I came across a strange old story this week, from the Book of Tobit, one of those books a lot of people have never opened. A young man named Tobiah marries a woman named Sarah, and before anything else happens on their wedding night, the two of them get up and pray together. Not a quick blessing, but an actual prayer, said out loud, naming exactly what they were asking for. He tells her something close to this, that he takes her not with lust but with fidelity, and asks simply that they might grow old together.

I read that this week and had to sit with it a minute, because I know exactly what my own wedding night looked like, and praying together out loud wasn’t the first thing either of us did. It wasn’t really something either of us had ever been taught to do. Looking back now, I wonder what might have been different if prayer had been the foundation we started from, instead of something we picked up years later, slowly, after a fair amount of trial and error.

I don’t think the lesson here is guilt over a night long past. I think it’s permission to start now, tonight even, with something as plain as naming out loud what we’re actually asking God for in this marriage. Tobiah didn’t wait until he felt ready to say it well. He just said it.

Today’s Bible Study

Peter picks up this same thread centuries later, telling husbands to live with their wives with real understanding and honor, because, as he puts it, they are heirs together of the grace of life, so that nothing hinders their prayers. It is easy to read that as a warning about marital friction getting in the way of a man’s own private devotion. But set beside Tobiah’s prayer, it reads more like confirmation of the same point: a marriage is not just something you occasionally remember to pray about. It is meant to be something prayed inside of, together, as a matter of course.

Recommended Reading

If any of this struck close to home, I would actually point you toward Gregory Popcak’s For Better Forever: A Catholic Guide to Lifelong Marriage. It is less a theory of marriage and more a practical look at what actually holds one together for the long haul, prayer very much included.