On the duties of marriage

Questions about the vocation you actually live.

Marriage is a vocation, which means it has its own duties and its own failures — and most of them never appear in a standard examination of conscience. These questions are for husbands and wives preparing for Confession.

Toward Your Spouse

• Have I been faithful in body, in what I look at, and in what I entertain in my mind?
• Do I speak to my spouse with respect, or with contempt disguised as humour?
• Have I withheld affection to punish?
• Do I listen, or wait to reply?
• Have I compared my spouse unfavourably to someone else, aloud or silently?
• Have I let resentment accumulate rather than dealing with it?
• Do I take my spouse for granted — their work, their patience, their presence?

Toward Your Children

• Have I been a model of faith, or merely an enforcer of it?
• Do I lose my temper with my children in ways I would not accept from them?
• Have I been present, or merely in the house?
• Have I undermined my spouse in front of the children?

Toward Your Home

• Have I been honest about money with my spouse?
• Have I put work, hobbies or my phone ahead of my family repeatedly?
• Have I neglected hospitality, or the care of relatives who need us?
• Is our home a place where the faith is lived, or only discussed?

Toward God

• Do we pray together at all?
• Have we been faithful to the Church’s teaching on marriage and the openness of our love to life?
• Have I asked God for help with my marriage, or only complained about it?

A Prayer to Close

Lord, You joined us and You know us both.
Show me my part in what is wrong between us,
not my spouse's.
Give me the humility to say sorry first. Amen.