Kevin Ranaghan gave this talk at a May, 1992, weekend for married couples. He emphasized the importance of a couple living out the life of the community together, noting that one of the main purposes of marriage is helping each other to live as saints. He gave many practical suggestions of ways a couple can pursue the work of mutual sanctification.
Transcript
This document is a direct transcript of an audio recording, and may contain transcription errors and other minor edits for the sake of clarity.
KEVIN: It’s good to see everybody here today. We all have our own particular nightmares. My nightmare has to do with calling a meeting and you get there and no one comes! [Kevin and all laugh.]
This talk is meant to build on the other talks we’ve had this weekend, obviously. This is a talk on mutual sanctification, which is one of the main purposes of the marriage relationship.
Mutual sanctification, I think, simply means helping one another to live as saints, helping one another to become saints, helping one another to become more and more holy.
One of the main purposes of our married life is that, through our married life, we would become saints now, and for forever. Usually, when we think of holiness, we tend to think quickly of our personal spiritual activities, where we might find our most immediate experience of personal contact with God. We might tend to think immediately, when we think of sanctification, about our personal prayer life, our spiritual reading, our reading of the word of God, our nourishment by the sacraments or ordinances of our churches, and the like.
But mutual sanctification is a much larger issue, and sanctification itself is a much larger issue than those elements, although those elements are certainly a very important part of it. If you want to ask the question, “What is my spirituality?”, the right answer to that question is that “my spirituality is not so much a list of my personal spiritual activities, but my spirituality, or our spirituality as a married couple, is our way of life.”
For the next few minutes I’ll be repeating some things I said in a community meeting a couple of months ago, but I think they bear repeating. The point I’m making here is that our spirituality as a married couple is our way of life. Jesus gave us a way of life to live, according to the gospel, and Christians in different generations and in different times and places have found different ways of expressing that way of life by developing different patterns of life, through which they’re going to follow the Lord.
Our spirituality is the way of life of the People of Praise. And our spirituality is also the way of life of Christian marriage. So, for us, if we’re going to talk about our spirituality, in and through which we want to find holiness ourselves, and through which we want to bless our spouse in mutual sanctification, we will find that . . . in the way of life of Christian marriage, inserted into the way of life of the People of Praise.
I can give you this one example which I’ve given before. I give it because it’s fairly striking. If you go back to the third or fourth centuries in Palestine and North Africa and what’s now Egypt, you find a growing monastic movement among the Christian people. Lots of guys felt called by the Lord to flee the worldly pagan cities and its [sic] influences, and to go off and live in the desert; to serve the Lord in the desert. These guys, these early monks, tended to live by themselves in little caves, and most of their prayer life consisted in the continual meditation on Scripture and the recitation of the Psalms. That’s what they did while they were awake, and they were awake most of the time. They memorized the Psalms and said them over and over again.
Every once in a while they might get together with a spiritual master who’d give them a talk, or they’d get together for the Eucharist, maybe once a week or maybe more frequently. And they did a lot of spiritual warfare; they majored in that. If you read their writings, they’re always involved in big tussles with the devil and evil spirits, out in the desert fighting temptation.
They tended to support themselves by making baskets, which they sold to travelers at the roadside, and with the money they got from that they bought a little bit of flour, made a little bread, had a little olive oil, which was their only diet.
Now, that’s how they lived. They lived that way day in and day out. That was their way of life. And that was their spirituality. That was how they grew in holiness. That was how they grew closer to the Lord. The way they grew in the life of the Spirit was through this way of life that they felt the Lord had called them to.
It was not the way of life of all Christians, by a long shot. Other Christians had other ways. But that was their way, and that was their spirituality.
Now you could give lots of other examples of this phenomenon, both Catholic and Protestant, throughout the history of the church, and you would find groups of Christians adopting a way of life in which to serve God.
The point is that their spirituality is not just their private personal devotions. That’s the thing I’m trying to hit at here. Spirituality is not just a matter of devotion or personal spiritual exercises. Rather, it’s a matter of your whole way of life.
Now to go back to the point I was making before, what we [married couples] have done is that we have put together two ways of life into one way of life. One way is the married state in Christ, with all its obligations, joys, and responsibilities. And the other is the way of life in the People of Praise. We’ve put them together for ourselves.
So, if you want to say, “Well, what’s my spirituality?,” I’d say to you, “Well, read the Spirit and Purpose. That will tell you.” Or another way to answer the question is [to] say, “Look at my week. Look at how we pray in our home. Look at our headship meetings. Look at our Lord’s Day. Look at the way we raise our kids. Look at our men’s groups, women’s groups. Look at how we serve. Look at our whole pattern of life. That’s our spirituality.”
So, when we look at the question of mutual sanctification, it has to do, first of all, with supporting one another in this way of life which we have committed ourselves to. It has to do, first of all, with husband and wife supporting each other in this way of life they have committed themselves to.
So it would be a mistake, I think, for any member of the community, or any married couple, to say, “We have our community activities over here, where we do this good community stuff, and we have our spirituality over here, where we seek the Lord, or where we pray, or where we have a devotional life.” Those two elements have to come together in the one way of life.
So we are involved in the work of mutual sanctification when, as a couple, we are involved in living out the life of the community together. And, when we free each other to live out the life of the community, we’re also involved in this work of mutual sanctification. When we enable each other to keep our community commitments, we’re involved in the work of helping each other become holy. And when we do it together as a couple—like being here together as couples—we are involved in the work of assisting one another to become saints.
We’re helping each other, in our spousal relationships, to come closer to the Lord, and to be more dedicated to the service of the Lord, precisely by giving ourselves to all the activities and content of the pattern of life that the Lord has given us in the People of Praise.
Now, I realize that I’m going over some of the ground that Bud and Sharon [Rose] treated yesterday afternoon. But I’m trying to do it from a different angle. What I’m emphasizing is that all the things Bud and Sharon, and also David [Sklorenko], were talking about, in terms of how we live our life in the community, and all the things Dorothy and I were talking about yesterday morning, about the headship and submission relationship, while they have their own purposes in and of themselves, are also precisely the means of our becoming saints, of our becoming holy. And it is inasmuch as we throw ourselves into that and give ourselves to those things, those elements of our life, that we are involved in the work of mutual sanctification.
So, for example, I think we would have to look at the possible problems that would come up if, or when, a couple might pull back from the life of the community in order to have their own time or space in a habitual way. I mean, everyone needs their own time or space worked into their normal life. But if, in a habitual way, people were pulling back into their own world, there could be a real problem. Because in doing that, they might actually be pulling back from how they’ve committed themselves to work for their mutual sanctification.
So, as I said a minute ago, you have to think of community meetings, area meetings, men’s and women’s retreats, serving the sick with meals, performing a variety of community services—all of them you have to think of as opportunities to grow in holiness.
The question each couple has to ask is, “Are we throwing ourselves into all of this, or are we cool to it, are we cooling to it? Are we just going through the motions in that involvement, or are we making excuses for one another, as a couple, not to participate as we should?”
Not often, but every once in a while, I run into a situation where people who have committed themselves to live out the pattern of life of the People of Praise suddenly develop a whole new style of spiritual life, and try to emphasize that as their distinctive spirituality.
Now, I want to be very cautious in what I say here, because I know what I have in mind, and you don’t know what’s in my mind, and if I don’t say this right, I could leave you wondering what I’m talking about.
Let me put it this way. Surely, within our broad pattern of life, there’s lots of room for individual differences, and I’m not criticizing that. Some of us, for example, might be particularly devoted to the spiritual writings of Jonathan Edwards or of John Wesley. And that’s a perfectly legitimate interest to have and a course of spiritual reading to follow. Perhaps we come from that spiritual tradition in the church. Others of us might be more devoted to the spiritual writings of Teresa of Avila or John of the Cross.
Those kinds of differences among us are perfectly legitimate. There’s a big, wonderful banquet of spiritual riches to draw from in the church, and we are an ecumenical community. So I’m not criticizing that; I’m not criticizing those kinds of differences in our personal spiritual approaches. Don’t understand me to be saying that.
But if someone came along in the community and said, “You know, the community life is kind of boring for us. And it hasn’t given us too much. So we’ve decided, as a couple, that for our spiritual life we’re gonna invest ourself [sic] in some other movement.” Or, “We’re gonna invest ourselves in something like the Third Order of St. Francis,” or something like that. I would think that that was very odd. Because it’s sort of like adopting another pattern of life, and another set of activities, another spirituality, than the spirituality the Lord has given us, and than the spirituality we’ve covenanted ourselves to.
That doesn’t mean that someone might not be inspired by reading, for example, The Little Flowers of St. Francis. But what I’m talking about is the problem, the kind of schizophrenia that would come about, if there was a whole other involvement and a whole other way of life—which, indeed, other Christians may be called to by the Lord as the way he wants them to work out their mutual sanctification. But we need to focus on the community way of life as our means of sanctification.
Now, let’s look inside the home situation for a few minutes, because I’ve been talking mostly about community activities outside the home. But there’s a lot that goes on inside the home. And that’s where we spend a lot of time as a married couple, inside the home. So a lot of mutual sanctification we can expect to be going on in that environment.
The home is part of our community life, and there are many opportunities for mutual sanctification there.
First, there is the whole area of joint spiritual life, lived out in the marriage. Joint spiritual life. For example, going together to the church to which we belong, or coming close to the Lord through the Eucharist, Holy Communion, together as a couple. Being nourished by the word of God in the church or parish we belong to. That’s important. Or, as a couple, being nourished by the teaching at community meetings, and taking that word home, and chewing on it together, and sharing it together, and growing in our understanding of it together. That’s an example of joint spiritual activity that we share.
Or by taking the prophecy at the community meeting home, sharing it, and applying it to our own lives. Or by being open, as a couple, to being ministered to by the spiritual gifts from our brothers and sisters. Being open to the discernment of spirits. Being prayed with, say, by the coordinators, or by going through deliverance ministry together—or “together separately”—but going through it, having it as a regular, ongoing part of our life together.
All of these are tremendous opportunities for us, as a couple, to grow in holiness together, to grow closer to the Lord together. As husband and wife, we need to help each other make these things happen. Family prayer, even if that means couple prayer, prayer as a couple, every day in our homes. And I mean, by that, something more involved than an extended grace before meals. Or household prayer: making that a real priority, praying together as husband and wife. Keeping the Lord’s Day, as Bud was talking about yesterday, making the Lord’s Day a real priority. Keeping the Lord’s Day is not a law for us, but it is very much part of our community culture, and Lord’s Day ought to be a regular part of making our home a holy place, dedicated to the Lord, and making his day a holy day for our home and for our kids.
Beyond that, there’s keeping the seasons of the year—Advent and Christmas and Lent and Easter and Pentecost—in our homes, having those seasons of Christ’s life and of the church year permeate the atmosphere and the environment of our home as a couple in the People of Praise.
Of great—what I’m saying here is that a lot of the work of mutual sanctification has to do not only with activities we do together, but with creating the right kind of holy environment in the home. We have to help each other, to support each other, to make these things happen.
Then, shifting gears a little, there are the more individual activities that we’re involved in: personal prayer, individual prayer, personal spiritual reading, perhaps of a book like The Imitation of Christ. The Imitation of Christ [by Thomas à Kempis] is, I think, an increasingly popular devotional spiritual reading tool in the community. And that’s why we went to the trouble and the expense to reissue the Knox–Oakley translation of The Imitation of Christ: because we thought it was the snappiest, zippiest, strongest translation in English that could help us grow in that.1
Or other reading. Reading the lives of great Christian heroes. I mentioned a few minutes ago Edwards and Wesley. Or great missionaries of the Catholic and Protestant traditions, the lives of great saints and martyrs. Reading these kinds of books in our homes, is tremendously nourishing, and it ought to be part of our lives, and we ought to help each other to do this kind of reading. Solid spiritual reading, and the example of successful Christians who have gone before us, ought to be part of our lives and our mutual support in the home.
Yesterday, we talked a little bit about studying and applying Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care to our own situations. That’s another example of a kind of spiritual reading and study that people in the community are increasingly doing. It is, I’d say, becoming more and more part of our way of life. It’s becoming more and more part of the way that we are growing in holiness. So the reading and the study of Gregory, for example, can be a great way to build that right kind of spiritual atmosphere and spiritual understanding in our homes.
In all these personal things that I’m talking about, I think it’s a matter of supporting each other and freeing each other to have the time to have these activities as part of one’s spiritual life. It certainly is the husband’s responsibility to see that this happens; but the husband and wife have to cooperate, together, to see that their spouse has the time and the freedom and the calm, in his or her life, to pray, to read Scripture, to do spiritual reading.
But it’s not only a matter of freeing one another to have the time. It’s also—and this is another point—a matter of sharing with one another, as husband and wife, what’s going on in our prayer time, and what we’re learning from our spiritual reading—from the autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux, or from the biographical stories of the great evangelical missionaries in the Amazon.
See, the sharing of these kinds of things really builds one another up. I want to plead with us today—and I want to plead with us because I think it is an area of communication problem in which we need to grow a lot: don’t keep the personal dimension of your spiritual lives hidden from one another, but seek to share them. Seek to communicate about them.
In this regard, it will not come as a surprise, I think, that women and men will both experience and express their personal relationship with the Lord somewhat differently. It’s an interesting thing: Jesus is God and Jesus is man. And all of us men love Jesus our Lord and God, who is a man. We think of him as a man, we love him that way, as a man loves a man. And women are going to love Jesus, the God–man, in a way that women love, and in a way that women express love, appropriately, for a man. And that experience, and that expression, I think, is going to be somewhat different.
Notice, for example, in our living together, that women in the community tend to be much more open when they, say, hug each other at birthdays, or in greeting their sisters and saying to their sisters, “Oh, I love you so much.” Sister to sister.
Now, when I get together with a men’s group on a regular basis, I just don’t walk up and hug my brothers and say, “I love you so much.” Men don’t express it the same way, generally speaking. Do we love one another as men? We certainly do. And we know we love one another, and we have this wonderful experience of loyalty to one another. But we express our love and affection differently.
So when husbands and wives share their personal love relationship with the Lord, he’s probably going to express it in a man’s way, and she’s probably going to express it in a woman’s way. Obviously, there’s going to be overlap; these things are not mutually exclusive, of course. But sometimes, I think, men get confused here, because women’s spiritual language is often much more up-front and much more emotionally expressive. And it’s very filled with a language of love. She’s expressing it in a very womanly way, and a husband may be intimidated by his wife’s expressing her love for the Lord in that way. He knows he loves the Lord, but he doesn’t express it that way; he doesn’t feel quite the same way. And he may think, boy, she’s really spiritual. She’s really up here; I’m just a dolt down here.
And maybe he’s misinterpreting what’s going on. In fact, they may be in the same place! Or, he may be way ahead of her in relationship with the Lord. But his interpretation of her feminine way of expressing her spiritual relationship with the Lord makes him think, she’s really holy. She may be; but a lot of men can get very intimidated by that.
On the other hand, I’ve experienced situations where some women can be intimidated and be afraid to express their love for the Lord before their husbands because, in an odd sort of way, they’re afraid of setting up some sort of competition between their love for their husband and their love for the Lord.
Thus, some women hold back from telling their husbands about their relationship with the Lord, because they’re somehow afraid of another person coming between them and their relationship in some way.
Now I just encourage us to think about this. This isn’t a big revelation, or a big teaching or something—but just think about this issue. I don’t want to make an enormous point of it, but I think it’s worth thinking about, and it may help us to overcome some of our reserve in sharing, as couples, about our relationship with the Lord and what we’re learning of spiritual things.
Another thing we can do, in terms of mutual sanctification in the home, is to look at our dinner conversation as an opportunity to grow in holiness. Discussion, for example, about this morning’s homily, or about the spiritual books we’ve been reading, or about the community teaching, along with the discussion of other important things in life, like the kids’ soccer game or the parent/teacher meeting, or politics, is important.
I’m not trying to set up our homes as monasteries where only very, you know, spiritual activities go on. But spiritual activities in the—spiritual sharing in the flow of the rest of our real life should be there.
Certainly, spiritual conversation should be as much a normal part of our dinner table conversation as practical conversation. Some households, I know, are involved in the joint reading of books or joint programs of doing Scripture study together on a regular basis. Say, they might have a meeting once a week for discussion of, say, so many chapters or paragraphs of Matthew’s gospel, and everybody in the household should have worked on it during the week so they come prepared to discuss it. That’s a wonderful sort of thing to do as a family, and I think it could be done at all sorts of levels. I mean, it could be done with parents and children together, having those kinds of discussions on something they’ve read together.
Another example many of us have learned from PTIs [Pastoral Training Institutes] or other adventures with Kerry [Koller], is that it can be helpful to get a decent Christian movie, or a decent human movie, and watch that together on video, and then have some kind of serious conversation about it, about its meaning and about the vices and the virtues of the people who’ve been portrayed, and the spiritual and moral lessons we can draw from it. That could be a really good use of television in our home, in terms of building up a holy and a Christian culture there.
All of these things are really exciting ways of bringing the spirituality of the community and our way of life from the community meeting and from other outside activities into the home and into the marriage relationship.
I want to shift gears again. Another area that I think we have to be involved in, for the work of mutual sanctification, is speaking the truth in love to one another in our marriages, husband and wife. The husband—excuse me—the headship/submission relationship between the husband and wife does not preclude both spouses speaking the truth in love to one another. This makes sense, I think, in terms of our growth in improved skills in communication, which we were talking about yesterday.
It’s sometimes hard to speak the truth to one another if we’re like two ships passing in the night. But as we grow in our ability to communicate, we can “mirror” to each other, and we can call each other on, to the ideals of the life we’re committed to. We can call each other on, for example, to the ideals of different chapters in the Spirit and Purpose: what the Spirit and Purpose teaches us about ecumenism, or what it teaches us about our material possessions, or about prayer.
We can call one another on, because we are committed to it together, and we can encourage each other in our common way of life. We have the freedom in our marriage/love relationship to call one another on to holiness, and we have the freedom in our married relationship to correct one another in a loving way.
If we see a pattern of sin or a pattern of vice in our spouse, or if we see imperfection, or we see faults; if we see areas that our spouse may even be unconscious of, things your spouse may not—have no idea, for example, that he does. I mean, he may have no idea that, when he, you know, sits in a prayer meeting and is praying or talking to people, he’s also doing this all the time [presumably, Kevin makes a gesture; the audience laughs]. You have the freedom to speak the truth in love! There really is a place for spousal correction.
We talk about fraternal correction in the community, and spousal correction is a certain kind of it. Sometimes, I have found some people who misunderstand the headship/submission relationship in marriage, as if it precluded a wife holding up a mirror to her husband so her husband can see how he’s acting. And she may be the only mirror he has that God has placed there for him to see where he needs to change and grow.
So there is a real place for this kind of correction; but it’s also important that it be done lovingly. For example, if there has just been, as Dorothy [Ranaghan, Kevin’s wife] pointed out yesterday, a “frank and cordial exchange of views,” immediately after that may not be the best time to point out to the other person his or her faults.
Spousal correction should not be used as a weapon, like [ominous tone of voice]: “I’ve been waiting to get you in a spot like this for a long time,” and now, whack, right over the head with it.
But, obviously, there has to be that freedom to talk to one another in an honest way. I think it’s important to receive what our spouses have to say, even if we don’t agree with it. But to take it, and to listen to it, and to pray about it, and not to use it automatically as the material for our next argument.
I think, if we’re able to speak the truth in real love and gentleness to one another, then there never should be a reason for the other one of us to ever have to say, “Don’t ever speak to me that way.”
I want to move on to a couple of other areas. Let me indicate, briefly, some headings you might want to think about as means of mutual sanctification. I’m not gonna describe them in detail at all, but I just want to kind of list some things to think about as opportunities for grow- —these are opportunities for growing in holiness. Okay?
Deferring to one another. That’s one. Just think about it.
Another one: doing our work around the house well. Both the husband and the wife doing their work well as an opportunity for growing in holiness. So it’s an opportunity not just to please one another, but an opportunity to grow in holiness.
Self-sacrifice. We could have rewritten all the talks of this weekend around the topic of self-sacrifice. Because what we’re doing in marriage is—in a particu- —is a particular way of laying down our lives for one another, in imitation of Christ’s laying down his life for us.
Forgiveness. We talked about that yesterday. Forgiveness and reconciliation is a great opportunity for growing in holiness.
Another one: bearing one another’s burdens. Suffering with and in Christ through sickness; through financial troubles; through serious disappointments in our work and in our family. As we are approaching death, [and] enduring pain—all these are opportunities to grow closer to Christ.
They may be obstacles to be overcome, but they’re not just obstacles to be overcome; they are opportunities to grow in the love of Christ and grow closer to him.
Shifting gears again.
We also promote our mutual sanctification by fostering the relationship of spousal love that God has given us to bless us and to glorify him, and to protect, encourage, and sustain us. We need, in our marriages, to continue the relationship of lover and beloved; of pursuer and pursued; of wooing; of offering and responding.
That relationship, which in so many ways has characterized our courtships, and does characterize good and wholesome courtship, needs to continue in our marriages. And that relationship is a way of growing closer not only to one another, but closer to Christ. We need to see that as part of the holiness, and the way to holiness, that is appropriate to the married state, while completely inappropriate to the celibate state.
We therefore need to delight in one another’s presence, and to continually give ourselves to one another joyfully and in countless ways. We must continue to work hard to show affection to one another throughout the busyness of our lives and the busyness of every day.
Taking time to be affectionate is a key to growth in holiness in marriage: to speak tenderly; to be deliberately kind; to touch each other frequently, if only briefly or with hugs; to look into each other’s eyes and to say that we love one another.
These things come easily to us in our courtship and in the early days of our marriages. It can be a serious problem when this element of our married life fades away. And we need to rediscover it and promote it again.
Very often, when I find a marriage situation where there is some kind of difficulty, I find that, one way [or] another, when the people got where they wanted to be—that is to say, when they got married and could have a legal sexual relationship with one another—then the whole aspect of affection kind of cooled off and died, as if the affection between them was only some kind of foreplay or of preliminaries to get them to the point of explicit sexual activity, rather than being—what would I call it?—an ongoing atmosphere and a quality of the relationship itself, which is meant to perdure.
The habitual expression of affection between spouses strengthens our resolve to serve the Lord together. It consoles us. It gets us through the day. It helps us to be faithful to our other responsibilities. It brings us closer to his light and his love, through our experience of each other’s love.
In this regard, it can be very helpful to develop a whole set of ideas for quick and inexpensive dates: for “times out,” for “times together,” in which we can bless each other with our company.
Now, we all know we’re very, very, very, very, very busy. But we know that it is still important to work to make time and space for something like the expression of this element of our relationship.
I recently saw such a list of “times together” in a Christian magazine, and it suggested, among other things, the following possibilities. Write down the story of how you met. Tour a museum or an art gallery together. Float on a raft together [chuckling in the room]. This is the one I can’t . . . quite . . . see . . . Dorothy and me doing [laughter]. Take a stroll around the block and hold hands as you walk. A lot of that was going on yesterday during lunchtime. Rent a classic love-story video and watch it together, sitting on the couch. Remember to look into your spouse’s eyes as he or she tells you about the day.
Create your own special holiday. Why, sitting right here in this room, there is a couple in the branch who recently did this. They created their own holiday. Got someone else to watch their child, and they were able to have 24 hours . . . together. They had their day. It was a very refreshing time for them.
Send your spouse a love letter. Build a snowman together. Watch the sunset together. Sit on the same side of the booth in the restaurant [laughter]. We may need—some of us may need larger booths, but that’s okay [more laughter]. Put together a puzzle on a rainy evening. Take a moonlight canoe ride. Whisper something romantic to your spouse in a crowded room. Reminisce through old photo albums. Share one milkshake through two straws [chuckling]. Ride the merry-go-round together. Dedicate a song to her on the radio [laughter]. Tenderly touch your spouse as you pass around the house. Reminisce about your first date. Go kite-flying. Attend a sporting event you’ve never been to together.
Well, pagans can do these things too, but when Christians do these kinds of things—and I don’t think anything there was very expensive except building the raft [laughter]. . . . But when Christians do these sorts of things together, they have an opportunity to renew the affectionate side of their marriage. And that’s a very, very important thing. And it’s an important part of mutual sanctification! Because we’re meant to provide that kind of affection for one another as we seek the Lord and grow in the Lord.
Now I want to move into the final area I want to talk about. . . .
[Interruption in the recording.]
. . . great length in CFS II about this area. We must remember—all of us must remember, but we also must remember, especially, as we get older—that sexual intercourse is not just a right or a privilege, but a responsibility for each other, and a responsibility towards each other in our marriage relationship. Good, holy sexual union, the giving of mutual sexual happiness, marked by a spirit of serving my spouse, is a very important element in fostering our union and in freeing us to serve God more wholeheartedly.
It’s unfortunately true that, in the world in general, and also in our community, we can run into marriages which may look fine from the outside, but in which there is little communication, little affection, and little sexual life going on. This is a tragedy.
The point I want to make here is that just as we have to work on communication and affection, we have to work on the art of sexual love in our marriages. And I think it’s extremely important to say to anyone that if you are experiencing difficulties, little difficulties or big ones, in your sexual relationship or in your affectionate relationship—just as you might experience difficulties in your communication—you are certainly not alone. Lots of people in the world, lots of people in the churches, and other people in the community have problems in these areas.
As we said yesterday, help is not only on the way; help is here.
One of the difficulties I’ve noticed in community life is that people often are so embarrassed about certain kinds of problems, or so private about certain kinds of problems, that they never expose the problem for any kind of ministry or help. And I think that’s a very big mistake. I don’t mean get up in the community meeting and say [Kevin changes to a robust voice]: “Let me tell you about this sexual problem.” [Laughter.] No.
There are problems of sexual adjustment for newly married people. There are problems of sexual adjustment after the birth of children. There are the many difficulties and strains that couples experience who are seeking to follow a program of natural family planning. It can be very difficult. And there are a lot of sexual adjustments that are needed at the time of menopause. There are changing patterns of frequency of sexual love that often come about as we get older.
There are a lot of problems that can come about in this area, and we have to understand that we are a lay community with very many married couples, and a wealth of experience in every age bracket and every circumstance of marriage. I doubt that there are any problems of married sexuality that we don’t have experience of, and where we don’t have some wisdom, some advice, and some help to share.
So, as husbands and wives, we need to commit ourselves to good sexual love that is regularly available to our spouse, according to what is appropriate for our age and circumstances. Perhaps we may need some renewal in this area, a rekindling of interest in wholesome sexual love in areas like techniques or patterns of frequency, foreplay, positions—done not for lust or just for the sake of experimentation, but for the sake of blessing our spouse and deepening our union, and as an essential part of our work of mutual sanctification.
Well, I think, when we look now at this whole subject, working backwards from our sexual life and our affection for one another; when we look at our mutual correction and our bearing one another’s burdens; when we look at sharing our personal devotional life with one another; when I look at our joint spiritual life together; when I look at participating together in all the activities of the pattern of life that God has given us together in the community, we need to recognize that these, all together, are the principal ways that we, as couples, should be pursuing the work of mutual sanctification.
We must never forget that this mutual sanctification is one of the primary purposes of our Christian marriage. This is sort of a wild way to put it, but it is as if Christ was saying to each one of us, “I love your spouse, and I’m working out his or her salvation . . . with you as my partner.” Every husband is a partner or a co-worker with Christ in the ongoing salvation of his wife. And every wife is a partner or a co-worker with Christ in the ongoing salvation of her husband.
We have to understand this, brothers and sisters, as part of our vocation. And we have to make the sanctification of our spouse one of our highest goals . . . in our married life.
Amen.
[Applause.]
Endnotes:
1. Greenlawn Press, owned by the People of Praise, published this translation in 1990. Return to text
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