To Love Another Person: Thoughts on Pursuing Holiness in the Vocation of Marriage

Last month, a lovely friend messaged me:

"If you have some time and are keen to write something down, I’d love to hear some of your thoughts on continuing to cultivate intimacy with Jesus in the context of marriage. And even intimacy with Jesus in the day-to-day of living a non-religious vocation."

She was grappling, she said, with the idea of radically pursuing intimacy with the Lord, alongside and unleashed in the married vocation.

Her question struck right at the heart of one of the ways God has been deepening my understanding of His love throughout the last five years since I came back down the mountain from Jamberoo. 

Early on in that time I wrote a few blog posts about holiness in dating and moving beyond a 'Jesus is my boyfriend' spirituality. But then came my dad's cancer and the covid pandemic (and all the heartache that came from the convergence of those two things), and a job that stretched me spiritually in some incredibly challenging ways, and the great big scary void of post-undergraduate decision making and masters study and career planning and an interstate move. And I didn't end up writing much about vocation throughout dating and engagement, even though it had always been one of my favourite topics to think about, pray about, and share about. Looking back it strikes me as funny that the process of finally discovering and beginning to live my vocation was such a quiet, private one, after the very public way in which I'd begun my discernment journey.

In some ways I think the Lord was quite merciful to me in drawing my attention away from the big questions of vocation and holiness during that season. I had spent five years very intentionally discerning religious life and God's call for me: Jesus knew that my heart was His and that I was ready to do what He asked of me. And almost as soon as I realised that what He was really asking of me was marriage with Callum, some huge challenges entered my life that meant that I couldn't keep investing all my energy in second guessing my vocation. I had to stop fixating and ruminating, and let the 'Fiat' I had given Jesus carry me even when my own understanding didn't keep up (you'll see below that my frantic, flappy brain did attempt to keep up sometimes, with mixed results). 

That bigger Fiat, though, and the groundwork I had laid with the Lord in my single years, ended up carrying me through engagement and our wedding and the first year of marriage. Jesus didn't let me look face-on at the question of 'becoming my best and holiest self outside of a religious vocation' much during this time. I think He knew it would send me for a tailspin, especially on top of the other challenges my heart was facing.

Yet now, in looking back over these last five years of prayer and in attempting to formulate a response to my friend's question, I realise that the Lord has been forming my heart in very deep, quiet ways throughout the whole season. In some ways, my entire understanding of intimacy with Jesus shifted. Vocation to me now is something a lot earthier and more humble and messy and full of grace, much quieter and less shiny and showy than I thought it would be when I began my discernment journey almost exactly ten years ago. 

I wanted to share the little letter of encouragement I wrote to my friend here on the blog. I ended up sending a copy of it to another friend in the interim, when she too was grappling with some of these questions. I can only hope that there's another heart or two out there that God wants to reach today. I don't think that what I've written necessarily answers the questions my friend was asking - but it is the fruit of my journey with Jesus in trying to abide more fully in His love, and I hope it blesses you. Praying for you in your journey of discovering God's love for you and His call on your life, sweet friends.

~~~

Dear friend,

What does it mean to cultivate intimacy with Jesus in the context of a marriage? How can we become our best and holiest selves outside of a religious vocation?

For me the process of answering these questions was a slow and often painful one. I remember several moments in the first year or two of dating Callum when I became absolutely convinced that outside of a convent or a mission of martyrdom, I had no chance of becoming the woman God wanted me to be, the woman I felt the world needed as a witness and light. This would usually end in me sobbing and asking Callum whether he thought we were meant to break up.

His answer was always no: a calm, steady no that came from a place of deep commitment and contentment in what God was asking of him. If I was honest with myself, my real answer was always the same as his - that we were, somehow, supernaturally called to be partners in this world and to help one another to the next. Deep in my heart, I knew what Jesus had spoken. But up in the frantic, flappy levels of my brain I kept getting caught up in phrases and ideas about holiness that made it feel elusive and inaccessible - particularly inaccessible within the very normal, very earthy vocation to marriage.

In some ways I think this is where we all have to start in answering these questions - with the frantic, flappy parts of our brain that fixate on falsehoods and doubt the grace of God working in our very normal, very earthly lives.

• What do I think holiness is, and why does it feel elusive?
• What is my definition of 'intimacy with Jesus' and what do I believe are the bare-minimum necessary features of that?
• Whose words and opinions about vocation have influenced me most, and what ideals am I anxious to live up to?
• What, in gritty detail, do I admire or desire about religious life that makes it seem like an enabler of holiness and intimacy with Jesus?
• What, in gritty detail, do I fear about marriage and parenthood that make them seem like obstacles to, rather than enablers of, holiness and intimacy with Jesus?

Until we have clear answers to questions like these, finding holiness in marriage - or holiness at all - will be a futile exercise, because too often we are living in fear based on lies or misunderstandings. We’ll be operating out of a Pelagian mindset of trying to earn grace, trying to be the means of our own salvation (and the world’s salvation), repressing and denying much of what the Lord himself loves and values within us because we are trying to become our own shiny, flawless, soulless idol.

Why am I starting with this? Because I think it’s too easy to say that holiness in marriage is praying together. It’s too easy to say that intimacy with Jesus in marriage is keeping space for your own personal prayer life. Sure, those two things may end up as key features of a holy marriage, but if they are rooted in fear and a desperate attempt to compensate for something we believe to be lacking in our state of life, they won’t actually bear fruit.

To truly cultivate intimacy with Jesus in any state of life first and foremost means letting Him get close to us. He desires to get close to our desires and to help us see them clearly. He desires to get close to our fears and misconceptions, and gently, slowly heal these. He desires to get close to our circumstances, to the mundane details of our day-to-day lives and relationships, in order to bless them and raise them up. He humbles Himself to share in our humanity so that we might come to share in His divinity.

And too often - for me at least - the humility of God is deeply, deeply uncomfortable. I want to cultivate intimacy with Jesus by getting up to His level, not by surrendering to the truth that I need Him to come down to my level. I want to live out heroic love in the context of my vocation, rather than realising that the ultimate call on my life is to receive the heroic love of Christ crucified and resurrected.

I imagine it’s a truth that religious and priests have to learn over and over again - that as precious and beautiful as their ‘yes’ is to God, they aren’t actually doing something spectacular and special. None of us are. We are sinners in need of grace, little children in need of a Father, simple human beings longing for the Divine to touch and transform our lives.

We can thank God for the loving witness of the Saints and for those living saints who inspire us to give our own ‘yes’ to the Lord, but we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking sanctity is a particular mode of action or regime of prayer or rule of life. Sanctity is simple receptivity: we open our hearts more and more to the love of God so that it can overflow into the world. That will look radically different in different lives and circumstances. In His wisdom, God has made as many paths to heaven as He has made individual souls: there is no one-size-fits all model for loving Him.

Even in the context of a specific state of life like marriage, I don’t think there are universally applicable guidelines that can guarantee intimacy with Jesus - or indeed, guarantee that it won’t be present. St Monica became a holy woman in spite of (and indeed perhaps because of) her violent, alcoholic, adulterous husband. Her intimacy with Jesus flowed out of a marriage filled with sorrow and suffering. Sts Zelie and Louis Martin lived a fairly normal, middle-class life, touched with love, disappointments, and tragedy in quite normal ways, and are remembered more for the daughters they raised than for their own acts or writings or way of life. Their intimacy with Jesus flowed out of a marriage that looked reasonably ordinary for its time. Sts Basil the Elder and Emmelia had ten children; St Joseph and Our Lady never consummated their marriage. Prayer can look different; charity can look different; chastity can look different.

What I do believe was common to all of these marriages was the ability to see Christ in the other. We cultivate intimacy with Jesus not by making the world peripheral, but by making it translucent: we look through our spouse, our child, our enemy, the poor, and see God. As my favourite line in the musical Les Miserables puts it: “And remember the truth that once was spoken: to love another person is to see the face of God.”

St Monica loved her abusive spouse out of love for Jesus Christ, her eternal bridegroom: she saw through the angry, imperfect, unloving creature in front of her to the Creator whose Love for her was eternal. Sts Basil and Emmelia looked upon one another with reverence and allowed the communion of their bodies and souls to become the image of God’s love overflowing into new life. This is receptivity: this is holiness. Marriage in a particular way asks us to continue to see the image of God in every new revelation, every complex facet, every irritating detail, of the full human person in front of us. In choosing to see and love Christ in the other, we are transformed ever more into another Christ for the world, into Love.

Sometimes receptivity to Jesus in marriage means humbly accepting the overwhelming goodness of our spouse as they serve us, caress us, minister to our hearts with tenderness and mutual joy. Sometimes receptivity to Jesus in marriage means letting God get close to our fights, our brokenness, the lack of virtue we encounter in the other and in ourselves, and allowing Him to heal and transform us. Sometimes it is making love; sometimes it is abstaining. Sometimes it is praying aloud together; sometimes it is sitting apart in an Adoration chapel in complete silence. Sometimes it means offering hospitality to friends and strangers; sometimes it means safeguarding a sacred, solitary space for connection as a couple. Sometimes it means going out to serve the poor; sometimes it means acknowledging our own poverty and need to be served by the person God has anointed to look after us ‘for better, for worse, in sickness and in health’ (here’s looking at you, pregnancy!). Sometimes it’s simply getting out of bed in the morning, going to work, and getting the chores done. Nothing is too humble for God.

Intimacy with Jesus in marriage takes intentionality, yes, but I don’t think it’s something elusive or inaccessible or prescriptive. I don’t think it’s a particular list of norms to check off every day (though we should never underestimate the grace God is constantly longing to pour out on us in the sacraments and in prayer). I don’t think it’s necessarily even going to look radical to the world, although it might. The married life of St Joseph and Our Lady was at face value pretty normal, quiet, and simple for a couple of their time: “On the surface it was similar to that of everyone around them, but faith, piercing the superficialities, disclosed that God was accomplishing very great things.” (Jean-Pierre de Caussade)

Rather, I think the thing we have to be most intentional about is our attitude: am I approaching my life, my marriage, my family, with a fundamentally contemplative attitude, ready to see and to love Jesus in all things? Can I be intimate with Him in my desires, in my fears, in my beliefs about who I am and who I’m called to be? Can I be intimate with Him in my conversations with my spouse, in our lovemaking, in the mundane tasks we must work together as a team to achieve every day? Can I be intimate with Him through prayer, through the sacraments, through service, through my friendships? Can I be intimate with Him in the deepest sorrows and sufferings of my life - in grief and loss, in arguments and injuries within my marriage, in challenging decisions and setbacks? Can I allow Christ to humble Himself to share in my humanity at every single moment of my life and vocation, knowing that that is how I come to share in His divinity?

He is not far away; He is closer to us than we are to ourselves. We don’t need to search for Him or frantically hustle to cultivate particular virtues and say particular prayers or even carve out time that we don’t have in order to maintain old familiar norms of what intimacy with Him felt like in singlehood.

Rather, we simply need to clarify and focus our gaze. Learn how to gaze upon Jesus in every moment - in the Blessed Sacrament, in the face of your spouse, in the trials of your present circumstance - and you will be intimate with Him. Identify those things that obstruct your gaze upon Him in all things - the fixation with particular ideas about holiness, the addictions to our comfort zone and self-idolatry that keep us looking at ourselves rather than Him - and allow Him to purify them. Let Him come close to you and look upon all of you - no fig leaves - and receive is loving gaze.

Then will we be able to gaze upon ourselves with love. Then will we be able to gaze upon our spouse with love. Then will we be able to gaze upon the world with love. Then will we begin to become the presence of Christ who is ever present with us, loving us and leading us home.

AMDG

With love,

Kate xxx

~~~

Incidentally, I've realised I really love praying about and writing responses to questions like this. If you have specific topics that God has put on your heart right now that you're willing to share with me, I would love to pray for you and maybe even chat about those topics here on the blog. Send me a message! I don't at all think I have the answers, but I definitely feel called to be faithful in sharing the little glimpses of His love that Jesus shares with me, and prompts are a great way to get the ball rolling. K xx