As we end our time blogging here on For Your Marriage, it seems coincidental that the topic we feel called to share is our Blessed Mother and the role she has in guiding us deeper into a relationship with her Son.

We were engaged on Good Friday of 2016, which also happened to fall on the traditional feast day of the Annunciation. It was so fitting that these two important days, where the two greatest “yes” responses of salvation history are found, was also the day that we both said yes to spending our lives trying to imitate Our Lord and His Mother. And it was most fitting that it was a Marian feast day, since Mary has been undeniably instrumental in helping us find our vocation and follow God’s will. Earlier on we consecrated our relationship to Mary, and soon after we got engaged, did the same with our engagement. Mary has been our constant guide and intercessor in being worthy of this vocation and as we celebrate this Advent season, we are reminded once more of the unique role she plays in helping us live out our marriage.

As we entered into this Advent season, we found ourselves drawn to reflect on the life and relationship of the Holy Family, and pray that we might become ever more like them. We have learned, over the past almost six months of marriage, that we have very far to go in our journey of sanctification. We have come to realize that we are, a lot of the time, much more weak and human than we once thought – we get impatient, selfish, or snippy more often than we’d like to admit. And sometimes the ideal of the Holy Family, a family that loves selflessly and sacrificially, seems inevitably out of our reach.

Yet, we are reminded that the reason the Holy Family is holy is because of Jesus Christ. It was His presence, His identity, and His merits that made the Holy Family who they were. And it was because Mary and Joseph were entirely fixed on Him and the Father’s will that they were able to live out the call God had asked of them. In this respect, we have much of the same call that Mary and Joseph did – to be utterly defined by our relationship to Jesus Christ and to allow His presence to transform our relationship with one another. During the celebration of His birth, Christ asks us to be receptive to His entering into our lives and hearts through His Incarnation and to let Him transform everything He finds there.

And so, this is our prayer this Advent season. To follow in the footsteps of Mary and Joseph, be totally receptive to Christ being born anew in our lives, and allow Him to transform our entire relationship so that it is focused on Him. We pray that Mary and Joseph might aid us always in this continual journey of conversion and might lead us ever closer to their Son.

We honestly can’t believe it has already been a year since we started blogging here and nearly six months since we were married! God has been so good to us and we are so grateful to have had the opportunity to share the great love and faithfulness that He has shown in our lives with all of you. Please continue to pray for our marriage, that through our love for one another, we might reflect Christ’s love for the Church.