Spiritual Retreats for Married Couples

Balthasar interprets marriage as a life-giving form [Gestalt]:

"What could be stronger than marriage, or what shapes any

particular life-form more profoundly than does marriage? . . . When they make their promises,

the spouses are not relying on themselves—the shifting songs of their own freedom—

but rather on the form that chooses them because they have chosen it, the form to which

they have committed themselves in their act as persons. As persons, the spouses entrust

themselves not only to the beloved ‘‘thou’’ and to the biological laws of fertility and family;

they entrust themselves foremost to a form with which they can wholly identify themselves

even in the deepest aspects of their personality because this form extends through all the

levels of life—from its biological roots up to the very heights of grace and life in the Holy

Spirit. And now, suddenly, all fruitfulness, all freedom is discovered within the form itself,

and the life of a married person can henceforth be understood only in terms of this interior

mystery"

The Glory of the Lord, Vol. 1, Seeing the Form, p 27.