A prayer for a happy marriage

IAbout this prayer

Scripture records a husband and wife praying together on their wedding night. In the Douay-Rheims, which translates the Latin Vulgate, Tobias’s first recorded words to his bride are a call to prayer: “Sara, arise, and let us pray to God today, and tomorrow, and the next day” (Tobias 8:4). “For we are the children of saints,” he says, “and we must not be joined together like heathens that know not God” (8:5). Then “they both arose, and prayed earnestly both together” (8:6). Modern Bibles, such as the New American Bible, call the book Tobit and word this chapter differently; the text above is the Douay.

Look at the shape of their prayer. It begins with praise, not requests: heaven, earth, sea and rivers are asked to bless God. It remembers where marriage came from, God giving Eve to Adam. It names what the marriage is for. And it ends with Sara’s line, the prayer most couples find themselves praying after enough years: “let us grow old both together in health.”

Two phrases need a word. Tobias calls his bride “my sister” as a word of kinship and tenderness: Sara was the daughter of Raguel, “a near kinsman of thy tribe” (Tobias 6:11), and the Canticle calls the bride “my sister, my spouse” (Canticle of Canticles 4:9, Douay-Rheims; Song of Songs in modern Bibles). And “not for fleshly lust” refuses a desire that only uses the other; it is not a verdict against married love. The Church teaches that the acts by which husband and wife are united are noble and honourable, and that their union serves both the good of the spouses and the gift of new life (CCC 2362–2363). Tobias speaks of marrying “for the love of posterity.” If God has not given you children, this prayer is still yours. The Catechism teaches that a marriage without children can be rich in meaning, human and Christian, and fruitful in charity, hospitality and sacrifice (CCC 1654).

St. Paul calls marriage “a great sacrament” because it speaks “in Christ and in the church” (Ephesians 5:32, Douay-Rheims), and before he speaks to wives or husbands he puts every Christian under one rule: “Being subject one to another, in the fear of Christ” (Ephesians 5:21). A couple who pray together, out loud and briefly, as Tobias and Sara did, are living that verse.

IIWhen to pray it

• On your wedding night, and on every anniversary.
• As an engaged couple, in the months before the wedding.
• At night together, once a week, before you sleep. Keep it short enough to survive a bad week.
• At the start of a hard season: a move, a new baby, an illness, a loss.
• If your marriage is not hard but dangerous, get safe first; call 911 in an emergency, or the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (or text START to 88788). The Church permits spouses to live apart when living together has become impossible (CCC 1649, 2383).