Spiritual Direction with Couples is Unique

Then The Name said, “Here is My eternal covenant with you, my sacred bond, between Me and you - I will be your G-d and you will be my beloved. As for your eternal covenant with me, your sacred bond, between you and Me - you will be my beloved and I will be your G-d. From this point forward, we will have a sign to remind us of this promise and it will be inherited by all. I will be G-d to all of you and all of you will be my beloved ones. This is our covenant, which we shall keep.” (from Genesis 17)

Spiritual Direction with couples is not the same as group spiritual guidance and needs to be understood as something more than just individual spiritual direction with two people present.  Through Spiritual Direction with couples, we're able to honor the sacred space where covenant partners may explore and come to understand their union as something more than just two individuals contractually coming together. As an embodied reality of two persons being fully one through G-d’s miraculous love, covenant partnerships can be a sacrament of G-d’s covenantal promises and have a spiritual journey of their own. 

Covenant Theology is our lens for interpreting who G-d is, who we are, and how we are to be in relationship with G-d. It is also a way for us to understand our relationships with each other, especially our most intimate and committed relationships. Marriage is a way of living into a covenantal theological perspective, "a vehicle of holy living.” (Task Force on the Study of Marriage 2015, 17) Aided by G-d and a community of faith, our covenant beloved-ness reveals that “Eternal Love never fails.” (ANZPB 1997, 785). The covenantal commitment made by spouses is a sign of their promise to draw ever closer to each other as they draw closer to G-d, seeking to know and be known ever more intimately and deeply. "[T]he metaphor of the Divine Lover who draws the beloved ever closer” is repeated throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, “[portraying] the human-divine relationship in the love language of the joyful intimate ‘knowing’ of covenanted spouses.” (Lommasson 2005, 112) 

“And I swear,” said The Name, “you will call Me your Spouse, never addressing me the same way you do any other relationship. I will make an eternal covenant with you, My beloved. I will marry you for ever; I will never leave you nor let you go. You will be My spouse in steadfast tenderness and loyal love, in righteousness, justice, and mercy. Our marriage will be honest and truthful. You will be My beloved spouse in faithfulness, and you will know me intimately as The Eternal Holy One, your Divine Lover.” (from Hosea 2) 

Marriage, at least Christian marriage in the Church, is interpreted as a covenantal relationship that serves as an outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual covenant that we have with our Divine Lover. Thus, as a sacramental expression of our covenantal spiritual relationship with G-d, marriage serves as a symbol of how we are called to be in loving relationship with one another based on how we are called to be in relationship with G-d and vice versa. The way our Divine Lover embodies this covenant as a triune G-d and lives it out through Christ and the church serves as “a model which earthy marriage should emulate in order to be holy.” (Task Force on the Study of Marriage 2015, 19) 

To be holy is to be set apart as something not like any other. It is to be established and constant, even in the midst of chaotic change. Covenantal marriage, then, is set apart from other relationships as a container for our embodied and lived out expression of this covenantal understanding of relating to G-d and each other. Just as the chalice is a container set apart from other cups for the Eucharistic wine, so Christian marriage helps us live into and understand the mystery of our faith. The chalice doesn’t make the wine into the Eucharistic blood of Christ, that is the work of the Holy Spirit though the mystery of the epiclesis. In the same way, marriage itself doesn’t make the relationship between spouses into a sacramental covenant relationship; that, too, is the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit. Much like the Eucharistic Prayer, though, the Blessing of the Marriage, within the wedding ceremony in the Book of Common Prayer, requests that the power of the Holy Spirit dedicate the covenant relationship for a divine purpose, to be devoted and set apart, to be consecrated. (BCP 1979, 430) 

However, unlike the epiclesis of the Eucharist prayer, the wedding prayer of consecration is not repeated on a regular basis. Like the cross, it is a once and forever blessing. So, if “[t]he understanding...(remains) that the bond and covenant of marriage is enacted by the couple themselves, and the function of the church is to solemnize the event,” then the on-going work of nurturing and stewarding the covenant relationship, the on-going work of sanctifying (or setting apart) the marriage, then, is the responsibility of the couple in cooperation with the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the “...ministers of the rite are the couple themselves.” (Task Force on the Study of Marriage 2015, 16) 

Fortunately, covenantal partners do not have to do this work alone. Like the Eucharist prayer, Spiritual Direction with married couples “can become a tacit enactment of the epiclesis,” (Grant 2017, 18) inviting the divine presence (known in the Hebrew as the Shekinah) of The Eternal Holy One to empower and encourage a covenantal three-some within Christian marriage, shared by both spouses and the Third Person of our Triune G-d. The Shekinah of the Divine Lover experienced in Spiritual Direction highlights for the earthly spouses the sometimes unrecognized daily presence of the Holy Spirit within covenantal marriage. Thus eucharistic in nature, spiritual companionship with couples nourishes the covenant of marriage, “supplying the essential and ineffable nutrients” (Grant 2017, 20) needed for each spouse, as well as “for purposes beyond the individual life of” each covenant partner. (Grant 2017, 20) Ultimately, “the nourishment enjoyed by the (couple) is not solely for (them) but vicariously for everyone in (their) sphere of influence.” (Grant 2017, 20)

Through Spiritual Direction with couples, the covenant relationship contained within the marriage “becomes the (directee and the) director, inviting partners into new areas of growth, healing, and wholeness.” (Giblin 2005, 50) A Spiritual Director, then, need only hold sacred space to witness and encourage “[p]artners ...to listen to (the Advocate) speaking through their marriage.” (Giblin 2005, 54) As a covenantal three- some, spouses begin to “raise their awareness of (the Holy Spirit’s) presence in and through each other, to view their shared experiences, communications, conflicts, decision making, even (their everyday) lives together as grounded in (The Divine Lover’s covenantal) love.” (Giblin 2005, 55)

- excerpted and adapted from Couples Spiritual Companionship by Mary-Carolyn M. Allport, December 6, 2021.

Bibliographical Resources & References

1. Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia. A New Zealand Prayer Book: He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa. San Fransico: HarperCollins, 1997.

2. Episcopal Church. The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church: Together with the Psalter or Psalms of David According to the Use of the Episcopal Church. New York: Seabury Press, 1979.

3. Episcopal Church. Report from the Marriage Task Force of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. https://extranet.generalconvention.org/staff/files/ download/12485.pdf, 2015.

4. Giblin, Paul. "Spiritual Direction in Couples." Presence 11, no. 04 (December 2005): 50-56.

5. Giblin, Paul. “Marital Development: Psychological and Spiritual Dimensions.” In Handbook for Spirituality for Ministers, edited by Robert J. Wicks, 545-568. New York: Paulist, 1995. ISBN: 0-8091-3521-3.

6. Grant, Carl. “Come Holy Spirit: Spiritual Direction and the Eucharistic Epiclesis.” Presence 23, no. 03 (September 2017): 18-21. 

7. Lommasson, Sandra. 2005. "Tending the Sacred Fire: Sexuality and Spiritual Direction." In Sacred is the Call: Formation and Transformation in Spiritual Direction Programs, edited by Suzanne M. Buckley, 110-121. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Co.