Keep the covenant.

What the Covenant is

St Paul writes of marriage: “This is a great sacrament; but I speak in Christ and in the church” (Ephesians 5:32, Douay-Rheims). The Church is a bride and a mother, and a Christian marriage is a living sign of Christ’s faithful love for her. So a wife is called to image the Church in her home: a faithful bride, a mother who gives life room, a keeper of the lamp, as Our Lady was in Nazareth.

The Covenant is a small daily companion for that calling. It does not replace the words you said on your wedding day; it helps you keep them, one ordinary day at a time. For husbands, our brother house 1765 Sanctum makes formation from the man’s side.

How to use it

1. Every day: the Covenant gives you one small act for your husband, drawn from this week’s part of the promise. Mark it when it is done. Your run of days follows one rule: consecutive kept days, and one missed day ends the run. If you kept yesterday’s act and forgot to mark it, you may log yesterday.
2. Every Sunday: the Sunday examen asks six questions, one for each part of the promise. Mark each held, strained, or fell short, and write one resolution. Your own part only: his is between him and God.
3. Every month, on your wedding day: the renewal opens for three days either side. Light a candle, take his hands, pray Tobias and Sara’s prayer together, and renew your promise in your own words. It is a private devotion, not a rite: your marriage bond does not lapse.
4. After ninety days, and every twelve weeks after that: a short review shows what held and what strained, and asks you for one change.
5. In a hard season: turn on the hard season. The daily act becomes a minimum you can keep, with a prayer for the season, private notes, and where to find help.

The six parts of the promise

These are 1765 Regina’s reflections on what a Catholic marriage asks, in our own words; each comes with a verse of Scripture from the Douay-Rheims and the paragraphs of the Catechism behind it.

• Faithful. Faithful in body, heart and attention: what you gave him on your wedding day is kept for him.
• For life. For life, through every year: chosen again on ordinary days.
• Tender. Tender in word and touch: the first gentleness goes to him.
• Praying together. Two gathered in His name: the marriage held up to God.
• Honouring. Honour that goes first: each of you before the other in respect.
• Open to life. Open to the life God gives: children, and, where God has not given them, the fruitfulness of charity, hospitality and sacrifice.

For every state of life

If you are widowed, the Covenant becomes a place to remember your husband: a daily prayer for his soul, the traditional prayer for the dead in English and Latin, and his days kept with you. If you are married but living apart, it keeps a daily prayer for him, the week’s reflection, and what the Church says about separation, without judgement. If you are not married, it keeps the covenant of your baptism, with a prayer for your vocation.

If you are afraid at home

Honour in marriage is never a duty to accept harm. If your husband hurts, threatens or controls you, or you are afraid for yourself or your children, that is not a hard season to endure; it is danger, and the Church does not ask you to stay in it (Code of Canon Law, can. 1153). In danger right now, call 911. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is free, confidential and open all hours: 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788 (checked on thehotline.org, October 10, 2026).

Your privacy

Everything you mark, the resolutions you write and any private notes stay in this browser on your device. Nothing is sent to us. Anyone who can open this browser can read them, so if someone checks your phone, do not write private notes here. The your data page explains how to clear it from this device, and where export and sync live.

Sources

• Scripture: the Douay-Rheims Bible (Challoner revision, public domain), from drbo.org: Tobias 8:4-5 and 8:7-10 (with Tobias 6:11), Proverbs 31:11-12, Matthew 19:6, 1 Corinthians 13:4-5, Matthew 18:20, Romans 12:10, Ephesians 5:21 and 5:31-32, Galatians 6:2, Luke 1:38, 2 Machabees 12:46, 1 Corinthians 7:39, Osee 2:19-20, Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 and 4:12, Canticle of Canticles 8:7, John 2:5.
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, given in our own words with links to the Vatican’s text: on baptism, 1267; on marriage, 1601, 1615-1617, 1629 and 1637, 1640-1642, 1644-1654, 1655-1658; on fidelity and fruitfulness, 2365-2368; on separation, 2383; on consecrated life, 916.
• Code of Canon Law, can. 1141 and can. 1153 (only death dissolves a ratified and consummated marriage; separation when a spouse is in danger) and can. 901 (a Mass may be offered for anyone, living or dead).
• St John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem (1988), 21 (spiritual motherhood) and 24 (in marriage the subjection is mutual).
• St Augustine, Confessions IX.9.19-22 and IX.13.37 (St Monica and her husband Patricius), tr. J. G. Pilkington (1887), at New Advent.
• The Memorare and the prayer for the dead: public-domain English from The Raccolta, translated by Ambrose St John (1910 edition), no. 196 and no. 410 (the prayer for the dead is said here for one soul).
• Prayers marked “composed for 1765 Regina” were written for this site and are labelled wherever they appear. No words of the wedding rite are quoted.

For your husband: 1765 Sanctum.