Jackie and Bobby Angel share the joys and struggles of marriage. They discuss the everyday experiences that have taught them how to live for each other, and demonstrate how communication and self-sacrifice are the keys to a healthy relationship between a husband and wife.
Jackie and Bobby Angel offer their thoughts on marriage, the everyday sacrifice it requires and the ultimate joy it brings.
These four tips can help those who are already married, and anyone looking forward to taking their vows build a strong foundation for a marriage that gives glory to God: Don’t make your loved one into an idol, Communicate with your spouse (especially when it’s most difficult), Work on becoming more holy before entering a relationship, Make sure there’s a friendship underneath the romance.
While sharing the Church’s beautiful teaching on sex and marriage, Jackie and Bobby explain why sex is more than recreational. The biological and theological purpose of sex is to bear children. Whenever a husband and wife give themselves to one another freely, totally, faithfully, and fruitfully, they are saying “I do” just as they did on their wedding day.
Jackie and Bobby discuss the benefits and the beauty of natural family planning (NFP). Far from being just a more difficult form of contraception, NFP works in accordance with God’s design for life. While admitting some of the struggles that come with practicing NFP, Jackie and Bobby also talk about the joy and authentic freedom it has brought to their marriage.
A lot of us probably think of marriage as broadly the same thing: two people coming together in love to spend the rest of their lives together. But when we start to dive into the specifics of that idea, it’s important to recognize the difference between what the world expects from marriage and what God expects. The Church teaches that in the case of sacramental marriage, it is asked and even expected of the couple that they be open to life throughout their marriage. This is why the priest performing the ceremony and leading marriage prep asks the couple if they are freely, fruitfully, fully, and faithfully entering the sacrament with their spouse.
For many people, the Catholic Church’s teaching on in vitro fertilization and contraception is a hard one, but it is in concordance with the nature of things. The nature of a thing, as Fr. MIke puts it, is its “what-it’s-for-ness”. Sex is for procreation and the unity of the couple. Equally important is the fact that sex, not in vitro fertilization, is the natural way to bring forth a new life. Contraception and in vitro fertilization violate the nature of not only sex, but also the nature of the person and life itself. If you feel that this teaching prohibits you from being truly happy, Fr. Mike offers encouragement. It may not seem fair to us at first, but the deep abiding peace we acquire from living by God’s plan is better than anything we could acquire by doing things our way.
What makes a dance such a fitting metaphor for marriage? God’s creative love guides the couple in the choreography of their love; it is a graceful movement carrying them to the heights of all that marital love and complementarity have to offer.
Jackie and Bobby explain why it’s important to raise holy children. Being a parent is exhausting, but if you’re called to marriage and parenthood, you’re also called to die to yourself every day for the sake of your children, and for the glory of God. You’ll never get an award or public recognition for raising children, but the slow, everyday work of raising kids in the faith means doing your best to send holy reflections of Christ into the world.
Jackie and Bobby talk about how to bring your children to Mass, especially those under the age of reason. As parents of four kids all under the age of 7, Jackie and Bobby have some experience introducing their kids to Mass. The reason kids get bored or fidgety during Mass is the same reason any adult gets bored: they don’t understand what’s going on. Anytime you’re in a situation where you don’t understand what’s happening (sporting events, ceremonies, lectures, etc.) you’re naturally going to become bored and anxious for it to be over. This is what kids under the age of reason experience almost constantly.
What makes a marriage successful? A lot of people are scared to get married! A lot of marriages are breaking up! Even those marriages that stay together a few of them say they are really happy.
Jackie and Bobby talk about apologizing to your kids. We know it’s important to teach our kids manners and to say sorry when they hurt someone, but are we reflecting that teaching in our own lives? It’s often really scary for a kid when their parents lose their patience with them and raise their voice, and as parents it’s okay that we make mistakes sometimes. But even when disciplining, we need to remember the importance of going back to our children after everything has settled and saying these two things: “I’m sorry” and “Will you forgive me?”
Jackie and Bobby explain how marriages can escape infidelity. Maybe you’ve heard some statistics about the amount of spouses that cheat in their relationships. They’re not good. For Catholics, our idea of cheating is a bit broader than the secular world’s view, which can make it even scarier to discern marriage. It’s not an easy undertaking, but there are a few things we can do to strengthen our discipline and avoid infidelity in our relationships. The first thing we need to realize is that everyone has the capacity for great good and great evil. We are all fallen human beings, prone to sin. It’s only through the grace of God that we are given strength to withstand temptations. Because we have this natural capacity for temptation and sin, we need to take infidelity seriously. The world may tell you that pleasure is the highest good and that sex isn’t actually important, but not only are these ideas untrue, but they directly undermine the sacrament of matrimony.. Catholicism shows us that sex is not just about pleasure, but it’s a communion of souls with the beloved, and is meant to mirror the sacrificial love that Christ has for his Church. Treating sex as just another activity can lead us into believing that doing so outside of marriage, or with someone who is not our spouse, isn’t that big of a deal.
Falling in love and staying in love is not just a feeling. It takes work. The Christian understanding of love is to be willing to lay down your life for your beloved. As the years go by in our faith life and relationships, it’s easy for our love to go on autopilot. If we don’t nurture our relationship with God and our loved ones, those relationships will reach a place of complacency. In romantic relationships, the romance starts to fade. Remember the cross of love, “the horizontal and the vertical”—with our earthly neighbors and our heavenly father. Christian love requires reaching out to others and maintaining a relationship with God above. Christianity is a love story. As G.K. Chesterton said, “Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.” God was our first love. Before we loved anything else he loved us first. But we’ve lost touch with that innocence, that relationship. As St. John wrote: “I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first” (Revelation 2:4).