For the fifth year in a row, we are offering this Lent Challenge for Catholic Marriages! (We’ve been doing the Advent one for even longer!) Do one thing for your marriage each day of Lent.
We’ve really seen the power of connecting in small ways on a regular basis, and we also choose one thing to do together during Lent every year, so this challenge was inspired by both of those. For each day of Lent, we provide a challenge for you to complete. The challenges range from fun to spiritual and all of the things in between!
The complete challenge includes both a calendar of the challenges (this year includes March and April), as well as a guide that explains each challenge and gives suggestions on how to complete it. If you’ve done our challenges before, using just the calendar works just fine! If you’ve never done our Lent or Advent challenge (or it’s been awhile), we suggest purchasing at least the guide since that gives more information. The calendar and bundle that includes the calendar does also have a blank version of the calendar, so you can either use it as your Lenten plan or to switch up the challenges to better suit your schedule.
**This product is no longer available**
Personally, we choose to laminate the calendar with challenges and put it in our bathroom so we can see it every day. Then we refer to the guide when needed! Just figure out what works best for you. It really is meant to be a simple way to connect every day and to keep your marriage a priority during the most solemn time of the year.
If you’re looking for other ideas on what to do as a Catholic couple this year, check out our massive list here!
Regardless of what you choose, we just want to encourage you to lean in together, to grow closer to God and to each other. The sacrifices we make during this season have an eternal weight! And the more we focus on the pillars of Lent (prayer, fasting, and almsgiving) and what Jesus did for us on the cross, the greater celebration we will have at Easter. And the glory of the Resurrection should remind us of the end goal of marriage – to help get each other to heaven.
We are praying for all of you! Please pray for us.
Looking for the 2025 version of our Advent challenge? This year you can find it on our Substack!
We’ve really seen the beauty of doing small things for our marriage! Since Advent and Christmas are some of the busiest seasons of the year, we wanted a way to help couples make their marriage a priority during these times.
This is the sixth year we’ve offered an Advent challenge, and last year we even included Christmas challenges since it was the shortest Advent ever.
This year, we have multiple options so you can hopefully find what is best for you and your spouse! Regardless of what you choose to do for Advent, we hope and pray that you remember the following:
During Advent, we are preparing for Jesus’s coming at Christmas and when He comes again.
In marriage, we have the ultimate goal of getting each other to Heaven.
The little things in marriage really do make a big difference.
The original Advent challenge calendar and guide
As always, the Advent challenge includes both a calendar with a simple challenge each day, as well as a guide that gives you some ideas on how to complete each challenge. The challenges range from spiritual to fun to everything in between. Some are easy to do, and others will likely push you out of your comfort zone. Some are specific to feast days, because we love living liturgically!
If you’ve done our challenge a few times already, you likely are familiar with how to complete each challenge. That’s why we’re offering the calendar separately. If you’ve never done our Advent challenge, we recommend you buy at least the guide… but we really like having both the calendar and guide. We laminate our calendar and place in our bathroom so we can see it each day. And then if we need to, we refer to the guide for ideas.
If you choose an option with the calendar, we’ve also included a blank calendar (as always) for you to use instead if you’d like, to write in your own challenges. It’s also a great way to keep track of everything going on — feel free to use it for the challenge on the first day of Advent, “Make an Advent plan.”
If you are not interested in the daily challenges, check out A Journey Through Advent instead, which includes a weekly date night.
Whatever you do, we really do encourage you to focus on Advent together from December 1-24. We’ve realized that when we really focus on Advent and the meaning of the season, it makes Christmas even more special and celebratory. For years, we’ve loved celebrating the Christmas season with our family by doing at least one special thing each day of Christmas, and now we try to do the same for our marriage!
Our new Christmas Fun Couples Challenge
We decided to make our Christmas challenge separate from our Advent challenge this year. But the good news about that is you can use it every single year, since it’s not specific to one year. We provide 12 fun challenges to complete for each of the 12 days of Christmas, December 25 to January 5. We also provide 4 challenges that you can choose from for the feast of Epiphany on January 6. The Christmas challenges are more fun, because it’s a time to celebrate, and we want couples to have fun together!
Please note: In the U.S., Epiphany is usually transferred to Sunday and does not always fall on January 6. Regardless, we choose to still celebrate all 12 days of Christmas, as well as Epiphany on both January 6 and whichever Sunday it is transferred to!
We are praying for all of you always and hope these resources are a blessing. Please pray for us!
We share about both of our Advent products in this video!
Note: These are all digital downloads. A physical product will not be mailed to you. After checking out, you will receive an email with a link to download the file(s) Please do not share the file(s) with anyone. If you’d like to print multiple copies to share as gifts, please purchase multiple copies, or contact us for group licenses. Our group licenses offer discounted products. Thank you!
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After fifteen years of marriage, we have learned how important spousal prayer and living a sacramental life is to our vocation. But we have been reminded over and over again recently of the graces available to us. We have been encouraged more than ever to incorporate these great sacraments into our marriage and family life, through books, homilies, and talks. God is certainly trying to get our attention!
One of these recent talks we heard was geared towards families, where the speaker quoted St. John Paul II as saying that prayer and the sacraments of the Eucharist and Reconciliation are the “infallible and indispensable” means “to form the Christian spirituality of conjugal and familial life” (originally in the pope’s general audience on Wednesday, October 3, 1984, and then included in the book Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body).
Since marriage and the Eucharist have a special connection — in that both are a foretaste of heaven, and both involve sacrifice and communion — we’re going to focus on the Eucharist today.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “The Eucharist is the ‘source and summit of the Christian life.’” If you’re married, that means the Eucharist is also the “source and summit” of your married life. Many holy men confirm this, including St. John Paul II who says, “The Eucharist is the very source of Christian marriage” (Familiaris consortio, no. 57).
While reading Robert Cardinal Sarah’s book for married couples, Couples, Awaken Your Love!, I thought it was very interesting that the first two chapters are about the Eucharist. You can listen to all of the best marriage advice in the world, but if you are not centering your marriage on God, specifically in the Eucharist, you will not have the graces needed for your vocation. Cardinal Sarah tells couples that the Mass and Eucharistic Communion “is the source of their married life, and therefore, of their family life.” He continues: “There is no authentic married life without the Mass, without the Holy Eucharist” (page 17).
The Eucharist is a gift for marriage
Do we realize the great gift we have in the Eucharist? Do we believe that it truly is the source of our married and family life? Do we express our gratitude to the Lord for this great sacrament? (After all, the word “Eucharist” comes from the Greek word that means “thanksgiving”.) Have we turned to the Eucharist as the source of grace while navigating the trials of marriage?
I don’t mean to oversimplify the solution to all marriage problems, but I daresay we may be underestimating the graces of the Eucharist. Our pastor recently said in a homily that through the Eucharist, the impossible becomes second nature. So that means we can overcome any weakness, vice, or addiction. Through receiving Holy Communion, we become more like Christ. And when we become more like Him, we love as He loves.
When you’re at a crossroads in your marriage and family life, go to the Eucharist. Make the Eucharist the center of your life. The Church has recorded over 100 Eucharistic miracles that confirm the presence of Jesus — Body, Blood, Soul, & Divinity.
But how many more miracles of the heart have there been? How many marriages have been strengthened through the Eucharist? How could the Eucharist strengthen YOUR marriage?
How we can make the Eucharist the center of our marriage
As Catholics, we have an obligation to attend Mass every Sunday and on Holy Days of Obligation. But instead of seeing it as an obligation, let’s see it as a gift. We don’t have to receive Jesus in the Eucharist — we get to receive Him. It is truly a gift. He wanted a way to be with us always.
First Communion for one of our boys
Sunday Mass should be the climax of our week, as our family all receives our Lord in Holy Communion together. And that’s not our only chance to incorporate the Eucharist in our married and family life. We can attend daily Mass. We can spend time with Jesus in an adoration chapel or any Catholic Church.
I’ve always loved this quote from Venerable Fulton J. Sheen in his book Three to Get Married:
“Two glasses that are empty cannot fill up one another. There must be a fountain of water outside the glasses, in order that they may have communion with one another. It takes three to make love.”
(We have a print with this quote for you!) That fountain is the Eucharist. Build your marriage and family life around the Eucharist, and you will have sustenance for the journey.
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In the early years of our marriage, we (like most couples) were having our share of trials. I remember specifically when I was pregnant with our second son, and we had a lot of scares with the pregnancy. My pregnancy was already high-risk due to my incompetent cervix, but ultrasounds were showing some other concerns, and one of my doctors was concerned about our baby.
In addition, we had a strong-willed one-year old and many unexpected bills. Needless to say, we were overwhelmed. Logan felt immense pressure as the head of our family, so much so that it manifested in physical ways. One night, I found him passed out in the bathroom! (All checked out fine, but it was still scary!)
I started to ask St. Joseph to pray for Logan and to help him as a husband and father. I even prayed a novena to St. Joseph, with the intention that Logan would be less stressed and able to handle everything better. A few days after my novena, Logan suddenly shared with me how he was feeling, and I knew St. Joseph was intervening. He is such a great spiritual father!
We received this as a gift for Christmas one year but you can find prints here. It hangs in our bedroom and we love it!
St. Joseph is the Pillar of Families
St. Joseph has been so good to our family ever since! We have asked for his prayers with our marriage, jobs, finances, pregnancies…just to name a few. And in 2021 during the Year of St. Joseph, Logan finally started a new job…on the feast of St. Joseph! His intercession more recently has also been pretty amazing – like answering novena prayers before we even finished his novena! We love him.
We named our third son after St. Joseph, because we were so thankful for his intercession, and now we are convinced that everyone needs him as a patron!
Why your marriage needs St. Joseph
We all know that marriage is hard. Even though we all experience different trials as couples, we all could learn something from St. Joseph.
St. Joseph was responsible for protecting, guiding, and providing for the son of God and the mother of God (talk about pressure, right?). If you are struggling in your vocation as spouse and parent, ask St. Joseph for prayers.
St. Joseph is called “most chaste” because he was the most chaste human man who ever lived. When you’re struggling with chastity (because we’re all called to chastity, even in marriage), ask St. Joseph for prayers.
God spoke to St. Joseph while he was sleeping, and St. Joseph immediately did what God asked, even if it seemed crazy — like taking his wife and newborn son to a strange and possibly dangerous country. When you are struggling with discernment and don’t know what God is asking of you, ask St. Joseph for prayers.
Because of Scripture, we know the Holy Family was poor. St. Joseph trusted God in the midst of their poverty. When you are struggling financially, ask St. Joseph for prayers.
St. Joseph was the holiest husband and father who ever lived, and that’s why your marriage needs him. He wants us to be holy spouses and parents as well, and he understands how difficult it can be in our human nature.
How you can get to know St. Joseph
We could honestly talk about St. Joseph all day, but for now, we just want to leave you with 3 ways to get to know St. Joseph.
Ask him for prayers for your marriage and family every single day. We have no doubt that he will answer you! We also recommend his novena, which you can find at Pray More Novenas.
Consecrate yourself to him. We highly recommend the book Consecration to St. Joseph, which we first read together in 2020. There is so much to learn about St. Joseph from this book, and consecrating yourself to him is a surefire way of getting his help in our married vocation.
Celebrate his feast days. He has two! The major one is the Solemnity of St. Joseph, Husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary on March 19. There is also an optional memorial of St. Joseph the Worker on May 1. His solemnity is one of our favorite days to celebrate!
St. Joseph’s Altar
Speaking of his feast days, we love celebrating the Solemnity of St. Joseph on March 19. In New Orleans (where we live), there is a big tradition of building altars in honor of St. Joseph on this day. It’s a tradition that started in Italy, when there was a drought in Sicily and people begged St. Joseph for help. He answered their prayers and it rained! In thanksgiving, everyone set up tables of food to honor St. Joseph and then shared it with those in need. We continue that tradition today.
During the pandemic in 2020, there were no St. Joseph Altars at any churches since everything was shut down. So we decided to make our own altar at home!
You can see the details in our video above. Church altars resumed in 2021 so we didn’t do one at home, but then we realized we could still do both! So since then, we have continued to do this every year as a way to thank St. Joseph for all he has done for our family. We encourage you to bring St. Joseph into your marriage, because he truly is the most amazing saint that every marriage needs.
Over the years, we’ve offered Advent devotionals and Advent challenges for couples, and this year, we wanted to try something new!
A Journey Through Advent for Catholic Couples provides a weekly date night with suggested Scripture passages, a reflection, discussions questions, a prayer, and activities to do together. It’s like an Advent devotional and marriage challenge all in one!
Advent can be a beautiful season for married couples
Advent has always been one of our favorite times of the year. Yes, it can be crazy and stressful, but if we truly treat it as a time of preparation (for Christmas AND for eternity), it can be a beautiful season. Since Advent and marriage have a special link, in that they both point us toward heaven, we wanted to provide a fun and fulfilling way to spend time together as husband and wife during Advent.
What makes it even better is that it is not specific to any year, so you can revisit it every Advent. Each Advent, you will have a built-in way to spend dedicated time together as husband and wife. We provide a date night plan, so to speak, so all you need to do is make it happen!
A rundown of our weekly date night
We encourage you to use our date night suggestions merely as a guide and to make any changes that work best for your marriage. We go into more detail in the PDF, but here’s the brief rundown of what you can do each week:
Light your Advent wreath.
Look up the Scripture passage in your Bible and read it together.
Read the reflection and then discuss the questions.
Say the prayer together.
Then have fun by doing one (or more) of the suggested activities together.
By incorporating a weekly date night at home during Advent, it is our hope that you grow closer together as husband and wife as we await our Lord’s coming. We pray this is a blessing for your marriage this Advent!
Note: This is a digital download. A physical product will not be mailed to you. After checking out, you will receive an email with a link to download the 20-page PDF. Please do not share the file with anyone. If you’d like to print multiple copies to share as gifts, please purchase multiple copies, or contact us for group licenses. Our group licenses offer discounted products. Thank you!
At minute 5 in this video, we share about A Journey Through Advent!
It’s that time again… time to start thinking about Lent! This is the third year we’re offering a Lent Challenge for Catholic Marriages. For every day of Lent, we have a challenge for you to complete together. Then refer to the Lent challenge guide for more thoughts about each challenge and ideas on how to complete it.
The challenges range from fun to spiritual. There are many ways to connect and pray together, and we wanted to include as many of them as possible. Hopefully this Lent challenge will help you figure out which devotions and small acts of love you want to continue once Lent is over. More importantly, it will help you connect with your spouse each day of Lent!
Also included is a blank calendar for February, March, and April that you can use to keep track of your Lent commitments and events, or you can fill in challenges of your own.
As we like to say with both our Lent and Advent challenges: don’t let these challenges stress you out. Yes, some of them may get you out of your comfort zone a little bit. But if you miss a day (or two…or three), just pick back up where you left off. The goal is to spend time together and pray together throughout the Lenten season. Click here or the button below to purchase.
Note: This is a digital download. A physical product will not be mailed to you. After checking out, you will receive an email with a link to download the PDF. Please do not share the file with anyone. If you’d like to print multiple copies, please email us for licensing options. Thank you!
Back in 2019, we started this Advent challenge for Catholic couples as a simple way to prepare for Christmas together with your spouse, while making your marriage a priority. So many have found it helpful, and we have even done a Lent challenge for 2 years now!
So here it is again: our 2022 Advent Challenge for Catholic Couples.
Our inspiration for this Advent challenge
Advent should be a calm and peaceful time, but often it’s the busiest time of the year! In the weeks leading up to Christmas, it’s very easy to get focused on shopping, parties, and everything else holiday-related.
But let’s not forget about our marriages.
Advent and marriage have a special link—both point us toward heaven.
Use this Advent season to draw closer to each other, to foster your relationship together, and to remind each other of the end goal—eternal life in heaven. And we’ve created something to help you do exactly that!
A calendar with a simple challenge each day
This challenge includes both a calendar with a simple challenge each day, as well as a guide that gives you some ideas on how to complete each challenge.
As an added bonus, we also include a blank calendar in case you want to make up your own challenges or switch some of the challenges around. Both calendars include feast days (because hey, Catholic marriage!). We really do hope and pray this will enrich your marriage and Advent season together! That being said…
Do not let these challenges stress you out. Skip a day, if necessary, or switch the challenges around to better suit your schedule. These challenges are to make sure you’re spending time together and praying together. Peace is the goal….not stress. Okay? Okay.
The Advent challenge and guide is available in our shop! Add it to your cart by clicking the button below (or click here if it’s not showing up)…
Note: This is a digital download. A physical product will not be mailed to you. After checking out, you will receive an email with a link to download the PDF. Please do not share the file with anyone. If you’d like to print multiple copies to share as gifts, please purchase multiple copies, or contact us for group licenses. Thank you!
When I found out about Caitrin’s blog, I knew she would be the perfect guest blogger for us! It’s so important that we get to know married saints as inspiration for our own marriage. I love how Caitrin gives us some great examples of holy couples and concrete ways we can strive toward sainthood as husband and wife.
I’ve always been interested in the lives of the saints. Reading biographies of amazing holy people like St. Padre Pio, Pope St. John Paul II, and St. Augustine has been very inspiring to my faith. I love knowing I have friends in heaven, and that I can reach out to these saints to pray for me in specific situations that they can relate to personally.
But when I got married five years ago, I realized that none of my go-to saints were married. Who could I look to for inspiration in my marriage? Who could I ask to pray for my husband and me, knowing that they had experienced the joys and trials of married life themselves? I felt called to meet some married saints, so I began researching and reading.
I read about married saints from biblical times, like Sts. Elizabeth and Zechariah; from the early centuries of the Church, like St. Monica; from the Reformation Era, like St. Thomas More. I even found some holy people on the road to sainthood who lived very recently — even during my own lifetime — like the Servants of God Cyprien and Daphrose Rugamba, who were killed in the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
My research eventually became the basis for a book I am hoping to publish one day, as well as my own blog on Catholic marriage. Though my new married saint friends lived all over the world and throughout history, I noticed some common elements in their lives. These common elements helped the saints shape and maintain holy marriages, and they can do the same for all of us today. So, let’s get to the list and learn from the saints
1. Learn — and live out — your marital vows
A marriage is a covenant with specific vows. These vows are like our job description as married people. And how can you do well at a job if you don’t know what you are expected to do? On our wedding day, we each vowed to love our spouse freely, fully, faithfully, and fruitfully. I call these the “Four F’s.” Furthermore, we vowed to love our spouse for better or worse, in sickness and in health, until death do us part. Some of these vows are more widely understood than others; most of us know what it means to love faithfully, for example. However, we may need to look at a few of these vows more closely to better understand them.
Loving “freely” means that we are able to truly give ourselves to our spouses because we are not slaves to materialism or sin. Sts. Louis and Zélie Martin, parents of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, offer a wonderful example of living simply in order to free your heart from the bonds of materialism. They lived below their means and gave everything they could to the poor.
Sts. Louis and Zélie Martin
The vow of “fruitful” love encompasses much more than just welcoming children into your family. It can also mean offering the gifts (fruits) God has given you back to Him. Sts. Elizabeth and Zechariah exemplified this vow when they offered their long-awaited son, St. John the Baptist, to God to prepare Jesus’ way.
Finally, when we promised to love our spouse “until death do us part,” we may not have considered how the Christian perspective on death played into that vow. Because we see the Church as the body of Christ, unbroken by death, we are called to pray for our spouse’s salvation while we are both alive on earth, while he or she suffers in Purgatory if we outlive them, and from heaven if we precede them into eternal life.
St. Monica, mother of St. Augustine, certainly lived out this vow. She prayed for her husband and wayward son until they both converted, then died peacefully, requesting only that she be remembered in prayer and in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. For more clarification on our specific marital vows, check out my blog at www.holiermatrimony.com!
2. Practice self-denial and mortification
Every saint I’ve ever read about — married, single or religious — practiced unique forms of self-denial and mortification. St. Thomas More, advisor to the infamous King Henry VIII, secretly wore an itchy, uncomfortable hair shirt under his clothing for most of his adult life. Bl. Barbe Acarie, mother of six and foundress of the Carmelite Order in France, often ate only one meal a day.
These mortifications made them better spouses and better followers of Christ. By saying “no” to themselves in small things, they knew that they were training themselves to say “yes” to their spouses and to God in bigger things, like Thomas More’s eventual martyrdom or the political exile of Barbe Acarie’s husband.
As Catholic Christians, we believe that our suffering is valuable and meritorious when we unite it with Christ’s suffering on the cross. Small, voluntary mortifications as well as deep, involuntary pain will all be redeemed when we lay it at Jesus’ feet.
3. Serve the “least of these” together
When Jesus called us to serve the “least of these,” He certainly meant to include the poor, but this title can refer to many other categories of people, too. The “least of these” might be the sick, the elderly, or the spiritually thirsty. Your helpless newborn baby or your ailing mother-in-law might be the “least of these” God is calling you and your spouse to serve right now. Serving together with your spouse is a beautiful way to bond, creating a family mission you can rally behind.
The Servants of God Cyprien and Daphrose Rugamba felt called to serve the material needs of the street children in Kigali, Rwanda, by starting a shelter. Meanwhile, they also ministered to the spiritual needs of their local community by founding a new chapter of the Emmanuel Community there, meeting with small groups to pray and discuss their faith.
Servants of God Cyprien and Daphrose Rugamba, photo by Karel Dekempe, license
Blessed Karl I and his wife the Servant of God Zita were the last emperor and empress of Austria-Hungary. Despite their noble status, they always looked for ways to serve the “least of these” in their empire, for example by ordering that the royal carriages be used to bring coal to those suffering in the cold instead of transporting nobles such as themselves.
These holy husbands and wives bonded through their acts of service, and they helped one another to be more like Christ in the process.
4. Pray with your spouse (and with your kids)
If marriage is your vocation, you are called to walk your path to holiness and heaven hand in hand with your spouse. This means that the two of you are encouraged to take up and live out spiritual practices like prayer together.
Blesseds Luigi and Maria Quattrocchi were a couple from Italy that chose life for their daughter when they were pressured to abort for medical reasons, and who helped protect wanted people from the Nazis during World War II. The Quattrocchis focused on developing spiritual habits for their whole family to enjoy, such as praying the Rosary together after dinner each evening.
Blesseds Luigi and Maria Quattrocchi
St. Thėrèse’s parents, the Martins, inspired devotion to the Blessed Virgin in their daughters by encouraging the girls to adorn a statue of Mary with flowers during the month of May. Which spiritual practices could you do together as a family? The possibilities are endless!
5. Live a sacramental life
Beyond praying together and for one another, as Catholic married people we must commit to frequent reception of the Sacraments so that God’s grace can flow in our marriages and in our lives. We believe that the Sacraments both symbolize and convey grace, which is the power of God working in us. Each Sacrament conveys specific graces. Our Baptisms marked us as God’s children; Confirmation offered us the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. The graces conveyed in the Sacrament of Matrimony help us to live out our marital vows, giving us patience, charity and mercy for our spouse.
Sadly, we don’t always take advantage of those graces. Then they are wasted, like the valuable talent (treasure) the servant buried in the field in Matthew 25:18. Other times, we let sin build up in our lives and get in the way of sacramental grace, like the moon eclipsing the light of the sun. This is where the Sacrament of Confession comes in. We can always come clean and start over anew!
Ask God in prayer to help you avail yourself of the marital graces, and seek out the Eucharist and Confession as means to keep those graces flowing freely in your life. Marriage is hard — too hard, in fact, for us to do well by our own strength. But, armed with sacramental grace, we can approach the challenges of married life with God’s own amazing power!
All the married saints I have met have patterns of sacramentality. Most participated in the Sacrifice of the Mass many days a week, or even twice a day. Bl. Emperor Karl I even made sure to attend Mass on the battlefields where he commanded troops in World War II, and St. Thomas More rose as early as 4 a.m. so that he could have time for prayer and Mass before his long work day began. The saints also tended to go to Confession monthly or more often, though I know they had less to confess than I do!
These married saints also frequently reflected on the vows of their marital covenant. Daphrose Rugamba pushed through years of rejection from her angry, atheistic, and philandering husband, pleading with God to refresh her with the marital graces she would need to live out her vocation better than she did the day before. We can (and should) all do the same!
These are just five of the many beautiful ways my role-models in marriage worked to strengthen and sanctify their marital covenants. I encourage you to meet some married saint friends, too!
And, when in doubt, look to the Holy Family. Sts. Mary and Joseph are the ideal married couple, the couple to whom God entrusted His only Son. They offer a wonderful example for us all to follow, showing us how best to live out all our marital vows, how to suffer for Christ, how to serve, and how to pray. Ask for their intercession often as you prepare for, receive and fortify yourself with the sacramental graces that will aid you on your own path to holier matrimony!
Caitrin is a busy Coast Guard wife, mama of three under four, Catholic blogger and aspiring author. She is originally from Virginia, currently living in Florida, and preparing for a military move to North Carolina in a few months. She enjoys writing, playing the piano, long walks on the beach, and going out for tacos and margaritas with good friends! Check out her blog at Holier Matrimony.
Some of these links are affiliate. If you click through and make a purchase, we may receive a small commission. Read our privacy policyfor more information.
Every year, we like to propose a challenge for your marriage during Lent: pick one thing to do together throughout Lent. It’s easy to go overboard and pick several things to do, but just pick one or two!
We’ve really come to see the power of doing one small thing together and how that can lead us to holiness. While giving up sweets or alcohol or something like that isn’t a bad thing, just make sure you’re picking something that will have a positive impact on your marriage and spiritual life together.
And remember, it’s not supposed to be easy! When you’re deciding on what to do, it’s also good to remember the three pillars of Lent: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. So while we’re encouraging you to pick only one thing to do together, you should still focus on all three pillars throughout Lent.
Ready for some ideas for what you can do during Lent with your spouse? In no particular order, here we go!
Pray together everyday, if you’re not already doing so. [It might be good to also read Praying For (and With) Your Spouse by the Popcaks.]
Read Scripture daily. Maybe a Psalm a day or a chapter from one of the Gospels.
Do the enrichment program Beloved: Mystery & Meaning of Marriage. If your church parish has a subscription to Formed.org, you could do Beloved for free! There are 6 sessions, so you can do one each week in Lent.
Sign up for the Pray More Retreat. It’s a self-paced online retreat with talks, videos, and study guides. The topics look so good and would be great conversation starters!
Wake up earlier to connect and pray together.
Go on a marriage retreat.
Take Natural Family Planning classes, if you haven’t done so yet (or have been putting it off!).
Don’t watch TV. But be sure to replace that TV time with something better!
Pray a daily Rosary.
Go to daily Mass during the week (in addition to meeting your Sunday obligation).
Donate extra money to your church or favorite charity.
Commit to not spending any money (other than necessities and usual bills) during Lent. Have a “no spend Lent”, if you will.
Pray a Divine Mercy chaplet every day.
Invite someone over for dinner each week. Maybe it’s time to work on hospitality!
Pick a day each week to do hardcore fasting, like what’s done on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Fasting together makes for some good accountability.
Go to bed earlier. Make sure to pray together first!
Commit to not having your phones by you when you’re spending time together at home. Enjoy each other’s company!
Pick a person or family each week to bless in some way. Bring them a meal, offer to babysit, whatever you think might help them. (And don’t expect anything in return!)
Pray an hour from the Liturgy of the Hours each day. This can be done with an app like iBreviary or Laudate, but I’m a big fan of the one-volume Christian Prayer. (And if you want to learn more about the Liturgy of the Hours, I recommend reading The Everyday Catholic’s Guide to the Liturgy of the Hours by Daria Sockey.)
Make a weekly visit to an Adoration chapel.
Learn a new devotion together, like the Seven Sorrows Rosary or the St. Michael chaplet.
Listen to a talk about Catholicism or marriage and family life each week. Catholic Productions has a great selection, and there are several awesome talks in their marriage and family life category. (Both CDs and MP3s are available.)
Do the Stations of the Cross together each Friday.
Do the enrichment program United in Love-United in Christ. We did this one year with a large group of couples at our church, and it was great! You could do it with a small group in your own home as well, meeting once a week for 6 weeks.
Advent should be a calm and peaceful time, but often it’s the busiest time of the year! In the weeks leading up to Christmas, it’s very easy to get focused on shopping, parties, and everything else holiday-related.
But let’s not forget about our marriages.
Advent and marriage have a special link—both point us toward heaven.
Use this Advent season to draw closer to each other, to foster your relationship together, and to remind each other of the end goal—eternal life in heaven. And we’ve created something to help you do exactly that!
Enter: the 2020 Advent Challenge for Catholic Marriages. It comes with both a calendar and a guide!
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You can choose to just use the calendar, which contains a challenge each day to complete together. Or you can also use the blank calendar and fill in challenges of your own! Both have feast days listed. Then refer to the Advent marriage guide for more thoughts about each challenge.
Do not let these challenges stress you out. Skip a day, if necessary, or switch the challenges around to better suit your schedule. These challenges are to make sure you’re spending time together and praying together. Peace is the goal….not stress.
The Advent challenge and guide is available in our shop! Add it to your cart by clicking the button below…
$3.99
We pray this will enrich your marriage and Advent season together!
