I don’t know what they’re putting in the water these days, but several more of my friends have got engaged this week! To celebrate this, here’s a short video by Brent Rice which speaks of the Paschal nature of marriage called “A Crucifixion Type of Love”.
(Thanks to Neal Obstat for this one)
Last month I wrote a post talking about the large number of my friends who got engaged or married in December. In the article I asked my married friends to write in the Comments, giving their advice for my newly-engaged and newly-married friends.
Many thanks to all of you who responded to my request and shared with us lessons learned. Here are some my favourite quotations…
During this Advent and Christmas season, everyone became engaged or got married.
Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration…but only a bit! Seriously, there were a lot of engagements. It seemed like every day Facebook was announcing yet another one. During one particular twenty-four hour period, four new engagements were announced!
All this is wonderful news, of course. It’s great to see so many of my male friends, both in America and England, manning up, getting down on one knee and popping the question. For the last few weeks my News Stream has been filled with lots of happy pictures 
As the number of engagements and weddings increased I thought about doing something here on the blog to mark the occasion. I’ve written a little bit about marriage before, but mainly focusing on the theological dimension and the exhortations of the Early Church Fathers. This time I wanted to share something of value concerning the day-to-day life in a Christian marriage, some advice on how to lead one another to Heaven and to keep God at the centre of the marriage as the “third strand”.
However, given that I’m not married myself, I don’t think I’m really in a position to give this advice! So I’ve decided to outsource this post, turning it over to my friends who are already married! I am also going to email my married friends and ask them this question:
As a Christian spouse, what piece of advice would you give all my friends who are committing to marriage?
Please comment below…
UPDATE: I put all the advice together into this post here, Wise Words for Newlyweds.
A few months ago I went to the Catholic Answers Gala which was hosted by Patrick Coffin. Here he is speaking about his book, Sex Au Natural:
I read his book a good while ago and really enjoyed it. In fact, I’d suggest that it’s one of the best books I’ve read explaining the controversial Papal Encyclical Humanae Vitae. Patrick thoroughly explains the Catholic objection to contraception, looking at it from practical, historical, Scriptural and philosophical points of view.
As it happens, he’s having a sale going on at the moment, so head on over to his blog and get some Christmas shopping done!
Free. Total. Faithful. Fruitful.
There is one wedding “tradition” which I had never come across prior to coming to the United States. It’s the “tossing of the garter” where, in front of all guests, the groom takes off his bride’s garter (sometimes using only with his teeth) and then tosses it to all the single guys, much in the same way as a bride throws a bouquet:
Now, maybe I’m overly sensitive or maybe it’s just because I’m English, but I think this is a custom which is both extremely tacky and undignified:
“They wanted to pray together, but not see each other, before the ceremony”
As a wise man once said, “Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder tooday”…
“Just as priests and religious lay prostrate as they make their vows to God, we felt called also to make this act of love during our wedding. As one of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal C.F.R. chanted the Litany of the Saints, both Cristina and I laid prostrate (Cristina with a little difficulty in her dress!) as we vowed to take on the cross that we had each previously carried as singles. Lying there defenseless, we both committed our lives and souls to God by entrusting them to our spouse. We committed our dreams and goals and our past and future in sacrifice to one another”
I came across this 1993 broadcast of something Paul Harvey wrote in the 60′s:
Thanks to Mommy Life for the link.
I recently wrote a few concluding thoughts about Jeff Bethke’s “Jesus > Religion” video. I’ve just seen a new video starting to go viral on Facebook…
Good chap, that’s much more like it.
