I asked the old couple what secrets they could tell me about living long and well. At first they looked at each other and laughed, then he declared,
"Things are as they are. I know my wife and she knows me. We don't hide from each other. We don't ask each other lots of questions, we aren't anxious, running around all the time. Everything is open between us. We say our prayers and do our work. Most of the day I am outside, and she is inside, and when we unite, we enjoy our company, thanks be to God."
Our lives are a story, dear friends, a pilgrimage in which, hopefully, we grow to spiritual maturity, where we experience inner peace and joy, serenity, in trustfulness, in self-forgetting to self-transcendence. We are invited to surrender to the Holy Mystery together -- in loving communion with one another allowing the Spirit to make us one ... As long as we journey, as long as we are pilgrims and shaping our stories, we cherish the silence at the end of our activity and in the midst of our prayer, where the Holy One is present to be reverenced in mystery and loved in truth.