Spiritual Direction with Couples (continued)

How, then, can spiritual companions hold a sacred space where covenant partners may feel safe and brave enough to honor their covenant relationship in Spiritual Direction? First, directors can remind couples of the promise from Matthew 18:19-20 that if two discern about anything in prayer, then that discernment will be blessed by our heavenly Divine Lover. For where two or three are gathered in Christ’s name, the Triune G-d is there among them, helping them discern. Claiming this promise, covenant partners can trust that they are not alone in their covenant relationship, listening for the third voice of Divine Wisdom during spiritual direction.

Second, directors can invite the covenantal three-some to discern an honest definition to their covenantal relationship and begin to understanding the larger spiritual development of their marriage, not just the individual spiritual development of each covenant partner. (Giblin 1995, 545) With the care of a Spiritual Director, couples may begin to understand the rhythms of their covenant relationship, not unlike the cyclical nature of The Name’s relationship with all of us found throughout scripture.

Third, directors can help covenant spouses to identify and articulate where spirituality and sexuality intersect within their marriage. “Something like the laddered strands of the DNA double helix, sexuality and spirituality are intimately tied together. We cannot have one without the other” (Lommasson 2005, 112). When a covenantal relationship is understood to be a holy three-some, what may be miraculously revealed within their marriage when covenant partners begin to understand that “[s]exuality is never just about sex, and spirituality is never just about spirit?” (Lommasson 2005, 112)

Lastly, directors can prompt covenant partners to listen to their marriage, hearing the Holy Spirit reveal to them those places where and when their marriage has been, or is called to be, a sacrament of G-d’s covenant. With the marriage as the director and the directee, the three-some of their covenant relationship may begin to discern the belovedness, giftedness, and purpose of the relationship. 

Spiritual Companionship with covenant partners needs its own tending and stewardship. As a sacrament of G-d’s covenantal relationship with all of us, covenantal partnerships, like marriage, can be the container for the Holy Spirit to live, move, and have being in the already/not yet nature of the Kingdom of G-d. By honoring the sacred space needed by couples to listen and communicate with the Holy Spirit, Spiritual Directors may highlight for spouses that their marriage is indeed a ministry of forgiveness and reconciliation. As an embodied, living testament of Jesus’s first miracle at the wedding in Cana, covenantal marriage can transform the waters of the couple’s individual lives into their marriage of gospel wine. (ANZPB 1997, 787)

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

Bibliographical Resources and 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.