Team meeting
Sacrament of marriage: source and mission of the Teams of Our Lady

1. Text for meditation :

“Building the Church does not consist in ‘transporting’ Christians and couples somewhere else: It is, leaving them where they are, and allowing the grace of God to come down on them as the fire from heaven came down on the sacrifice of Elijah. In the case of the couple, it is to allow the divine, through their sacrament of marriage, to get a hold on them, to invade them, to penetrate to their very depth, to reform them radically, to divinise them. And the couple isn’t just a man and a woman, but all that is intergral with them, that is bound to them, that is an extension of themselves; their little kingdom, their children, their home, their cattle, their fields. Through the sacrament of marriage, the divine gets a hold, not only on their souls, but on their body too; it becomes incarnate, it penetrates everything with its particular quality, it implants itself, it takes roots in their soil. It is the redeeming incarnation that is working through them. Nowhere else does this redeeming incarnation gets hold so deeply of human nature and the temporal sphere. Indeed, through the sacrament of marriage, it is the whole marriage in all its reality: juridical, physical, spiritual, that becomes sacrament, to such an extent that the physical union of man and woman is an integral part of the sacrament. The whole married life is not only healed, elevated, sanctified, but is rendered sanctifying” (Henri Caffarel, Special Issue of the Anneau d’Or: “Marriage, this great sacrament”, 1963, p. 315)

2. Personal reflexion

Take 15 minutes to reflect individually on the questions that have been set below

- The Teams of Our Lady are a movement for deepening the graces of our sacrament of marriage. In what way does the fact that the sacrament of marriage is at the centre of our movement characterises it?
- How do we respond to this vocation of our movement?
- How does it affect our life as a couple and as a team?

3. Exchange of views as a team

Please take time to listen to each other so that each person has an opportunity to express himself/herself

4. Concluding prayer of the meeting:
Extract from Blessing n°1 of the Marriage Ritual

Holy Father, you created man and womanso that, together in the unity of flesh and heart,, they should be an image of you and so accomplish their mission in the world.In order to reveal the plan of your grace,you willed that the love of man and womanshould be a sign of the Covenant you made with your people,and that, in the sacrament of marriage, the union of the spouses should express the mysteryof the wedding feast of Christ and his Church.[…] Grant that, throughout their life together, sanctified by this sacrament,they should exchange mutually the gifts of your love,and that, through being a sign of your presence for each other,they may become of one heart and one mind.