Traveling together on the road to reconciliation

They have been married for almost 35 years now, with three grown-up daughters and a grandson. The wife is Catholic, and the husband Evangelical Lutheran. Thirty-five years ago, it certainly was not easy to live as a couple belonging to two different Churches.

E. : I grew up in a small Catholic village. When I was pursuing my studies as an elementary school teacher, my eyes were suddenly opened to the division among the different confessions. I was then living in Nuremburg where there was an Evangelical university specializing in education. At that time, there was a rigid division between Catholic and Evanglical schools. To avoid the risk of not finding a job, I had to look for a Catholic university and transfer to Eichstätt, another city.

P. : I spent my childhood at Ochsenfurt along the Main River (Germany). We Evangelicals were living in the diaspora, and we had no contacts at all with the Catholic parish. At the end of the 60s, I took a specialization course in Munich on differentiated schools.

E. : I was there taking the same course, and that was how we met and started seeing each other. At the beginning, we avoided the idea of forming a family. Our respective Churches then kept us on guard against “mixed” marriages.

By coincidence, I received an invitation from a friend to travel to Rome. I read the invitation hastily thinking it was for tourism, and I decided to go. I found myself in an ecumenical meeting of “Centro Uno,” the ecumenical center of the Focolare Movement. I did not know anything about what was going on, and in the beginning I was not enthusiastic at all. But then Chiara Lubich’s explanation of Jesus’ words in St. Matthew’s Gospel, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Mt 18,20) struck me. It did not say, “Where two or three Catholics…,” nor “Where two or three Evangelicals…,” but “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” I invited my friend to come with me to the next meeting.

P. : It was then that we found the courage to start a family together. I pledged to myself to love my wife’s Church as much as I love my own. Naturally, I too had my own difficulties in accepting typically Catholic forms of piety, such as when our daughters participated in the procession of “Corpus Domini,” proudly donning their white dresses. I joined them, but just out of sheer love for my family.

E. : For me it was something new and unusual to see him read from the Bible everyday, according to his Evangelical tradition. For a while I let him read alone, then – also for sheer love at the beginning – I kept him company. Now I can no longer do without it. Since the time we took Chiara Lubich’s meditation on Jesus in the midst as our own, we always finish the reading by promising each other to do everything to keep His presence among us. In spite of all our mistakes, limitations and  weaknesses we try to maintain reciprocal love and start over and over again.

(E. and P. – Germany)