Claiming our Deepest Desires: The Power of an Intimate Marriage - Softcover

Jerome L. Shen served as director of fundamental research for DuPont Protein Technology International for several years. Presently he serves as visiting professor of chemistry at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, Illinois.

Brennan and Shen have successfully accomplished their goal of providing readers with a book that will ‘affirm and inspire couples to live their marriage covenant.’ It provides thought provoking exercises and reflections after each chapter that are sure to lead individuals into a deeper understanding of themselves and their spouse. It will function as a meaningful book for couples groups, as well as a couple who may wish to grow deeper in love with God and their spouse.Catholic Studies

The reader will be awed to see marriage in a Trinitarian context . . . and will smile at practical problems like miscommunication about kitchen cabinets - all in a reflection steeped in the Ignatian spirituality that this couple has lived out for many years.Rosemary Jermann, co-editor, Theology Digest, and adjunct instructor, Saint Louis University

The authors draw on their own experiences, intimacy, and aspirations as a married couple as well as their work in running workshops and retreats for married couples for their counsel on how to enjoy marriage as a special spiritual state. . . . They talk about the notion of a 'mission' as a part of marriage which helps husband and wife keep a focus and which infuses the different factors of a marriage, including the practicalities, with the sense of what is at stake in them, thus continually motivating the marriage partners to cooperate and seek the best in their marriage.Midwest Book Review

This is a thoroughly practical book. . . . It will function as a meaningful book for couples groups, as well as a couple who may wish to grow deeper in love with God and their spouse.Catholic Books Review

In this book Bridget Brennan and Jerome Shen show couples ways to build a closer connection between faith and the daily challenges of marriage. They draw on a number of sources, including their own experience in marriage, and provide helpful reflection questions as well. May this help couples to realize more deeply the holiness that is right before them.Kathleen Finley

From the depth and breadth of their married experience, Bridget and Jerry accompany and assist those of us who walk, and occasionally stumble, along the same journey. They offer a patient, trustworthy, at times vulnerable companionship. As witnesses, they are the best teachers about what it means to grow spiritually in and through marriage.H. Richard McCord, Executive Director, USCCB Committee on Marriage and Family Life

Bridget Brennan and Jerome Shen, a long-married couple, acknowledge that writing this book together helped them grow in love, intimacy, and the desire to live what they believe and write. Reading it, and especially working through the reflective exercises it offers will do the same for readers. They will be helped to discover and communicate their own marital stories, and to grow in the love not only of one another but also of the God who calls them to marriage and blesses their faithful marriage as the sacrament of the relationship between Christ and Christ's church. Claiming Our Deepest Desires is applied theology and spirituality at its best.Michael G. Lawler, Amelia and Emil Graff Chair in Catholic Theological Studies and Director of the Center for Marriage and Family, Creighton University