to do nothing more for his father or mother

“For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and ‘Whoever curses father or mother shall die.’ Yet you say, ‘If someone says to father or mother, “Any support you might have had from me is qorban”’ (meaning, dedicated to God), you allow him to do nothing more for his father or mother. You nullify the word of God in favor of your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many such things.” (MK 7: 10-13)

Being very religious doesn’t mean that that person is close to God. It only means that they know how to practice religion. The same could happen with married couples. I remember one husband who shared with me after the Program that he always wanted to have a very good marriage and family, close to God and he really took care of the family: 

Today, the day after participating in the I + YOU = WE Program, I realized a common “lie” which had a great impact on my relationship with my wife. Namely, I always wanted my marriage to be good and the best. There is a lot of talk about it in churches – that marriages should be good and we should pray for “good marriages”. And I wanted it too. Making my marriage good and even perfect was my # 1 goal in my life. So everything looked ok. A moment ago I realized, however, that making sure that the marriage was well caused a lot of damage and pain in my marriage. I thought a lot and made a lot of effort to make my marriage and family good and happy: I worked reliably, built a house, cared for my husband’s best roles and worked hard at all of the things that I thought would make me a good husband. I did a lot to be a good husband and father. However, despite this, I felt that my wife did not understand my efforts, and I knew that she had other expectations (which implementation did not lead to my idea of ​​a good marriage). It has enlightened me now: my goal is not a beautiful marriage but love for my wife. I am to love my wife and not think about whether our marriage is good or not. A good marriage is just a resultant love for a wife. Now I see that the name of the program also suggests this. We do not take direct action on the result, i.e. WE! We only take action on ME and WE are only the result of adding. You want a bigger WE – give more you 🙂 It turned out that for me the image of a perfect marriage had a similarly bad impact (and maybe even a bigger one) than the image of a perfect wife. Perhaps the stereotype of a good marriage not only misled me?

“Incline my heart, O God, to your decrees; and favor me with your law.” (Gospel Acclamation)