Counseling concepts and applications

¶ … magnum opus "Marital Spirituality: The Search for the Hidden Ground of Love" by Patrick J. McDonald & Claudette M. McDonald on how it assists a pastoral agent in making expedient counseling response in pastoral care. The Works Cited appends one source in MLA format.

Counseling

Spirituality, a pragmatic science uniting the married relationship of couples with the pleasures and deep comprehension of God and His special ways takes the form of marital spirituality when two individuals enter a contract to lead harmonious and peaceful lives. "For a society plagued with widespread marital unhappiness and an intimidatingly high divorce rate" (McDonald P. & McDonald C, Backcover) pastoral care by a pastoral agent spreads the "message of hope" to the disturbed souls that have long tied knots only to discover that it takes one's inside out to make marriage fulfilling and successful. The McDonalds through their magnum opus have made a noteworthy effort to assist the pastoral agent as well as the sentimentally unstable married couples to deepen their understanding of "God as the ground of genuine married love" (McDonald P. & McDonald C., Backcover). The pastoral agent is further assisted by the masterpiece Marital Spirituality: The Search for the Hidden Ground of Love in making his conferring efforts and counseling sessions more effective for the shattered couples by offering four possible methods of encouraging spirituality in emotionally tarnished couples. Reading this thought-provoking piece of remarkable writing, the pastoral agent learns how to help his patients and respondents encourage and develop "a more sensitized bonding" (McDonald P. & McDonald C., Backcover). Moreover, the pastoral agent further gets an insight into the process of assisting the couples seeking his help in helping them understand the significance of the divine revelations and holy experiences by looking beyond the immediate while also accepting the teachings of God with an open heart. In short, a pastoral agent learns how to help the couples approaching him in making their marital relationships highly rewarding by showing them distinct yet easy ways to enhance marital spirituality. Patrick and Claudette McDonald help pastoral agents thereby indirectly providing guidelines for emotionally wretched couples to ameliorate their married life by compelling the priest or the spiritual counselor to concentrate and heavily rely on the spiritually comforting, mind healing and soul searching practice of Lectio Divina. The great guide by McDonalds helps priests to mould their attitudes and pastoral responses and condition their minds according to the counseling situation by seeking direct help from sacred scriptures and the innate differences underlying opposite sexes. The book thus provides a thorough guide to the pastoral agent in how to help the couples in studying these divine annals and making praying a part of daily routine thereby embedding spirituality in every aspect of the married life.

The Catholic spouses team helps unsteady marriage partners observe the marital union as a significant and a true spiritual camaraderie and to comprehend the fine line between the spiritual friendship between married partners and unmarried friends. The biggest contribution of this soul-soothing piece of work is to help the pastoral agent (playing an integral role in re-igniting the spiritual and romantic spark in mentally shaken couples) well discern the interweaving of various factors that are common to the married couples and the harmony in which, brings about a happy and a contented married life. Marital Spirituality considerably assists the pastoral agent in reviewing a couple's commitment both initial and later, their ability and desire to share intimate moments, the contemporary development of love, their individual sentimental lives, respective family relationships, gender disparities, sensuality, economic expectations and financial status and their separate expectations from and understanding of marriage. Thus, this marvelous work assists the pastoral agent to help the couples understand the need to keep a strict check on their differences and resolve them as soon they appear without procrastination that only results in augmented intricacies and further differences. Consequently, the deep understanding of these differences helps the pastoral agent in compelling the couples to comprehend the urgent need to incorporate certain much-needed values in the marital partnership of spiritual companioning. These spiritual or moralistic principles pertaining to being honest, humble, gentle, nice, understanding and accepting each other with the entire negative as well as the positive characteristics are common to all of us. What is uncommon is the comprehension of their fundamental role in building a solid and a smooth marital relationship. Helping the couples in transmuting the negative into positive of each other, focusing on the positive aspects and growth of their married life, working out the differences, accepting each other while establishing a greater intimacy with God, this book helps the pastoral agent in playing his role positively and effectively. Thus, the couples (looking forward to a better and a stronger marital and spiritual relationship) are offered a three-step guide to approach, incorporate and practice Lectio Divina in their relationship thereby transforming it from the mundane reality to an experience of profound spirituality. This simple to follow guide also helps the pastoral agents in improving their ability to increase the spirituality essence in the emotionally lacerated couples who are finding hard to keep their marital relationships pleasantly working.