You've heard the concept that the only person that you can change is yourself. The Lenten season is a perfect time or kairos for making changes in who you are. Here is a Lenten Reflection for couples.

Use the Lenten Season for Renewing Your Marriage

The Lenten season is a good time to get your lives in order. Having a time of reconciliation and redemption is important to every relationship. Everyone needs some time of growth in self-knowledge.

You can use this season of waiting and change to assess your personal life and to reach out to your spouse.

Kairos is Greek word for "a decisive point in time" and "an opportune moment". The Lenten season can be that moment for a married couple.

Lent is often described as a wilderness. Lent can be a place to pick up the pieces of your lives. Lent is an opportunity to go into your own desert for 40 days. Share what is in your heart with your spouse.

• Consider providing a home environment that is conducive to silence and meditation.
• Think about what you hunger for in your marriage.
• Reflect on the feelings of joy and sorrows, misunderstandings, loss, achievements, illness, failure, love, acceptance, grief, dreams, etc. that are part of you.
• Use this time in the wilderness of Lent to slow down and simplify your life and meals.

 

Lenten Traditions

Shrove Tuesday meal customs, such as doughnuts in Germany and pancakes in England, were introduced to use up the grease in the house.
The French lead an ox through the street on the way to be barbequed.

Mardi Gras started as a time for carnivals in the Middle Ages. The Italians would wear masks and enact folk comedies. The Germans celebrated with beer, pretzels, and huge sausages.

You don't have to slaughter an ox, but having waffles or pancakes on Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras) can signify your openness as a couple to a period of reflection and possible change.

"Marriage is a commitment to share thoughts, feelings, inner experiences. This may require as much generosity and faith as the sharing of bed and food and friends." -- Delores Leckey

"A good marriage is not one in which all differences and distinctions collapse, but one in which each partner protects and guards the other's solitude. -- Rainer Maria Rilke

 

Lenten Dialogue Questions