Study Topic for November                                                             

Teams of Our Lady was started when some couples approached Father Caffarel over 60 years ago and asked him to assist them to develop their spiritual lives within their marriages. The purpose of the Teams Movement has not changed since - it remains the same.

What does married spirituality mean? How aware are we of spirituality within our marriage? How do the different expressions and practices of our individual spirituality enrich both spouses within the marriage?

As individuals we give expression to our spirituality in different ways. Do we find the Word of God calling us to respond to Him with our different gifts? Can we discuss what God is calling us to do? It is important that as a couple we share on our individual spirituality and on our spirituality as couple. This will lead us to develop our vision of how we want to live out our lives together as couples, as family and as Domestic Church.

Through sharing together we grow as Father Caffarel described in Rome in 1970:

“Your home will bear witness to God in a still more explicit fashion if it is the ‘union of two searchers’, where intellect and heart are thirsting to know and to meet God, to become united with Him because they have understood that God is the Great Reality, and because God interests them more than anything else.”

In the Second Wind (one of the Teams Study Topic Booklets) we read:

“Married Christians are called to sanctity. They do not answer this call as individuals – although each retains his or her individuality – but rather they walk the road to sanctity as a couple. The great revelation of the spirituality of marriage is this: conjugal love and the love of God are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, they go hand in hand. Husband and wife can follow in the demanding footsteps of Christ, as a couple.”

An Understanding of Love

Responding to such demands, we must learn to suffer, to accept our weaknesses, to forgive each other and through our giving, heal each other.

 “When we love truly, we also suffer at times and this suffering makes us vulnerable and insecure. Each of us must certainly have experienced this in his/her life…. We learn to serve each other, to listen and to give, to understand shameful silences, to understand that the other can be saying ‘yes’ even when the words are saying ‘no’.

We discover that, when the other was generously forgiving us, he/she was healing our wounds. Forgiving is not always easy, but always necessary because to forgive also implies accepting our imperfections. In the course of the years….we have patiently trained each other and found the one who loves best and most is the one who can teach us to forgive. Let us never forget that the Lord has entrusted us to each other and has given us an inexhaustible gift on our wedding day which is with us throughout our life.” ( To and Moura Soares – Dickenson College – July 2001.)

Many of us, who have been married for some years will have had such experiences.

Father Caffarel understood this when he said: for couples seeking to develop their spirituality, it was not a question of:

 “running away from the world, but to learn, following Christ’s example, how to serve God in the whole of their life and in the thick of the world.”

He advises us that we must discover that spirituality does not consist only of certain Christian observance such as praying or retreats, but entails that service of God where we live, in our family, at work and in society.

A Practical Approach

“Both romantic love and deliberate/choice/committed love are important. It is vitally important that the couple reverences their humanity by being romantic, by saying ‘I Love you’ in all sorts of ways – words, cuddles, kisses, hugs, special dinners, red roses etc. But it is more important that they recognise that their deliberate love is patient, kind, forgiving, not puffed up, ready to excuse, trusting and so forth, no matter how one feels, whether one is having a ‘bear-with-a-sore-head’ (difficult) day or a ‘ cloud nine’ (happy) day.

They must see themselves and the other as contributing partners to the marriage. Each of them gives and receives precious gifts. Each must see themselves and the other as God’s providential gift, someone to be honoured and treasured.        They must each recognise that while they may not be able to change the other and must accept the other as he/she is, they can, out of love for the other, probably do a good deal to change themselves to be a better gift for the other.” (Pat and Marguerita Goggins from Oceania – Talk at Dickenson College 2001.)

Through all of this we must be aware of sin and of God’s forgiveness, for married spirituality not to be ‘idealised’.  At times of difficulty and incompatibility that cause us division, we must discover that we are sinners. Failures in love make us aware that love itself needs to be saved. Father Caffarel wrote:

“If admitting this painful discovery (of being sinners), their conjugal community at last becomes a penitent community with the larger penitent community of the Church, and have recourse to their Lord of whose presence and concern they may have doubt, then, opening themselves to forgiveness, they will find fresh hope.” (Marriage this Great Sacrament. p. 332-333. Fr. Henri Caffarel.)

What the Church Says Today

Fr. Fleischmann, speaking about the Second Vatican Council, in Dickinson 2001 said:

 “At the heart of the Council’s perspective are its very clear statements on the quality of human love consecrated by a special sacrament. It is an eminently human love that involves the good of the whole person and which manifests itself in a variety of ways according to cultures. This unfailing love guarantees the dignity of the physical and emotional expressions which are distinctive of married friendship. Going beyond the erotic inclinations, the feelings and the gestures of tenderness promote that mutual self-giving by which the spouses enrich each other with a joyful and thankful will.” (The Couple in the People of God. Father F. Fleischmann – Dickenson College - 2001.)

Supporting each other on the journey.      

“We need to help each other to be aware of the balance needed between the physical, the emotional, the social, the mental and the spiritual. It is in this balance that we grow as person spiritually and together as couple in conjugal spirituality. We realise that we must be pro-active people to live as Christians in today’s world. In helping each other to grow in spirituality, it is important to realise that to achieve any progress we must be guided by Jesus Himself, and His Holy Spirit.” (The Spirituality of the Couple – Fr. M.P. Gallagher S.J. with John and Elaine Cogavin – Rome 2003.)