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Our Journey in Couple Spirituality

John & Regina Ruport

(An excerpt from the Summer 1997 Matrimony magazine)

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John & Regina Ruport

How Did Our Spiritual Journey Begin?

When I, Regina, was 6, my mother died. We five children would get on our knees every night with my dad to pray the Rosary for my mom to be in heaven with Jesus.

I, John, was in a foster home until I was 6 years old. I went to a Methodist church with my foster family. When my mom remarried, I attended Catholic schools. I recall after my First Communion making a commitment to receive daily, which I did for several months. The Rosary also became an important practice for me.

When we met, I was struck by John's spirituality, his devotion to Mary and to Mass. He suggested we go to early morning mass at a Carmelite chapel that he frequented. I was too willing to do anything to have more time with him, so we often went.

The Christmas before we married, John gave me a small carved statue of Mary. John was the one who knew to place a bouquet in front of Mary as part of our wedding mass. I was really impressed that he ordered Eucharist lilies for my bridal bouquet. I felt so blessed to be cared for by such a spiritual man.

When I met Regina, I was struck by her gracious gentleness, beautiful smile, the attention she gave while someone was talking, and the ease with which she served others, particularly the elderly. She quickly became my lady and my strength. Pictures of our wedding show Regina walking down the aisle with a beam of sunlight shining behind her, creating the effect of a halo surrounding her head.

When John and I were first married, we looked for meaningful relationships with our priests, and they were frequent visitors in our home. We taught CCD, helped with the youth group and stayed involved with the life of the parish.

Once we bought our first home, Regina would lector at mass, while I was a minister of the Eucharist at a different mass so we could cover child care for our three daughters. We were trying to be involved with the parish, but somehow we were unsatisfied. After nine years of marriage and four babies, we both knew we needed some sort of recharge.

Time for a Weekend

Our eagerness to experience a Marriage Encounter Weekend was an indicator of how much we longed to have some choice time for the two of us. We didn't even want to separate to write our letters!

I, Regina, must have had some unhealed hurts with God and the Church because I recall thinking that someone had hoodwinked us into this weekend. When one of the teams began to speak about "openness to God's plan," I jabbed John in the ribs and whispered "Here it comes!" I was suspicious about what they wanted from us.

Yet the presentation on "Marriage in God's Plan" really struck me. I couldn't believe that God even knew John and me, and that He had a plan for our lives. His needing us amazed me. I was a bit leery of what I was hearing. I questioned how these couples thought they had a direct line to the truth and could be proclaiming all this stuff, when I had never heard of any of it.

I thought that miracles stopped when Jesus ascended to heaven. I didn't know God in a personal way. I thought He was too busy running the important things in the world to pay attention to regular people. At the end of the world He'd deal with all of us.

ln the Sacrament talk on Sunday morning, I heard "We are Church." Wow! I had blamed all my hurts on The Church never realizing that The Church was John and me, too. We counted! We were needed! We heard presentations on keeping our focus on one another, especially through the tool of dialogue and in our sexual relationship, and then we were called forth to serve in our Church.

By the end of our Weekend, we were passionately in love with one another and with our beautiful Catholic Church, which had given married couples this weekend of renewal and presented these concepts by which to live in order to stay strong.

Tools for Spiritual Growth

Dialogue was definitely a tool for our spiritual growth. I began to understand myself through this new language of the heart - by communicating feelings in a loveletter. And the same was true about my beloved. John wrote things to me that just didn't usually enter into our conversations.

When John and I would sit down face-to-face, we worked to listen in a new way to hear the heart behind the words. Communication with active participation and feedback was such a precious gift to both of us. I recall being so amazed two months after our Weekend, becoming aware of how much we had grown. Our strong adherence to the discipline of the 10 & 10 was a sign of how committed we were to growing in our marriage.

In our search for growth, we learned about dialoging in "prime time." We soon found that quality time enhanced every instance of our relationship, including prayer and love making.

Companions on the Journey

We tried lots of ideas suggested in our M.E. community, including dialoging with our children. We all drew pictures. Since our children couldn't write yet. Everyone stopping to focus on the speaker and just listen was new and very much appreciated in our home.

We were eager to continue this new spiritual journey. Our prayer couple from the Weekend invited us to join their sharing circle. We began and ended meetings with prayer and song, and spent time in dialogue and sharing. Our circle challenged us to help spread the Dream and we were eager to share our relationship with others.

Because we wanted to grow in every aspect of our relationship and because we were uncomfortable with spontaneous couple prayer, we joined our friends in attending a Life in the Spirit seminar.

We learned to overcome our feelings of vulnerability at praying aloud and to share what was in our hearts with God. A more personal relationship with Jesus began to take shape. A greater knowledge of the Holy Spirit enriched our prayer life.

We gradually began to pray at the start of our dialogue, because writing our prayer at the beginning of our loveletter was less threatening .These past few years, we have found that we are gradually building our couple prayer life by using formal structured prayer forms.

More Growth Opportunities

God has continually put opportunities for spiritual growth in front of us. In each instance, we were given innumerable graces and calls to grow in relationship with one another and with Him.

Our Weekend was just the beginning. We attended M.E. Enrichment Experiences, and our team training Deeper Weekend presented by Fr. Chuck Gallagher. About six months after our original Weekend, we flew to New York for the M.E. International Convention at St. John's University.

It was there, at our first convention that the dream of an M.E. pilgrimage to Rome and Lourdes was announced. We signed up and began saving our money. We were a group of 2200 people in 17 planes headed from New York for Europe in October of 1975.

What a blessing it was to visit the historical sites of our Roman Catholic faith. We fell in love with our Church again and realized what a privilege it is to be Catholic.

Finding housing in community for 10 days for our five children, including our 10-month old was another grace-filled event. We couldn't have done it without the love and generosity of our new, beloved M.E. Family.

We later attended a Couples' Cursillo. It was an experience of being unconditionally loved by people we'd never met. This encouraged us to continue to read Scripture daily.

I, Regina, began to more easily share my feelings with others when I was not with John. I saw how I assess people that I'm with and consider my self image before I'll decide to share what's really going on inside me.

Fr. Gallagher challenged M.E. couples at another convention to A Year of No Criticism. No criticism of our spouse or of others, but to instead focus on the special quality of each one around us. It's miraculous how a new habit can take over in a short time. We liked shedding the old critical spirit and focusing on being more Christ like in our daily lives.

We grew spiritually through our experiences with M.E. We were called forth by other couples who were seeking God's will in their lives.

Dick & Cindi Pardi especially challenged us to be open to new life at an M.E. convention in Los Angeles. Their presentation on Catholic Family Values, in particular "Being Life-Giving vs. Life-Controlling," brought about our seventh child. They explained "The Contraceptive Mentality," which is choosing modern world possessions and recreation over people and life, and we saw where the "world" was trying to lead us.

Each successive birth, our foster child, and even taking John's father into our home for the last six weeks of his life, and then John's mother for her last three years, were instances of God's grace stretching our hearts. After being formed by these grace filled experiences, being obedient to God, allowing Him to give us the family size He knew that we-plus-He could handle, living the simple Gospel lifestyle of large family community seemed natural.

We also learned more about couple prayer at an M.E. convention. We were asked to give the same presentation locally on couple prayer. We gave an example using these steps: 1) read a selected Scripture passage; 2) silently reflect for a moment; 3) share awareness of this verse in my life today and what it's calling me to in our relationship.

Such experiences as Celebrate Love, Evenings for Parents, Evenings for Couples, and Call to Be Catholic not only enriched our relationship, but were opportunities for inviting others to the Weekend! Some of these experiences we even brought to our parish and sharing circles. We usually dreamed big.

In addition, writing and re-writing our M.E. Weekend presentations created opportunities for spiritual growth because this gave us a closer look at the Weekend concepts. The process of writing talks called us to truly live what we were speaking.

Learning about Mary's Call

Our Lady blessed us beyond our wildest expectations for our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary with the gift of a trip with the M.E. community to Medjugorje in November '89. This was another stepping stone in our spiritual journey.

In preparation for our tour, John and I were able to follow some guidelines to prepare our hearts. We were reading daily Scripture, saying the Rosary, attending mass during the week, making confessions more frequently, and fasting on bread and water two days a week. In addition to our daily dialogue, these five practices have become the key elements for deepening our couple prayer life.

Fasting wasn't entirely new to us. John and my beginnings were similar. We fasted during Lent; as children, that meant that we gave up candy, gum and movies. We both had grammar school memories of going to morning mass and bringing a snack breakfast to eat before getting to school late.

These habits taught us that we could follow a path to holiness and that we had been blessed with strong willpower. Now it seems that this was God's way of strengthening us for future times.

We've read that fasting is for the soul what exercise is for the body. Initially, our fasting consisted of getting up earlier to go to daily mass (this wasn't year-round, and not during pregnancy or while nursing an infant, of course), and giving up coffee.

A strong call to us to employ fasting in more difficult life situations came when we read Matthew 17:I7 -2I about the disciples having failed at driving out a demon.

The disciples approached Jesus and asked him "Why could we not expel it?" "Because of your little trust," he told them. "I assure you, if you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you would be able to say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it would move. Nothing would be impossible for you. This kind does not leave but by prayer and fasting."

Lessons from Fasting

Fasting on bread and water during the day has taught us that we're bigger than our feelings - even feelings of hunger and tiredness. We're not slaves to human nature, and we can control urges to eat or drink excessively. We can control urges to criticize, to be irresponsible or selfish if we allow God's grace to help us.

Our goal is a day-long fast of bread and water, with a potato or bread at the evening meal. Fasting gets easier each time the spirit overcomes the flesh. The next time we try, there are even more graces to help us succeed. Fasting has sharpened our focus on the place of daily dialogue in our lives, because we get up earlier and have an extra time window in which we can write our loveletters and dialogue.

A more broad definition of fasting is doing something you don't want to do, or denying yourself something that you want. Or putting the needs of others (like our spouse) before our own needs. Mary has told the visionaries at Medjugorje that the most perfect fast is bread and water alone. However, she says another type of fasting is to give up something that we can't seem to do without, such as television, alcohol, or material wealth.

Another Way to Fast: Tithing

The concept of tithing was introduced to us through another couple sharing their journey. They spoke of responsible stewardship and gave us the scriptural background for being generous with the time, talent and treasure with which God has so generously blessed us.

We'd heard many financial appeals from the pulpit at church but this idea struck us differently. John took a short class on financial freedom to get more information, and we slowly began to live this new lifestyle. First we gave just 1 or 2 percent and then worked up to God's call of l0 percent of our gross income.

Although it took some years for us to fully obey God's plan in this area, for the past ten years we've been giving 5 percent of our income to our parish and 5 percent to other needs of our Church family. These are donations that don't directly benefit us. Part of tithing would include giving supermarket gift certificates to someone who is struggling financially, but tithing would not include buying tickets at church for our family to attend a barbecue.

We've heard the call to fast by giving of our time, talent and treasure. As Scripture says in Luke 6:38, "Give and it shall be given to you. Good measure pressed down, shaken together, running over, will they pour into the fold of your garment. For the measure you measure with will be measured back to you.”

Gifts from Sharing Our Journey

Through our sharing, we have been instruments of Our Lady to have our children pray the Rosary, to encourage other couples to pray the Rosary and attend daily mass. We believe that She made it possible for us to attend Adoration to grow in understanding of the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament has also given us greater awareness and desire to live the virtues of faith, hope, charity, patience, perseverance, and obedience, to which She calls us.

For the past two years, we have been praying, fasting and seeking discernment of God's will in our lives for a job, home and schools for our children. After 17 years, we moved a distance away from our home for a job change. We are at least two hours closer to each of our adult children. We can now attend daily mass together before John goes to work. There is a new job, better pay and only half the commute distance he previously drove. We are still prayerfully awaiting guidance on a larger home for our family.

This past Lent, our 24-year-old daughter who lives with us arose with us 30 minutes earlier than usual to pray a Rosary and novena every day before going to daily mass. When Lent ended, we continued getting up early, but moved the Rosary to the evening so the nine of us can pray it together. In the morning we are praying a 34-day novena as preparation for the consecration of our hearts to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Being involved in Marriage Encounter through the growth of our family from four children to 11 has taken many faith decisions. Our natural tendency was to want to stay home and take "perfect" care of our own family. Over and over we were called to look at the big picture: to change the world, not only for the sake of our children, but for the sake of those who will eventually be our children's spouses.

We certainly don't have a perfect family. We've cried "Why us, Lord?" when we've had our struggles. The answer has always come back that He has a greater plan, and everything is for His purpose. He turns all things to good.

We make it a practice to attend growth experiences offered by our Church, in addition to those offered by Marriage Encounter. As a sacrament, our first and specific area of enrichment is those experiences which focus on growth in our couple relationship. Through experiences such as the class on the New Catechism of the Catholic Church, and a recent Marian Eucharist Conference, God has been working in our lives to form us to raise faith filled children. We are learning how to share the truth with our children, and to not fight with them about it. We simply present truth, explain it, and then pray, pray, pray for their acceptance of the truth.

We believe we are on a journey in the direction that Mary is calling us. We have been told that Mother Theresa spends three hours each day on her knees. She says, "If you have much work to do, you must pray much." We feel a deep urgency to spend more time on our knees and less time involved in meaningless chatter and activities.

Sexual Spirituality

Our sexual relationship is a vital part of our couple spirituality. God calls us to be sexual and passionate with each other.

Currently, we are dialoging on the six week series on sexual intimacy, which we had done a few years ago. We often get discouraged to find that our attitudes haven't changed a whole lot. I, Regina, have always been the "get the work done before you play" type of person. Who are we kidding - of course the work never stops around our house!

My compulsion to get it all done wipes me out, and I don't want one more thing to do. There's the old attitude that love making is an "it," one more chore to "do." I didn't think I believed that any more, but there it is. Pacing myself, with John as my first priority is a challenge that I must keep in mind as part of our growth together.

As I have shared with our M.E. friends, I know that I, John, need to romance Regina all day long, yet I fall terribly short of this ideal. I often tell myself as we fall into bed at night that I don't "deserve" to make love with her. I am called to "make love" with Regina throughout the day, so that our passion stays alive. Sexuality is an integral part of our spirituality.

The best type of prayer and sacrifice is to keep each other in the forefront of our minds, and make tenderness, gentleness, attentiveness and listening continual gifts to each other throughout the day - just like we hear on the M.E. Weekend. We pray for the grace to make it happen, and we pray for passion in our relationship. The type of selfishness where we put other priorities before our relationship can only be driven out with prayer plus sacrifice.

Spirituality Requires Action

With M.E. as our primary apostolate, we set our other calendar dates around our M.E. sharing group that we know we need at least twice each month. We need friendship with others who share our values. Working to change the world is a job requiring more hands and feet than just ours. It's day-in, day-out stuff we all share that tells us we're hearing God's message to work for His people and that we can do it!

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