Why Pope Leo Is Right About the Importance of Prayer in Marriage| National Catholic Register

Unpacking over the weekend, following a move, my husband and I suddenly discovered we had exactly four drinking glasses — one tall and three short — not nearly enough for our family (and we broke another one on its way back to the kitchen).

Realizing we’d gotten the glasses for our wedding, we were quick to complain; after all, how did Macy’s expect us to live our lives and set up our house with glasses that shattered so quickly?

Except, we suddenly realized, we’ve been married 15 years.

Those were some glasses.

And a great vacuum cleaner, it turned out, a nice cutting board, and some very durable towels. But that’s it. Those are the last vestiges of that registry we set up when we first set out on our married life together, the remnants of what was there before, when we were setting up our home. And now that our home is full to bursting (and I know, since I just unpacked it all), we seem to have outgrown and worn out so many of our gifts — many, that is, except for prayer.

Recently, Pope Leo XIV encountered a married couple that asked for his advice on marriage. How, the pair asked, do we pray … together?

The Pope responded that married couples should figure out for themselves what keeps them praying together and follow the path, and he offered some advice from his own parents.

“My parents prayed the Rosary together their whole lives every day,” the Pope said. “I found that I was always blessed by their love for one another and their faith in God. It’s a wonderful thing.”

Since his parents ultimately raised the Holy Father, it’s hard to disagree with the Pope’s advice, and it certainly seems to echo across the centuries, through countless saints, especially those married couples who produced saints of their own.

Sts. Louis and Zélie Martin made prayer, together with their family, a priority, and their daughters became their own legion of saints. Some saints prayed the Rosary together; St. Gianna Molla and her husband, Pietro, encouraged a family devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. Even the Blessed Mother’s parents, Sts. Anne and Joachim, were frequently united in prayer for God’s gift of children, which gave us Jesus’ real and our own spiritual mother.

And, of course, there’s the Holy Family itself.

For my husband and I, prayer hasn’t always come easy. The first months of marriage were a test; neither of us had lived with someone else before, at least where we were constantly in each other’s way, including in how we practiced our faith. Once we settled into a routine, something changed — someone got a new job; someone had a medical emergency; we moved into an endless string of new apartments; family crises; disruptions in both our lives and in our spirituality.

And then came infertility, one of the most difficult crosses a couple can bear, and it’s borne together. The hopes and dreams we once had of a big family, tons of kids, home- schooling in blissful chaos, near family and friends, seemed to ebb away further with each passing year, challenging our faith and our marriage.

But when Pope Leo XIV and the great saints speak of prayer, they don’t speak of it just in good times. Prayer is what holds you through the rough times. Sometimes, honestly, it’s all that holds you through, especially when God’s timeline — the only one that matters — isn’t one that our human minds can easily wrap around.

Prayer brought us to a faithful doctor, who, in turn, prayed with and for us for nearly eight years as we battled to become a family. There were countless novenas — so many, at one point, to Mary, Undoer of Knots, that we bought a statue of her for our home.

And now, we pray as a family — even if that means that sometimes someone’s licking the breviary during Liturgy of the Hours (it’s happened), or a child must be rolled out from under the bed, clutching a gigantic stuffed animal, to complete the bedtime prayer routine.

Great saints pray. And we need to pray to become them … and to raise them.

So how do you pray in marriage? For us, it’s looked different almost every day of the last 15 years. We prefer to pray the Rosary individually, but coming together over meals and twice a day to pray as a family seems to get things started (and ended) the right way. No matter how crazy the day has been (or, as it is often with little kids), how little sleep anyone got at night, there’s always prayer; there’s always God to hold on to. We also try to look for God in the small places: in the kitchen, in the garden, in the gathering.

Truthfully, so much of married prayer is finding what works, just like Pope Leo XIV said. It may be a daily Rosary or a series of novenas. It could be a prayer board. And to some extent, it may be important to just set aside the time to pray, without phones, without a blaring television, or outside interference,taking a moment to say thanks to God in whatever quiet moment happens to come along.

There’s also plenty of failure. We’re human. We struggle with what God has in store for us. And great saints struggle, too. Sts. Louis and Zélie lost children, both before and after birth. St. Monica begged God, in her prayers, to save her husband and son. Blessed Luigi and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi and the Polish Ulma family faced down certain martyrdom in World War II, and I cannot imagine that, even with the love of Christ so evident in their lives, that they didn’t, sometimes, have doubts.

My marriage difficulties have been somewhat less dramatic than desperately clinging to hope that my son can turn from debauchery to one of the Church’s greatest thinkers, or hiding my friends from the Nazis, but there are moments that God seems far away in every marriage. They’re often in hospital waiting rooms, or in a pew in the back of an empty church, or alone, in the dark, struggling to understand an unkind word or a careless action.

The good news is, though, that when prayer is a habit, it’s easy to turn to in those moments of desperation. When you practice your faith in the good times, it becomes almost second nature to seek it out in the difficult ones.

Fifteen years later, unlike those glasses, that faith lasts.

Though, to be fair, I also recommend Macy’s drinking glasses.