The people who sit in darkness have seen a great light;
on those dwelling in a land overshadowed by death, light has arisen.
Matthew 4:16
My wife and I are sponsor couples in our parish for engaged couples to be married. It’s a fun ministry to be a part of, especially when the engaged couple really embraces it and contribute, talking and asking questions during our various sessions.
In addition to the material in the we discuss in the course, we always leave them with tips based upon our experiences as well as some other good resources and practices that made a huge difference for us.
Two of these are books – The Five Love Languages and Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover. Another thing we mention is the Marriage Encounter retreat we did, and how we learned how to not just communicate, but dialogue. And the final key is that you have to pray – and pray together – as a couple. There are many others, but these are instrumental in our marriage.
Why? The most common pieces of advice that most married couples who have been married for a while give are tidbits like you have to communicate… And don’t go to bed angry. Forgiveness. Surely there are many others, but those are the ones that always come up. Of course, these are very important, but how do you accomplish them?
My wife and I like to take that one step further. In order to communicate, in order to be able to put aside anger in those times you argue, you can’t hold any feelings back or hide things from each other – you need to be transparent.
You can’t put up any barriers. Because once you start putting up the barriers and closing yourself off, that’s when you don’t communicate, that’s when anger arises, and that’s when you start to get into a whole heap of trouble. There were times early in our marriage where we did create barriers. And it really was those resources above that we attribute to breaking down the barriers and helping us to be transparent with each other.
Yes, we were more vulnerable, and it opened up some gaping holes, but we placed our feelings and our trust in each other’s hands, and ultimately into God’s hands, and it made all the difference.
We started to learn how the other person likes to be loved, how they feel loved, and how they think. We started to learn how to better handle and discuss our finances, and how to share our dreams and goals, and hold each other accountable. We started to learn how to truly dialogue with one another – and most importantly, how to listen to one another. And finally, through prayer, we started to learn how to pray for each other and listen to God.
We started to break down barriers. And we continue to break them down. I say started to learn with every one of these because like life, marriage is a continuous learning experience, a continuous journey. We’ve been married almost 18 years, but we are just starting to learn about each other. And the more barriers we break down, the more transparent we can be, and the deeper and richer our marriage – and love for each other – grows. And the deeper our faith grows.
Why do I tell this story today? What does it have to do with the readings? Because I feel that a theme in the readings today centers on how we place barriers between ourselves and Christ, preventing us from truly seeing Him. Just as my wife and I have seen the difference as we’ve learned to be more transparent and break those barriers down – imagine our relationship with God if we were to break all those barriers down.
I started this reflection off with the Alleluia today. Here we are in the darkness of the world, and a Great Light has come. Christ has arisen to cast out all the darkness and anger, those barriers in our lives. He is here to cast out those demons that inflict so much turmoil, and yet we continue to place barriers before Him. What are your barriers?
Selfishness and pride? Wanting to do things your way, not admitting you are wrong, or that someone else’s idea is better, refusing to dialogue and letting that anger infest you?
Greed and envy? Do you wish you had the material things your neighbor has, or the promotion your co-worker just got? Do you let the anger and jealousy consume you?
Do you lust after people or things or power, addicted to the feeling that you only get from more and more and more? Does it make you angry that you can’t just get enough? Or does it make you even angrier that you can’t seem to stop?
Or are your barriers the things you distract yourself with – your career, technology and screen time, social media, the news media, overburdening yourself and your family with activities? Do you get angry when you can’t seem to stop the spiral? Do you get angry when you feel you’re not doing enough?
These are all barriers – barriers that can affect relationships with your family and especially your spouse, and most importantly, barriers that affect your relationship with Christ and seeing His Light in this world, seeing Him in the everyday.
These are all barriers that if we’re not careful, if we keep putting them up, they will harden our hearts.
And so just as we have to learn how to break them down in our marriages or our families, or really in every relationship we have – if we want a closer relationship with Christ, a deeper spirituality, a stronger faith, we’ve got to remove those barriers. We’ve got to open ourselves up to God, expose our vulnerability and seek Him – seek Him in silence, in prayer, away from all the noise and distractions. And we’ve got to seek Him in the Sacraments. Plain and simple.
What are the barriers you have in your life, barriers that affect your relationships?
And what are the barriers you place between you and God, from seeing His True Self in this world, in everything around you?
And what measures are you going to take, what resources can you use to break them down, and what lessons can you share with others to help them see the Light of Christ in the world?
