It’s a classic scenario.

A husband and wife come into a counseling environment and start blaming each other for their marital problems. They are so quick to point fingers at one another that they don’t realize that maybe their fingers should be pointing the opposite direction – back at themselves.

Couples often fail to see that the challenges they face in marriage provide opportunities to reflect on themselves and what each of them brings to the conflict.

Rev. Dr. Elias Dorham, Pastor at St. John Chrysostom Melkite Catholic Church in Atlanta, Georgia, explains, “If I’m upset about something, it could be pointing to something in me that needs adjustment or correction.”

Fr. Elias is no stranger to working with married couples. He focused his doctoral research on viewing communication and conflict within marriage as opportunities for mutual martyrdom and sanctification.

During his doctoral project, he designed and piloted a marriage enrichment program geared toward Orthodox Christians. This program was designed with two goals: to ground participating couples in an Orthodox Christian theological vision of marriage and to help them reframe common marital challenges related to communication and forgiveness.

“I felt that if I could help couples learn to see the ordinary challenges of marriage as encounters with Christ, these challenges might become a means for their healing and their transformation,” says Fr. Elias.

In difficult moments with a spouse, Christ is actually confronting an individual husband or wife in a way that he or she may not initially recognize or understand, and He will work it for their good (Rom. 8:28).

This does not excuse bad behavior in future conflicts. But it does call each person in a relationship to deeper self-reflection and taking steps toward Christ. They must personally surrender and let their hearts be transformed as they continue journeying toward sanctification through the vocation of marriage.

An Invitation to Find Mutual Forgiveness

Fr. Elias will further explore his Marriage Enrichment program and other concepts of his doctoral dissertation in an upcoming Communio Conversations webinar on Friday, September 20, at 1:30 PM EST.

Communio Conversations is an opportunity for church leaders to share and discuss faith-based solutions for marriage and family, knowing that 20 percent of Christian marriages that are struggling in the United States, according to Communio’s Nationwide Study on Faith and Relationships.

During the webinar, Fr. Elias will identify common obstacles to mutual forgiveness and share some effective techniques for making mutual forgiveness possible in marriage. Mutual forgiveness is a proactive approach to healing a marriage by choosing to forgive, even before the other partner may realize that they have done something to hurt or offend.

Through helping married couples enter into the vulnerability to both ask for forgiveness and to extend forgiveness, a great opportunity exists to not just change the statistics on marital decline, but to systemically alter the breakdown of the family and the handing on of the faith to future generations.

A Christ-centered relationship revolution is underway, and, with resources like Fr. Elias’ Marriage Enrichment Program for Orthodox Christians, we can teach couples that the ordinary challenges of marriage pave the way to Heaven. If couples can weather storms in their marriages, their children and their children’s children will have a clear path of sanctification to follow in their own marriages.

Click the button below to register for the upcoming Communion Conversations webinar with Rev. Dr. Elias Dorham.