. Uh so I I designed something that I thought could be useful, practically useful. Yes. And it wasn't so out of reach. And by the way, you know, if you drop off for a few days, you just pick up where you left off. So it's okay. I mean, like if you you know, if something like you know, life happens, and then sometimes there are things you just can't do it, okay, fine. But then you can pick it up, you know, when and it's quite easy to just find your pep your place and then just start again. Okay. There's no like, oh, well, I missed five days in a row. Yeah. I'm in trouble now. I'm way behind. You're never behind. You're just whatever today is, you can do today, and it's all you have to worry about. One page.
SPEAKER_03I was actually gonna ask you that because that exact scenario happened to me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And I I like that because I mean it it takes a lot of pressure off. Yeah. And it doesn't make it a burden. You know, and you're like, okay, Lord, I'm just I we are simply exhausted tonight, and this is not gonna happen. Okay, we'll pick it up tomorrow. Fine. It's okay. Yeah, just keep just keep at it. Yeah. And um, you know, we always joke, you know, in church law, the church never requires the impossible. And there, you know, there are there are things that happen in in in daily life that just preclude you from, you know, you have the best of intentions, you even had it scheduled, but for whatever reason, you know, you had to take, you know, your eldest to urgent care. Sure. And, well, okay, there goes the evening. So that's not gonna happen. Okay, fine, pick it up tomorrow. And it's perfectly fine.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Well, that's very encouraging. And like I mentioned before, I do I very much enjoy this idea of marrying the practicality of here's a toolkit for you to deepen your faith. So practicality and spirituality. There's not a lot of tools out there for couples to pray together. Arthur Brooks says praying together is one of the more most intimate things you can do with a spouse. So it's it's kind of scary.
SPEAKER_01It is, yeah, yeah. And I think this gives you a safe space, right. Where you're not um potentially having uncomfortable conversations, but maybe by feeling more connected to your spouse, you might be more comfortable doing so. You know? Um, so I think Brooks is right. I mean, couples by their by the nature of their vocation are um called to have a shared intimacy of life. And I know when we hear the word intimacy, we often think of that as sexual intimacy. But, you know, celibates have intimacy with God, which is non-genital. Right. Okay, so in and I mean, so I think the the strength of Brooks's claim is in the fact that he's expanding the notion of what intimacy can look like. You know, and that's super crucial, you know, especially for instance, um if you can feel close to your spouse even though you're physically separated for whatever reason. You know, like I I know situations where one spouse had to go away for even a year or two to take care of an aging parent overseas. Wow. You know, and coming back and forth was not that easy. But you know, they were able to talk every night and connect every night and feel connected every night. So they were uh you know, connected intimately, even though there was a physical separation between them. So those kinds of I don't I don't want to call them skills, but I mean it's in a certain sense it's a virtue, right? It's a stable disposition for the good, is um really essential to galvanizing the union of husband and wife. You know, can can we be intimate without being physically intimate? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03You know. And that is an important skill to develop. Yeah. Because like you said, uh most people assume intimacy, especially in marriage. Yeah. Assumes physical intimacy. Right. Which is not the only version of intimacy. That's right. That's right.
SPEAKER_01And by the way, you know, if you're it also makes you more um disposed to intimacy with God. Okay. Again, intimacy without physicality. Can you Okay, because that's that's what heaven's gonna be. Yeah. Okay, so in a certain sense, the this this cultivation is uh in a way a preamble to heavenly life. Wow. You know interesting. Because there's no giving and taking in marriage. Yeah. I mean that's why the vows are the promises at mar at uh in marriage are till death to us part. Because, you know, for instance, I d tell widows and widowers who want to remarry, you don't need an annulment. Yeah. Because the marriage ended a death. When one of you dies, the marriage is over. So you're free to marry. Okay. So um yeah. So I mean, there's you know, that I think that's also an important dimension of married life to sort of start cultivating is this idea that yes, we are we are intimate on a number of levels, um, but also we live with the realization that in spite of that, uh, and a common life and children together, that we still remain radically individual persons. Like we don't meld into one person. I mean, the two become one in terms of they join one flesh, but you you retain your individuality. And that also has to be respected even in an intimacy of life. Wow. You know, even if couples dress together, say have the same haircut, you know, kind of thing, same fashion style. Yeah, look to look at each other. You see couples like that once in a while, it's kind of funny. But even there, okay, there's still two individuated persons.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, and um they will meet the Lord one-on-one. Right. It's not like you know, salvation is not a team game in a way. You know, it's an individual sport on some level.
SPEAKER_03Like your judgment is you and God. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean, your review of life is gonna be you and God. Now, I mean, obviously, you know, a sense of your spouse's life is also gonna be interwoven in that.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01But um, your meeting with God is your meeting with God. You know, so that's I think that's the dynamic tension with which married couples live all the time. I mean, or they're they should be aware of it, right? That I mean, yes, we have an intimacy of life and a union, um, unlike any other, I will experience in this life, but nevertheless, we're still individuated persons. Like our personhoods don't collapse one into the other. We remain radically different people. Yeah. And that, you know, any person who's been married for a number of years, and I'm I'm suspecting at even at this point, you've you've seen this. Um, as much as well as you may know your your wife, there's always gonna be elements about her that are gonna remain a little bit mysterious. You know, like just I like I I I didn't grow up with you, I didn't know you back then. Right. And so I don't under I don't necessarily understand why that is important to you or why that affects you in the way it does.
SPEAKER_00It's okay. It's okay.
SPEAKER_01I mean that you you concede that and say, well, we're we're different people, right? Different histories, okay, different psychologies, different temperaments.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. It's okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And you can have a lot of freedom there to like appreciate who they are. Yeah. Um, and instead of trying to have the expectation that they become in your image and likeness, or vice versa, that you retain an individuality all the while sharing an intimacy of life. That's a really, really important dynamic tension that is important for I think in my in my read for married couples to be aware of at the same time. Yeah. Because it makes you it it it also um changes expectations. Um you're less likely to be disappointed in a certain way. Because you're like, you know what, you you you come from a different background, that's fine, great. You know, love that, wonderful. I mean, if I if you didn't love that, then you shouldn't have been married, right? To anyone, let alone the person you're with. So, you know, when you when you enter into marriage, you're really opening yourself up to um taking on. I mean, the analogy would be it's like, you know, when you marry your spouse, you're also marrying their family, yeah, and their history and their background. That's all part of it.
SPEAKER_03Ah yeah.
SPEAKER_01Respecting the spouse as an individual. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And, you know, and and I think that that gets spouses away from like bossing each other around or telling them what to do. Or it's like, you know, no, we're both adults and we're both individuated persons with individual free wills and individual intellects. And that's okay. And I and here I'm not trying to um push like this radical automaton individual idea, but just to say that I mean, even the persons of the Trinity are individuated persons within one Godhead. They're consubstantial, right, as we say in the creed, but they are individual persons. They're not three personalities or three modalities of one God. They're three persons. Interesting. So as God is, so we see in the natural order, with with especially in the human family.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01So there's a lot there. There is a lot there. None of that's in my book, by the way. But just and it's an interesting, I think it's an interesting thing to think through as you consider like how vocations are lived out, especially in marriage. Since most people are married, most people in the church live the married uh vocation. I think the more and more formation they can get in the area of just sort of understanding, like um there are these very important distinctions that need to be respected so that um when life happens and there's ups and downs, you can sort of dispassionately step away back from it and say, okay, let me let me get back to some real basic fundamental truths about my my my wife and me, or my you know, my spouse and whatever it is, and then say, okay, that puts it into context. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03You know? Because what I what I can notice is you can reach a uh you can enter into a situation where you may be thinking, wow, why why doesn't my spouse understand me? Or why are they behaving this way? I'm so confused. But if you take this into consideration, oh okay, I'm expecting them to be me, but they're not. They're not. And that's okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's okay.
SPEAKER_01I mean, and again, even if you were a really good, a really good communicator and you were really able to express yourself and articulate what you're thinking, um, remember you're always still dealing with the limitations of the hearer. And they're only able to hear what they can hear. Yeah. And depending on what's going on with them and their own experience of maybe a similar thing, right? I mean, there's always limitations there. So I think, you know, I mean, I've learned all of this in the work of seminary formation. Because I mean, this part of what we're doing in the seminary, right? Which we're we're trying to help inculcate into the seminarians sort of an ethos of priesthood. Well, okay. I mean, we can do that to a degree, but there's some dimension of it that remains a little bit mysterious that they're gonna have to work out.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And then as a formator, I have to be detached enough, having confidence in the working of the Holy Spirit and the candidate's life that they're gonna figure that out with God. Right. And say, okay, I there are limits to what I can do. And there's limits to what I can project onto and hope the seminarian assimilates. So the job my job is not to clone me into them. Yes. But it's actually to bring out the best of them for a life in Christ, for their own personal sanctification, and for the good of the church. Yeah. So you you sort of have to have there's like this, you know, you're really investing in them, but at the same time, there's almost almost like a healthy detachment. Yeah. Like, okay.
SPEAKER_03And so the analogy is it similar to in marriage, yeah, that that spousal relationship. Exactly. You're investing, but yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean, you're all in. Yeah. Okay. But you also do that with the grounded reality that we are not the same persons.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01And that's okay. And that's actually the complementarity of spouses is actually what makes it actually work. Right? You know, the idea the idea is that you're you're not trying to marry a mirror image of yourself. Because that's a little bit narcissistic. Very okay. And it's sort of like, no, you need to be like me. You know. So I have a really on a friend of mine who's in her 90s, you know, her, and I I joked, we joked years ago why we liked each other so much. And I said, you know what? I like you because I like me. And you're like me. You know, that kind of thing. Okay. Well, there's I mean, there's a dimension of that that's true, but I mean, at the at its core, though, I mean, you like it has to be a little bit more expansive than that, naturally.
SPEAKER_03Father, thank you so much. Sure. Anytime.
SPEAKER_01Happy to be here at St. Louis and uh always enjoy um you know spending time with you and the staff and Father O'Hare and the priests and certainly the parishioners. So it's I'm always happy to drop in.
SPEAKER_03On behalf of myself, the priests, the staff, the parishioners, yeah, likewise. For those interested, you can find links to Father McGat's books, Honoring the Covenant, volume one and two, in the description linked below and in the show notes if you are listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Thank you.