Do you pray with your spouse? Why is this not common?

[Lifeisawesome]

Based on work my wife and I have done with marriage retreats etc, we have found that most Catholics don’t pray with their spouses even when they are both committed to their faith. Why is this? I have my theories - what is your perspective?

 

[mamacita]

My husband and I certainly should pray more together, but we do pray the Rosary as a family every night together.

 

[Trishie]

Not with him as he became atheist after he became ill, so I can only pray for him. Please offer this prayer with me for him.

Prayer for unbelieving Spouse
Dear Father, through the love and merit of Jesus and Mary, I offer You all my husband’s good deeds, sacrifices and trials, in prayer for his salvation, fulfilment, happiness and peace. Foster him as Your own child, for if he truly knew You, he would be a loving, obedient son.

I offer every frustration and disappointment, all sadness and suffering of his life, together with his pleasures, satisfactions, and achievements. I offer him to You, united in that terrible hour that Jesus cried out to You, “My God, my God, why have You abandoned me?” Thus may his sufferings be powerful prayer for souls. In Your mercy, please unite him with the Mystical Body so that even without his knowledge his life is a living prayer pleasing in Your sight.

If in any way, I fail to convey Your love to him, or I do not enrich his life with warm gifts of my nature, please forgive me and heal him. Guide me to give him the love, joy and goodness that you have united us to share, and lead him to love me freely and honestly.

Please forgive and overcome his cynicism and doubt. Open him to Your Spirit. Let him experience Your love in his life, so that he enters into sacramental faith and dedicated Christian ministry. Grant him resurrection with Your Son Jesus.

Thank you.

 

[Lifeisawesome]

My husband and I certainly should pray more together, but we do pray the Rosary as a family every night together.

Mamacita - that is awesome that you pray the Rosary as a family together. Are you comfortable sharing why you don’t pray more with your husband or why you think that this is rare?

 

[maslibertad]

Not married yet, but we do pray together at least once a week. Of course I wish that we prayed every single day but our schedules are very crazy as we are both college students I think conflicting and busy schedules may also be a problem for married people.

However, when we do pray together, it gives us so many graces! I think it is very important that married couples do pray together as much as they possible can since i am sure they got through much more difficult times than we do.

 

[Lifeisawesome]

Not married yet, but we do pray together at least once a week. Of course I wish that we prayed every single day but our schedules are very crazy as we are both college students I think conflicting and busy schedules may also be a problem for married people.

However, when we do pray together, it gives us so many graces! I think it is very important that married couples do pray together as much as they possible can since i am sure they got through much more difficult times than we do.

This is awesome - my wife and I began our courting relationship by committing to pray with one another daily (often via webcam and phone) - don’t ever let this commitment fade - it will be the bedrock of powerful intimacy in your marriage.

 

[leonie]

One thing we do at meals is add some other prayers in addition to grace. So, I would count that as daily prayer.

We also pray together with members of our home church and a family rosary once a week.

 

[gardenswithkids]

Based on work my wife and I have done with marriage retreats etc, we have found that most Catholics don’t pray with their spouses even when they are both committed to their faith. Why is this? I have my theories - what is your perspective?

I can’t answer your poll because the choices jump from “rarely” to “once daily”. Look at the choices you offer in the poll: “rare”, “daily” “twice daily” and “more than twice daily.” Maybe you think it’s “not common” for spouses to pray together because you hold up high standards and think anything less than daily is “rare.” And why don’t you count praying together at meals as “praying with your spouse”? It’s a start and can include more devotions beyond the meal prayer.

Aside from meals, we often pray together, but it doesn’t happen every day.

Also, prayers don’t always have to take on a very formal and rote manner, like a rosary. Prayer with a spouse can happen when we’re concerned with a family matter and we take it to God, simply speaking from our hearts. Sometimes I think we Catholics get so focussed on the “do’s and don’ts” of our formal prayers that we forget prayer in about developing a relationship with God. Some Catholic couples may get discouraged and stop bother trying because they can’t pray the way they think they “should.”

Couples who don’t pray a daily rosary together can still have a prayerful relationship. Start simple. “God please help my spouse ____ at work. Please help us raise these children well. Amen.” Maybe add an Our Father or Hail Mary to conclude. If lengthy prayer together as a couple happens daily, great. If shorter prayers only happen only once in a while, that’s a start–and depending on your season in life it may enough.

Lent approaches. That’s a good time to re-assess our prayer lives, and adding more prayer together as a couple is something that many of us might consider. But be realistic. Don’t expect to have the prayer life of a monk or cloistered nun if God called you to marriage and family.

 

[Lifeisawesome]

I can’t answer your poll because the choices jump from “rarely” to “once daily”. Look at the choices you offer in the poll: “rare”, “daily” “twice daily” and “more than twice daily.” Maybe you think it’s “not common” for spouses to pray together because you hold up high standards and think anything less than daily is “rare.” And why don’t you count praying together at meals as “praying with your spouse”? It’s a start and can include more devotions beyond the meal prayer.

Thanks for your feedback and my apologies - it seems I hit a nerve here. How would you rebuild the poll in a way that better reflects what you think would be appropriate?

A few important notes: Polls never perfectly reflect a complete spectrum of answers - they only capture a specific perspective someone is looking to study. My interested is related to intimacy in prayer between couples. Thus, I don’t think anything less than daily is necessarily “rare.” It merely reflects that we have found that if couples don’t pray together at least once daily (that is they don’t have a regular habit of prayer together) that they pray very infrequently (not even once a week.) This may not be true with you and many others - it is true with the majority we have encountered. Of course I do count praying at meals as “prayer.” However, what I am getting at with the poll is the level of intimacy in prayer (usually prayers over meals are not what I would call intimate between couples - although it can be - it usually isn’t in my experience).

Make sense?

 

[mamacita]

Mamacita - that is awesome that you pray the Rosary as a family together. Are you comfortable sharing why you don’t pray more with your husband or why you think that this is rare?

**I am not sure why this is rare. I don’t recall saying that, or are you just asking my opinion on it?

Why don’t my husband and I pray more together? Good question. When he was working (he’s unemployed now) he was up and out the door in the morning before I was awake. As far as night/evenings go, he works 3 night a week and usually I am in bed before he gets home. The other 4 nights a week we should work on more… **

 

[Lifeisawesome]

**I am not sure why this is rare. I don’t recall saying that, or are you just asking my opinion on it?

Why don’t my husband and I pray more together? Good question. When he was working (he’s unemployed now) he was up and out the door in the morning before I was awake. As far as night/evenings go, he works 3 night a week and usually I am in bed before he gets home. The other 4 nights a week we should work on more… **

Just asking your opinion - not making an assumption about your marriage…

 

[Pug]

Based on work my wife and I have done with marriage retreats etc, we have found that most Catholics don’t pray with their spouses even when they are both committed to their faith. Why is this? I have my theories - what is your perspective?

Okay, I’ll shoot myself in the foot here. Maybe couples would pray together more if the man would just do it. Just say, Let’s pray X together now. (Pug - immediately ducks behind a large object in terror). I say that since you seem to be asking about couples, and not families (children with moms at supermarket, etc.).

For myself, no one in the two generations immediately above me role modeled praying as a family behavior (except meals and church). So it is not something I learned to do. In fact, the way I learned was to go into my room, shut the door, and the Father who sees you in secret will reward you. That was the way to pray in the home that the generation once removed taught. Religion was decidedly not a family thing in my family. It was a private, quiet thing, something you were supposed to do by yourself, except maybe during Sunday school. (I’m a convert from mainline Protestant).

 

[pentecostbaby]

DH and I decided that for Lent this year we are going to say the Morning Offering together every day. I’m hoping this will be a start for us to pray together more often.
I agree - no one modeled it for me, either. We were deeply weirded out saying Grace together at first, and this after I grew up doing it! It was the example of other people our age who did it (mostly young adult Catholics) and took the time out to pray even in a restaurant. That’s a really powerful witness.

 

[LindaS]

Dh & I pray together regularly. We are both enrolled in the Brown Scapular, and the Sabbatine Priveledge requires that you pray the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin daily, so we do it together. We also add prayers for priests and the unborn as well as a Morning Offering. This is a very important part of our couple life. I think that it’s not so common because many people are uncomfortable praying in front of another person. Family prayer was never a part of my family life, and dh was not Catholic. So it was hard for us to do this, and we still don’t do extemporaneous pray as part of our prayer time.

Peace,
Linda

 

[kage_ar]

Another here where no poll answer fit. Not daily, not rarely - at a minimum weekly (we go to Adoration together once each week) and at other times during the week.

 

[dancergal]

I would definitely like to pray with my husband more, but it seems that our busy schedules prevent us from praying together as often as we could. His work schedule changes every few days, so sometimes he works the day shift, sometimes the swings shift, and sometimes he even works a graveyard shift. So sometimes it’s difficult for us to find a good time to sit down together to pray.

We do try to make time to pray as a family when we can, though. We have two young children, and we always say bedtime prayers when we put the kids to sleep at night. We also always say a quick prayer together before meals, and we make sure that we attend church together every week.

 

[jmcrae]

Based on work my wife and I have done with marriage retreats etc, we have found that most Catholics don’t pray with their spouses even when they are both committed to their faith. Why is this? I have my theories - what is your perspective?

I don’t pray with my husband because he doesn’t like to pray with me. I would do it in a heartbeat, if he wanted to. We discussed it shortly after we got married, and he said he didn’t want to pray with me. (I am not actually aware that he prays at all, but I can’t imagine going through life without praying, so I suppose he must do it at some time when I’m not home.)

 

[jmcrae]

Okay, I’ll shoot myself in the foot here. Maybe couples would pray together more if the man would just do it. Just say, Let’s pray X together now.

Well, I know I would!

For myself, no one in the two generations immediately above me role modeled praying as a family behavior (except meals and church). So it is not something I learned to do. In fact, the way I learned was to go into my room, shut the door, and the Father who sees you in secret will reward you. That was the way to pray in the home that the generation once removed taught. Religion was decidedly not a family thing in my family. It was a private, quiet thing, something you were supposed to do by yourself, except maybe during Sunday school. (I’m a convert from mainline Protestant).

My maternal grandparents prayed and read the Scriptures together after breakfast every day. They also had what I would consider the perfect marriage, and I wanted my husband and me to have that, too. But looking back on it, it was definitely Grandpa’s idea. He was the leader, with it, and he was the one who insisted on doing it, even when people were in a hurry to get somewhere.

The rest of my family followed the “private prayer” idea, just like yours - which ultimately seems to translate into “no prayer,” as far as I can tell.

 

[JustAnotherThou]

I read the title as “Do you pray for your spouse?..”

I replied to the poll At least 3 times a day!!!

I was then going to make a smart comment on how I tell my DH that I have to pray a lot for him and ask all of you to pray for him too

Then I took time to read the title and saw the WITH (I really need to learn to read titles instead of just glancing at them)

We do pray with each other at least 3 times a day, at each meal, sometimes more, rarely less.

 

[Pug]

My maternal grandparents prayed and read the Scriptures together after breakfast every day. They also had what I would consider the perfect marriage, and I wanted my husband and me to have that, too.

It sounds like you have been blessed by your family!

My private prayer grandparents really did seem to pray and read the scripture at night, in bed (separately, though). Perhaps not visible, unless, like me, you tended to sneak into their bedroom to play in the closet during the day. I would look at grandpa’s fascinating shoes, for one, but I would also look at the meditation books that grandma kept by the bed. I’m sure I must have rearranged her bookmarks a few times. But by the next generation, it seemed to translate into not praying much, not that was perceptible to my eyes as a child.