15: Being together, with God

Episode 15: Caroline and Bernard - two guests! - share how their faith is the foundation of their marriage: 'God is the glue that keeps us together.'

They share how they came to walk down the aisle on their first date and how the routine practice of prayer and living their faith together helps them to grow.

Find out more:
Chemin Neuf
Connect and Alpha
Bible Alive

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Music: Greenleaves from Audionautix.com

Transcript

 You are listening to All Kinds of Catholic with me, Theresa Alessandro. My conversations with different Catholics will give you glimpses into some of the ways, we're living our faith today. Pope Francis has used the image of a caravan. A diverse group of people travelling together. On a sometimes chaotic journey together. That's an image that has helped shape this podcast. I hope you'll feel encouraged and affirmed and maybe challenged at times. I am too in these conversations. 

So for listeners, this is a different episode of the podcast today because I'm joined by 2 guests. And Caroline and Bernard are a couple who are married to each other, both Catholics, and I'm really looking forward to our conversation. So thanks for being here, Caroline and Bernard. 

Pleasure. Very happy to be here. Looking forward to it. Yeah. It's great. 

Okay, good. So I thought we might begin by just exploring for each of you, were you born into and brought up in Catholic families? 

Yes. We're called, I suppose, cradle Catholics, to use that term. And I was born into a very Catholic family. So both my parents followed the faith in a very loving way. Both were teachers, and my dad's was a head teacher, Saint Dunstan's middle school. And my mom was a primary school teacher until she had children. Yes. I'm one of 6 in the family. So nice large Catholic family. 

Lovely. Okay. And what about you, Bernard?

Likewise, I was brought up as a Catholic. There's only 4 of us. We lived in Arundel, so that we had Arundel Cathedral as our parish church, let's say. So every Sunday, we'd walk up and then come back down again and to a point where both my parents ended up working for Arundel Cathedral in various different ways. So, yeah, we're connected.

I know that meeting each other was an important thing for you both. But just before we get to that part, was your faith important to you before you met each other while you were still single people? 

My faith really guided me a lot. So I would say growing up in a Catholic family and Catholic education gives you a bit of a protected upbringing. And then after that, I went to Guilford Tech, and I went to Bournemouth College of Higher Education, studied catering, and then I went out into the big wide world and started my career in a large London hotel.  So the key factor I reflect on in my life is having that grounding and that faith of living a good life, in a way helped me in the secular world. And I would also share that there was a bit of conflict in me going on because, the way other people were living their life was very different from how I've been educated and brought up in the family home. So that also was a big learning and growth area for me. I still went to Mass. It was really important. Obviously, working in hotels, I wasn't able because my shift pattern, I wasn't always able to get to Mass when I wanted to. So so that internally, there's a bit of a conflict in me. So that was the beginning. And then as life grew on, definitely, my faith always guided me to try and do the right thing and live life as Jesus teaches us. From my side, I  was slightly different. I was going through the teenage years and into my twenties. I'm kind of drifting, really. I was going to church because my mom was going to church. She's a very strong Catholic, and she was kind of saying, oh, you can imagine a dark winter's night , there’s as an evening Mass. You gotta go to it. Somebody come with me. And so it was me that usually ended up going. So I would go to church. I would go through the motions and then not really figure out what was going on because I suppose I never really spent time looking into it. And then that was like that until it got to a point where I think God intervened on my side when my mum had a stroke. Now that is like a bombshell dropped into the family, and we all, we're all so shocked, so much so that I  was single at the time, and I thought to myself, oh, I can't go through life being single. I gotta find somebody and get married. You know? It just felt that way. And that's what kick started me into looking for somebody. And lo and behold - You met me. I found Caroline. And that's God. That's down to God. 

You feel that God helped you to find each other in some way?

Oh, completely. Oh, definitely. Definitely. Yeah. And the way I grew up, I'd always wanted to be married. You know, seeing my parents' marriage and being taught about Mary and Joseph. And it just seemed to be the right way to live life for  me, personally. And my faith also grew through a lot of going on retreats and spiritual growth. And then Bern and I were writing through the Catholic Unattached Directory. So we shared letters and then we spoke on the phone. Our story is that we met, because I was living in Leicester at the time and Bern was from Arundel. And we met at the Whipsnade Tree Cathedral. Yeah. So it's it's kind of halfway between Sussex and Leicester. So I was looking at the map.I thought, right. There's a spot we could go to. It says cathedral, right? We're going there. We agreed to meet up, and that's where we met. And, we walked down the aisle on our first date. Yeah. It's just a place with a lot of trees planted out into a shape of a cathedral, you know. It was a muddy March day, I think it was, wasn't it? Yeah. It was freezing cold and everything, but it was just an incredible experience. Love at first sight. Definitely, God was involved there along the way, you know.

That's lovely. I haven't heard of Whipsnade Tree Cathedral. I wanna go and give that a look now. That sounds like a beautiful place. So how long did it take till you decided you would get married? 

Well, it was very quick. It was 3 months, and then Bern proposed at Arundel Cathedral, went down on one knee, all the traditional. It was really lovely. Oh, yeah. Got to do it right. And then was it 6 months later, we got married. We got married on the 29th November 2008. You know what it's like that when you know that this person is right for you, but you just know. And so what's the point of hanging around?  Yeah. And we both agreed and off we went and it worked out so well. And the the lovely thing is our faith is the foundation of our marriage. Yeah. There's there's 3 in our marriage.

Alright. Yeah. I was gonna ask about that, where God fits into your marriage. Are you able to, I don't know, give some examples or put a bit of shape around that? 

He's with us all the time, and the essence, I suppose, of how we live together is in our faith. Well, actually, a really good example is where before we got married, we went on an Engaged Encounter weekend, which was very powerful for us, wasn't it? In that we discussed a lot of different aspects of life and our faith being one of those. And we both knew that this was our guiding force really. The Holy Spirit guides us in what we do and how we are. Maybe an example of that is, yes, we're living in Leicester, and Father John Joe Maloney married us, which is wonderful. Had lots for our family and friends at the wedding. And we then realized, what, 2 years later, both of our families were down south. Various parents were becoming ill. We decided, okay, well, actually, we would like to be with our families down south. So we moved down. In fact, after my father died, wasn't it? Yeah. I think God just really helps us to decide what's most important for us in life. Mhmm. And that changes really. You know, we've been married now nearly 16 years, and it changes all the time. Yeah. I think God is the glue that keeps us all together. It's the way I look at it. Various things seem to have happened along the way that sort of make you realise that, actually, it is all true. It has a value. Like they say in the Bible, there's that pearl in the middle of a field, treasure in the middle of a field, and the guy spends all his money to buy that field knowing that that is what he's gonna have. We both realise that, and we know that being together with God, with faith, that's all we need. 

So that all sounds really amazing.  I think some of what you're saying will resonate with listeners, people who've made some of the same choices in life for the same reasons. Are there things that are challenging, despite having such a strong foundation, is there anything that has challenged your faith? 

The things that challenge our faith are things like secular things that sort of seem to creep up on you. And you suddenly realise, oh, right. I'm gonna do this, or this situation's occurred. There's another thing that's actually popped up where we've had this restructure of our parish. It's unfortunately, it's like dropping a bombshell into the parish and a lot of people have split and gone away. So we've lost a lot of friends. It seems we've had to adjust to this new way of doing things. And you know what change is like?  It's very difficult to, to adapt to it. So the Mass time has changed. Secular side of things, I think it's made me reevaluate the financial side of things. It does make you pray more. To be fair, God has been good to us, and he's given us lots of things. So you have to change your mindset again to rethink those struggles or a different way of looking at it. I think that having a faith in and living a faith in the secular world brings many challenges. Something that I didn't really realise until people start to reflect and then sort of feedback into me is that they clearly see me as somebody different. Now the interesting thing is I've always been struggling against maybe, oh, why don't do I fit into this work team? What's going on here? This feels a bit odd. But, actually, because my faith is so important to me and I really believe in being a disciple of Jesus, it's not easy. So whether I go into work with a happy spirit and a a smile and a good morning versus other people who may not. Actually, now in my later years, I'm realising that it is seen and it is noticed. And even though people may not say anything, they're seeing something different. It's quite interesting because when I grew up, I thought I had to be this extraordinary, most amazing known person in the world. Now, through prayer, I've realised now I can just do very, very simple things. You know, Jesus born in Bethlehem, lived in Nazareth, was a carpenter, walked around, you know, the fields, actually drawing crowds to him. That's the way he's calling us to live our life. So we live a very humble life, really, don't we? We try to. 

There's something interesting there, Caroline. 1 or 2 of the guests that I've had on the podcast are people who've become a Catholic later in life. Well, not necessarily that much later, but they weren't born and brought up in a Catholic family. One of the things people say sometimes in that situation is that they saw something in someone else who was a Catholic that they felt drawn to and that they wanted to have. And so it's really interesting what you're saying there about finding out that people do notice something different about you, when you think you're just not really sure if it's having any impact. Actually, people are noticing something different about you. So that's really lovely to hear from the other side and to encourage us in our efforts to be disciples in in small ways where we are. I wanted to revisit what you were saying, Bernard, about the parish changes because I know there'll be plenty of people listening who either have been or are going through similar changes. And we've certainly had the same in my parish and it is really difficult.  And something as simple sounding as changing the Mass time does make a really big difference, doesn't it? Because somehow we've built our Sunday around what time we go to Mass, and actually, it is very unsettling when that changes. 

Oh, completely. And what's happened is because that Mass time has changed. We went to it at 9:15, you see. And there used to be a coffee social thing after that Mass because we've been there for such a long time. We're noticing that families were turning up. There's a lot more people turning up to that social thing, so you could interact and there were more lot more people in church. Now that the Mass, this bomb has dropped. So, you know, they they disappeared, although they are attempting to do something after the 10:45, which is more like 11:45 by the time you finish church. It's a sung Mass. So when it finishes, people disperse to go to lunch though.

 Yeah. I hear that. And I think lots of people will have similar experiences. I mean, similarly, if the Mass time is changed to something much earlier than you're used to, it can be really difficult for people who are used to Sundays, the day they have a bit of a lie in before they go to Mass, but now actually they're going to have to get up. That can be quite different too. And also changes in the community. I know there's so many important relationships in a parish community.

 Oh, it's huge. Yeah. 

That can be so changed by changes in the parish. And it's very difficult to see those things slipping away. 

Yeah. But I suppose  in one way, at least we've got a Mass. So lots of people don't have Masses for months, I think it is, isn't it? Some places in the world. 

That's right. We have to recognise that change there. 

Yeah. 

I had a podcast guest on, listeners might remember, who grew up in Nigeria and Mass was, was like you say, once in some months and huge preparations for it. Somehow it doesn't help knowing that we need to be grateful. It doesn't make it less painful actually when there are these changes.

Yeah, exactly. 

I hope there are people listening for whom, you know, having been through that process, the parish is rebuilding and meaningful relationships are - there's new opportunities too, aren't there? We have some hope around that. 

There's room to adapt and, well, you just have to go with the flow, like with the Holy Spirit.

And now let me try and get a sense of your spirituality then. Are there things outside of Mass on a Sunday that you go to, or practices, spiritual things you do together or separately? What kind of things do you find nourish your faith? 

One of the nourishing things is our Connect group, and we've just had one this morning, actually.  We go around to a friend's house once a month. We've been connecting before the pandemic, but in 2018, we were part of an Alpha group. So I was a leader on one of the groups for Alpha and said to one of the couples, oh, would you like to come to a Connect group? And they said yes. So we started meeting at our house. And what we do is we read the bible readings for the Sunday, and then we pray and we discuss them. So now our group is about 6 people. And really, over the time, the friendship has really become a lot stronger, and we just love meeting up, don't we? Yeah. It's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. The conversation might start at the gospel, and it disappears all over the place. And then it's not structured in any way. It's just that we just let it flow and then end up back at the gospel. Near the end, then we say a prayer and then depart and then kind of figure that and let another date for the next month. So that's one thing we do. We also connected to something called the Chemin Neuf, which is I think it was based in France, and then they came over with the first little bits and pieces in England. Yeah. They're worldwide now. So, yeah, we go to some of their meetings and prayer groups and we've been to a few retreats there as well. There's a parish church near us where there's a hub of this group called Chemin Neuf. It's ecumenical. So that one's run by an Anglican priest and his wife. They have another connection down in Cornwall and it's great for retreat. And then, in fact, we went on that one to a Cana weekend with some married couples, and you just go along and you explore your marriage and your faith, with this group. Couples go with children or without children. And the really lovely thing is on the last day, we have a Cana wedding. And so, you know, the tents are put up. Yeah. The feast, a meal. And everybody gathers and, yeah, really lovely celebration. We've been through a whole week of spiritual faith growth, sharing with other couples, time on our own, time for journalling, time for Mass. Mhmm. So, yeah, it's a very lovely week to go on. But during the week, I followed Bible Alive. So you have a piece of blurb about the gospel and the meaning of the gospel. And then you have the first reading, the psalm and the gospel itself. And if it's a Memorial to various saints, then you get that message as well. But for me, it's a great way of starting the day because I get up at 5, so I can read that, and I'm and I'm taking that out into the world. I might forget most of it, but, you know, there's some sort of nugget inside that's actually important. What's really lovely is, because I work away quite a bit during the week now. So Bern will WhatsApp me some of the key messages from Bible Alive. And then when I get out, then that's the first thing I read, and it's really, really helpful. So, yes, that inspiration comes across the waves from Bern, which is lovely. 

Great. There's some great examples there. I will put some links in the episode notes for Chemin Neuf and Bible Alive. 

And maybe also just to share with everyone the other aspect of how my faith has grown is for me, the Ignatian spirituality, I'm very much drawn to that. So I've spent quite a few retreats up at St Beuno’s, North Wales. I find that spiritual growth of taking a character out of the bible, the story, and putting myself in that character's being has helped me to learn, grow, see different perspectives as well, which then helps me out in the world working with lots of different types of people. And just taking silence, moving into silence, being with God. You know how a lot of people say, oh, I never hear what God says to me. So over the years, I've got to a place where actually being in silence lets me hear more of what God is guiding me with, comes through. And then I hear and that's a lovely guide for life. 

So practice over time has really made a difference. 

Yeah. Definitely. And I think this is where when we brought up, we're taught to say our morning prayers, to say our evening prayers. As adults, you know, we realise there is method there and that commitment is real commitment, isn't it, to our faith? Even though we're all tired, we actually do stop. And and okay. You know, the honesty is it doesn't happen every night, but we try our best, don't we? Through Chemin Neuf we've learned about couple prayer. And so at night, as couples, we can then share with each other something that's gone really well. Something has gone bad. Not so well. Yeah. Right, that's it. And also, we ask for a grace for the following day. And actually just in that sharing before we fall into sleep, it's such a gift. 

Sounds lovely. I think what's coming through from both of you is about the routine and the habitual practice of our faith and how important that is and how much growth there can be over time.

Yeah. Very true. I think cos every day is different, isn't it? 

So we've talked about the past a little bit and we've talked about the present. And I just wonder I haven't asked guests this before, but I was just thinking about this, whether you look ahead and have any thoughts about what the future holds.

For me, I'm waiting for the next thing Caroline's gonna drag me into. I I don't think about the future too much apart from going to heaven because that's our direction, isn't it? I would say probably we allow the Spirit to guide us. And yes. So whatever is happening in our life, is this something that's right for us to do? Maybe if it doesn't feel right, we don't do it. Yes. We do try and be guided, don't we? Mhmm. In in our life. Something always happens in the day you're in. And you, in general terms, you can see God all over the place. On reflection, sometimes, mostly for me, on reflection, I think, oh, yeah. But because you know that yesterday's gone, so it's all about today, isn't it? The in the moment type thing. But as for the future, we'll wait for that tomorrow. We don't try and plan, like, 5 years, 10 years ahead. Oh, no. We're happy when in the moment. And I think this is something that God is teaching us to say, be here, be now, be present. So through our interactions, whether it's with clients or work colleagues or family or friends? Actually, are we meeting that person with God? And are we, through Jesus' teaching, whilst he was on the earth, are we showing God to the other person in the world? And that's definitely something I try and live by. So funnily enough, that takes away the thought of those plans for the future. And I would say for me, definitely, it's brought a lot of peace more than the anxiety that I used to live in. 

I was thinking about that question, and then I think it's been very right for the 2 of you in how you are in your lives, and making the most of the present moment. I'm glad we got onto that. 

Exactly. And I think just to finally say, you know, in terms of our marriage, our faith being very, very strong in our lives. God has really helped us to keep together and keep our faith growing stronger and stronger every day. And that's an amen for me. 

So we're drawing to a close, Caroline and Bernard. Thanks ever so much for joining me. This has been a really lovely conversation. I feel so uplifted by meeting you both and hearing about you, putting so much effort and commitment into your faith and into your relationship with each other, with God. I think there's so much there for people to be encouraged by who are listening. And I hope people have really enjoyed that episode. Thanks ever so much.

Lovely. Thank you. 

Thanks so much for joining me on All Kinds of Catholic This Time. I hope today's conversation has resonated with you. A new episode is released each Wednesday. Follow All Kinds of Catholic on the usual podcast platforms to be sure of not missing an episode. And follow our X/ Twitter and Facebook accounts @KindsofCatholic. You can comment on episodes and be part of the dialogue there. You can also text me if you're listening to the podcast on your phone, although I won't be able to reply to those texts. Until the next time