Many of us have grown up hearing the famous adage, April showers bring May flowers and June brides.  For decades June was the most popular month for weddings.  Spring gives life to flowers but it also brings out the feelings of love and romance.  Many young women would dream of a June wedding because it followed the beautiful month of May, a time when trees came to life and flower blossoms brightened every garden and flower box in the neighborhood. 

    Of course, getting married in June did not necessitate a successful marriage.  As we all know, a happy and faithful marriage has nothing to do with the time of year within which the ceremony occurred.  We can get married anytime and romance and happiness will bloom for a lifetime. 

This brings us to another very important point.  What lies at the root of a happy and life giving relationship shared between two individuals?  Is it romance or money or mutual interests and friends or higher education?  Is there a secret formula for marriages to ‘succeed’?  If you ask people who have lived this life for forty, fifty or sixty years you will see that there is indeed a formula.  They may well express it in various ways but they will all end up with the same result. 

Love, as many older couples have experienced, is the result of a very intimate relationship.  This is the key.  Intimacy in all aspects of life, love, willingness to forgive, a desire to share one’s talents, openness and continual honesty in communication, a willingness to give as well as receive, all of these are essential to the formula of a happy marriage.  Can it be otherwise? 

Many people have attempted to live according to a different formula.  Many have centered their married lives on money, selfishness, secretiveness, etc. only to find themselves down the path of unhappiness which all too often results in divorce.  What is that?  Why does one path work while another cannot?  Is one path easier than the other?  You will admit that our first formula is not an easy path to follow.  What then is the answer?

The answer lies in the fact that a happy marriage is based on the identical criteria that our God experiences in the relationship shared in the Blessed Trinity, i.e., one of love, intimacy, mutual respect, complete openness, etc.  And, since we have been created in the likeness of God we will only be happy when we live in harmony with our human and divine natures.  God’s ways must be our ways.  There is no other way for us to experience happiness either in the life or the one to come.  Marriage is a vocation that helps us experience the very nature of God.  How fortunate the couple who lives in Love because, in essence, they are truly living in God!

                    Lorette P. Nault