Bringing Marriage Problems to Prayer

Hillary Ibarra shares how prayer helped to keep her marriage and family together. 

Waiting for the Sacrament of Reconciliation last year, I watched a wedding party pose for photos in the church. The frustrated photographer practiced patience as the excited bride arranged pictures with every distant relative. I watched the spectacle from the confession line, wanting quiet to gather my thoughts for another difficult confession in a year full of confessions, and I thought, “Congratulations, bride, but it gets a lot more challenging from here.” 

Marriage Involves Suffering 

For day 21 of the Consecration to St. Joseph, page 53, author Donald H. Calloway, MIC shares Venerable Fulton J. Sheen’s words on the three rings of marriage: the engagement ring, the wedding ring, and the suffering. When you make your vows on your wedding day, you can’t imagine what “for worse” or “in sickness” mean. If you could, you might say to your beloved, “Can I reflect on this vocation for a moment?” You don’t think that the “worse” can last for months or years or how sickness can be physical, mental, spiritual, emotional or all at once.  

Marriage is not perpetual Mardi Gras. It resembles the Lenten journey more, full of prayer and sacrifice and charity, that supernatural love. It is a profound sacrament that requires the support of the other sacraments, especially the Eucharist and Reconciliation. 

Christ Walks Beside You in the Suffering 

Just before Lent last year, my husband’s and my marital bonds became shredded and frayed like a worn cable that supports a once brilliant but now dangerously heavy chandelier. The chandelier that previously illuminated our lives with peace, joy, security, and unity darkened and swayed and threatened to crush us. As we pulled away from each other to escape the wreckage, Jesus held our hands, becoming our bond.  

Without Jesus’ presence in our marriage, we may not have made it beyond 23 years. Jesus led us into the desert last Lent, guiding us forward even when my husband and I failed to hold each other’s hands on the journey. Faith carried us through when my husband and I lost faith in each other.  

Our desert persisted well beyond last Lent into this year, making us question when it would ever end. In moments when I despaired, my husband comforted and bolstered me. In moments when he became despondent and blind to our progress, I consoled and encouraged him. Love for God and our family impelled us forward when we wanted to give up, and the temptation to give up was strong. 

The Holy Spirit Guides and Comforts

If you are experiencing the desert of your marriage, your cross is devastatingly heavy. Keep praying with your spouse and family and for them. If your spouse is reluctant, pray for God to change their heart. Offer up your suffering for your spouse and children. Ask God to heal your wounds so your family can heal. 

The Holy Spirit, the Comforter, will revive your heart and renew your mind so you can nurture hope and cultivate peace. This is a multi-step process. Growing hope needs a daily, sometimes moment-by-moment commitment to acknowledging God’s loving, saving presence in your marriage and family. My husband, children, and I prayed together as we have never prayed before, and I realized that Venerable Patrick Peyton’s assertion that “The family that prays together stays together” is true. 

My many lonely prayers of “Help, God!” and “Mercy, Jesus!” and pleas to Mama Mary also brought relief and consolation. When I was exhausted, angry, and discouraged and did not remotely feel like praying, I still prayed.  

I have just completed a novena to Venerable Patrick Peyton for the healing of our marriage and family, and a powerful prayer my husband found is St. John Paul II’s prayer for marriage and family. I also wrote my own marriage prayer, inspired in part by others’ words: 

If your marriage and family are experiencing the desert this Lent, I pray that you will find courage in Christ and comfort in the Holy Spirit through prayer. May your peace, joy, love, and unity be restored, renewed, and strengthened.  

Venerable Patrick Peyton, pray for our families! 

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Copyright 2025 Hillary Ibarra
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