The Sacrament of Marriage puts us face to face with the profound mystery of Love. Today would have been my 22^nd wedding anniversary. Yes, I’m divorced. It’s a sad thing but it was a necessary thing. The purpose of this post is not dive into the details of all of that. Regardless of the status of our marriages we are always guardians for the souls of our beloveds.

I’m hardly unique in saying that one of the gravest attacks of evil has been its assault on our marriages and families. Social definitions and norms of marriage have done an insidious yet surgically precise job of extricating God.

I’m sure we can agree that without our Lord at the heart and center of all we do, things fall apart. Chaos is always beckoning us to take glimpse around the next corner of appealing trends. There’s always an idol of comfort, pleasure, or selfish entitlement on the greener grasses of our neighbors’ white picketed fenced habitats. There’s something out there that’s bound to make us happy and fill our existential longings. Well… “Yes,” there is, and while it may not lead us to the troves of Pinocchio’s Pleasure Island…

This SOMETHING will quench our thirst like a deer longing for running streams (Psalm 41)… streams of Living Water (John 4-42) and everlasting Joy. And Yes, Joy even here and now. With pure hearts and our spirits washed in the Blood of the Lamb this is what we have been made for. Our inheritance is everlasting Life in the Light and fullness of God’s Perfect Unconditional Love.

When I got divorced I knew I needed to seek the Mercy of our Lord. In preparation for making a confession I wrote a litany of my marriage sins. I’m sharing this with you today because in any of our relationships whether they be marital, romantic, or platonic these dynamics of sinful tendencies are present in all of us. I found great peace this morning in my prayer time slowly praying this litany and thanking God for the gifts of my marriage and most importantly for the Gift of His Mercy which is Love that has given me new life, and the graces I need to keep imperfectly trying to be free of these patterns of sins.

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Lord have mercy.
Christ have mercy.
Lord have mercy.
Christ hear me.
Christ graciously hear me.
God the Father of Heaven, have mercy on me.
God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy on me.
God the Holy Spirit, have mercy on me.
Holy Trinity, One God, have mercy on me.

For my failures to respect my wife, have mercy on me… (after each phrase repeat, “have mercy on me)

For all the times I have judged her,

For all the times I have made her feel alienated,

For all the times I have been cold hearted,

For all the times I have failed to listen,

For all the times I have been closed to encountering her sacredness,

For all the ways and times I forget she is your Precious Creation loved Perfectly, Fiercely, and Passionately by You,

For all the times my words have caused her to withdraw,

For all the times I have attacked with harsh words with an intent to hurt,

For all the ways I have sought to control her or bend a situation to my will,

For all the times I have made her feel unloved,

For all the times I have not been open to encountering her ideas and viewpoints,

For all the times I have dismissed her with self-righteous thoughts,

For all the times I have failed to be a guardian of her soul and honor our marriage,

For all the times I have intended harm in the silence of my seething frustration and hurt,

For my haughty attitudes of her family,

For all the times and ways I have judged her faith,

For all the times I have second guessed her intentions,

For all the ways and time I have been willful,

For the times I have been a bad steward of our financial resources,

For all the ways and times I made her feel coerced into doing things,  

For the times my failure to pace with her needs and modes of communicating made her feel like she was being railroaded,

For all of my selfish acts,

For all of my hurtful words,

For all of my sexual sins of seeking sexual gratification against her interest or will, for lust in and out of marriage, and for the many times I treated our sexual union as self-centered masturbation,

For my emotional infidelities,

For my failures to finding more ways of asserting and expressing my needs,

For all my failures to be more open to allowing Jesus’s Sacred Imagination, wisdom and Love to transform the dead places in my marriage,

For all the times I failed to trust,

For all the times I failed to be an encourager,

For all the times my anger in any of its visible and hidden forms created any kind of spiritual injuries,

For all the times and ways I have been dishonest,

For all the times and ways I have rationalized my indifference,

For all the times and ways I have been insensitive, uncaring, and disinterested,

For all the times and ways Lord I have failed to be a tabernacle of your Light, Love, Joy, Healing, and Hope,

For all the times I have been disingenuous,

For all the times I have spoken to others in ways that have been slanderous,

For all the times my pride and arrogance have caused hurt and pain,

For all the times I failed to work with her to be a good parenting team,

For all hidden things unforgiven in my heart and spirit,

Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, spare me, O Lord.
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, graciously hear me, O Lord.
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on me.

Please Lord may the sacramental Graces of this confession grant an outpouring of your Blood and Mercy not just on me but upon my wife and my whole family. AMEN