A Fruitful Marriage

Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine 

In the recesses of your home;

Your children like olive plants

Around your table.

I remember the day I felt distinctly called to marry my husband. I was sitting in Eucharistic Adoration on an early November evening and this verse deeply spoke to me. I wanted to be that wife. I wanted a table with children. I wanted a fruitful marriage and oneness with this particular man. These were my dreams.

After a long period of singleness, and even with fruitful friendships, it became very clear that I needed and desired a partner in life and a companion on the journey. Man and woman, just like the first reading declares.

I love the psalm in this Sunday’s mass readings because it paints the picture of marriage’s beauty: the fruitfulness, the blessedness, the joy of family and home life, the richness of a life lived in the Lord, and the hope of seeing your children’s children. Most people when they are called to marriage want these things. They are often our deep hopes when we enter into married life, in addition to becoming “one” with a lifelong spouse.

Today marks my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary and how fitting that these readings resonate so much with the gift and beauty of a fruitful marriage. My parents are a living example of a marriage that has weathered storms and challenges, but was fruitful with children, love, blessings, and an overall good life. I think you only get those things with commitment, love, and faithfulness day in and day out.

Most of us can say the same for other couples we know who have celebrated anniversaries for so many years. They are living reflections of daily faithfulness, the “one flesh” that Jesus speaks to, and God’s goodness, fruitfulness, and bountiful love.

May we all live up to these models of marriage that the Lord has given us, and may we all live to see these blessings of marriage that are promised.