This article puts together the key points of the Pope Francis' advice to couples preparing for marriage which are contained in Amoris Laetitia. It also contains the sections on Preparing the Marriage Celebration and the First Years of Marriage.
Sub-headings were added to facilitate reading.
PREPARING
ENGAGED COUPLES FOR MARRIAGE
·
Discover beauty of
marriage.
We need to help young people discover the
dignity and beauty of marriage. They should be helped to perceive the
attraction of a complete union that elevates and perfects life in society, gives sexuality its deepest meaning, and
benefits children by offering them the best context for their growth and
development.
·
To understand the
mystery of family, remember God’s infinite love. In and among
families, the Gospel message should
always resound; the core of that message, the kerygma: the mystery of the
Christian family can be fully understood only in the light of the Father's
infinite love revealed in Christ, who gave himself up for our sake and who
continues to dwell in our midst.
·
Virtues; chastity. The importance of the virtues needs to be
included. Among these, chastity
proves invaluable for the genuine growth of love between persons.
·
Grounded on
baptism as covenant with Christ. Marriage preparation should be grounded in
the process of Christian initiation by bringing out the connection between
marriage, baptism and the other sacraments…"Mutual self-giving in the
sacrament of matrimony is grounded in the grace of baptism, which establishes
the foundational covenant of every person with Christ in the Church. In
accepting each other, and with Christ's grace, the engaged couple promise each
other total self-giving, faithfulness and openness to new life. The couple
recognizes these elements as constitutive of marriage, gifts offered to them by
God, and take seriously their mutual commitment, in God's name and in the
presence of the Church. Faith thus makes it possible for them to assume the
goods of marriage as commitments that can be better kept through the help of
the grace of the sacrament. Consequently, the Church looks to married couples
as the heart of the entire family, which, in turn, looks to Jesus". The
sacrament is not a "thing" or a "power", for in it Christ
himself "now encounters Christian spouses... He dwells with them, gives
them the strength to take up their crosses and so follow him, to rise again
after they have fallen, to forgive one another, to bear one another's burdens."
·
Initiation into
sacrament of matrimony. Marriage preparation should be a kind of "initiation" to the sacrament of
matrimony, providing couples with the help they need to receive the
sacrament worthily and to make a solid beginning of life as a family.
·
First objective in
preparation: love this person. The primary objective is to help each to learn how to love this very real person
with whom he or she plans to share his or her whole life. Learning to love
someone does not happen automatically, nor can it be taught in a workshop just
prior to the celebration of marriage. For every couple, marriage preparation
begins at birth. What they received from their family should prepare them to
know themselves and to make a full and definitive commitment.
·
Marriage: unconditional
choice and daily renewal. Those best prepared for marriage are probably those
who learned what Christian marriage is from their own parents, who chose each other unconditionally and daily
renew this decision.
·
Recognize future
risks.
Assist engaged couples to recognize
eventual problems and risks. In this way, they can come to realize the
wisdom of breaking off a relationship whose failure and painful aftermath can
be foreseen. In their initial enchantment with one another, couples can attempt
to conceal or relativize certain things and to avoid disagreements; only later
do problems surface.
·
Discuss
expectations.
For this reason, they should be strongly encouraged to discuss what each expects from marriage, what they understand by love
and commitment, what each wants from the other and what kind of life they would
like to build together. Such discussions would help them to see if they in
fact have little in common and to realize that mutual attraction alone will not
suffice to keep them together. Nothing is more volatile, precarious and
unpredictable than desire. The decision to marry should never be encouraged
unless the couple has discerned deeper reasons that will ensure a genuine and
stable commitment.
·
Firm resolve to
face sacrifice: trust. In any event, if one partner clearly recognizes the
other's weak points, he or she needs to have a realistic trust in the possibility of helping to develop the good
points that counterbalance them, and in this way to foster their human
growth. This entails a willingness to face eventual sacrifices, problems and
situations of conflict; it demands a firm
resolve to be ready for this.
·
Detect danger
signals. Reveal self and know the other. Couples need to be able to detect
danger signals in their relationship and to find, before the wedding, effective
ways of responding to them. Sadly, many couples marry without really knowing
one another. They have enjoyed each other's company and done things together,
but without facing the challenge of
revealing themselves and coming to know who the other person truly is.
·
Marriage as
life-long calling.
Both short-term and long-term marriage preparation should ensure that the
couple do not view the wedding ceremony
as the end of the road, but instead embark
upon marriage as a lifelong calling based on a firm and realistic decision to
face all trials and difficult moments together. The pastoral care of
engaged and married couples should be centered on the marriage bond, assisting
couples not only to deepen their love but
also to overcome problems and difficulties. This involves not only helping
them to accept the Church's teaching and to have recourse to her valuable
resources, but also offering practical programs, sound advice, proven
strategies and psychological guidance. All this calls for a pedagogy of love,
attuned to the feelings and needs of young people and capable of helping them
to grow interiorly.
·
Helpful resources,
especially Confession. Marriage preparation should also provide couples with
the names of places, people and services to which they can turn for help when
problems arise. It is also important to remind them of the availability of the sacrament of Reconciliation, which allows
them to bring their sins and past mistakes, and their relationship itself,
before God, and to receive in turn his merciful forgiveness and healing
strength.
THE
PREPARATION OF THE CELEBRATION
·
Avoid focusing on
material preparation.
Simple celebration to prioritize love.
Short-term preparations for marriage tend to be concentrated on invitations,
clothes, the party and any number of other details that tend to drain not only
the budget but energy and joy as well. The spouses come to the wedding ceremony
exhausted and harried, rather than focused and ready for the great step that
they are about to take. The same kind of preoccupation with a big celebration
also affects certain de facto unions; because of the expenses involved, the
couple, instead of being concerned above all with their love and solemnizing it
in the presence of others, never get married. Here let me say a word to
fiancés. Have the courage to be
different. Don't let yourselves get swallowed up by a society of consumption
and empty appearances. What is important is the love you share, strengthened
and sanctified by grace. You are capable of opting
for a more modest and simple celebration in which love takes precedence over
everything else. Pastoral workers and the entire community can help make
this priority the norm rather than
the exception.
·
Learn and
appreciate the meaning of the liturgical celebration. In their
preparation for marriage, the couple should be encouraged to make the liturgical celebration a profound
personal experience and to appreciate the meaning of each of its signs. In
the case of two baptized persons, the commitment expressed by the words of
consent and the bodily union that consummates the marriage can only be seen as
signs of the covenantal love and union between the incarnate Son of God and his
Church. In the baptized, words and signs become an eloquent language of faith.
The body, created with a God-given meaning, "becomes the language of the
ministers of the sacrament, aware that in the conjugal pact there is expressed
and realized the mystery that has its origin in God himself".
·
Words of consent:
involve totality of the future. At times, the couple does not grasp the
theological and spiritual import of the words of consent, which illuminate the
meaning of all the signs that follow. It needs to be stressed that these words cannot be reduced to the
present; they involve a totality that includes the future: "until death do
us part". The content of the words of consent makes it clear that
"freedom and fidelity are not opposed to one another; rather, they are
mutually supportive, both in interpersonal and social relationships. Indeed,
let us consider the damage caused, in our culture of global communication, by
the escalation of un-kept promises... Honoring one's word, fidelity to one's
promises: these are things that cannot be bought and sold. They cannot be
compelled by force or maintained without sacrifice".
·
Sacrament
influences whole of married life. "Many [young people] concentrate on
their wedding day and forget the life-long commitment they are about to enter
into". They need to be encouraged to see
the sacrament not as a single moment that then becomes a part of the past and
its memories, but rather as a reality that permanently influences the whole of
married life. The procreative meaning of sexuality, the language of the
body, and the signs of love shown throughout married life, all become an
"uninterrupted continuity of liturgical language" and "conjugal
life becomes in a certain sense liturgical".
·
Meditate on
readings and signs.
The couple can also meditate on the
biblical readings and the meaningfulness of the rings they will exchange
and the other signs that are part of the rite.
·
Pray together and
consecrate love to Mary. Nor would it be good for them to arrive at the
wedding without ever having prayed together, one for the other, to seek God's
help in remaining faithful and generous, to ask the Lord together what he wants
of them, and to consecrate their love
before an image of the Virgin Mary.
THE
FIRST YEARS OF MARRIED LIFE
·
Marriage only for
those who freely choose to love. It is important that marriage be seen as
a matter of love, that only those who
freely choose and love one another may marry. When love is merely physical
attraction or a vague affection, spouses become particularly vulnerable once
this affection wanes or physical attraction diminishes. Given the frequency
with which this happens, it is all the more essential that couples be helped
during the first years of their married life to enrich and deepen their conscious and free decision to have, hold and
love one another for life. Often the engagement period is not long enough,
the decision is precipitated for various reasons and, what is even more
problematic, the couple themselves are insufficiently mature. As a result, the
newly married couple need to complete a process that should have taken place
during their engagement.
·
Marriage does not
happen once for all: active role in life-long project. Another great challenge of marriage
preparation is to help couples realize
that marriage is not something that happens once for all. Their union is
real and irrevocable, confirmed and consecrated by the sacrament of matrimony.
Yet in joining their lives, the spouses assume
an active and creative role in a lifelong project. Their gaze now has to be
directed to the future that, with the help of God's grace, they are daily
called to build. For this very reason,
neither spouse can expect the other to be perfect. Each must set aside all
illusions and accept the other as he or
she actually is: an unfinished product, needing to grow, a work in progress.
A persistently critical attitude towards one's partner is a sign that marriage
was not entered into as a project to be worked on together, with patience,
understanding, tolerance and generosity. Slowly but surely, love will then give
way to constant questioning and criticism, dwelling on each other's good and
bad points, issuing ultimatums and engaging in competition and
self-justification. The couple then prove incapable of helping one another to
build a mature union. This fact needs to be realistically presented to newly
married couples from the outset, so that they can grasp that the wedding is "just the
beginning". By saying "I do", they embark on a journey that requires them to overcome all obstacles
standing in the way of their reaching the goal. The nuptial blessing that
they receive is a grace and an incentive for this journey. They can only
benefit from sitting down and talking to one another about how, concretely,
they plan to achieve their goal.
·
Hope that others
can change.
Love does not despair of the future: the hope of one who knows that others can
change, mature and radiate unexpected beauty and untold potential. This does
not mean that everything will change in this life. It does involve realizing
that, though things may not always turn out as we wish, God may well make
crooked lines straight and draw some good from the evil we endure in this
world.
·
Hope enables looking
beyond problems.
I recall an old saying: still water becomes stagnant and good for nothing. If,
in the first years of marriage, a couple's experience of love grows stagnant,
it loses the very excitement that should be its propelling force. Young love
needs to keep dancing towards the future with immense hope. Hope is the leaven
that, in those first years of engagement and marriage, makes it possible to
look beyond arguments, conflicts and problems and to see things in a broader
perspective. It harnesses our uncertainties and concerns so that growth can
take place. Hope also bids us live fully in the present, giving our all to the
life of the family, for the best way to prepare a solid future is to live well
in the present.
·
Put other’s
happiness ahead of my own. This process occurs in various stages that call for
generosity and sacrifice. The first powerful feelings of attraction give way to
the realization that the other is now a part of my life. The pleasure of
belonging to one another leads to seeing
life as a common project, putting the other's happiness ahead of my own, and
realizing with joy that this marriage enriches society.
·
Negotiate out of
mutual love.
As love matures, it also learns to "negotiate". Far from anything
selfish or calculating, such negotiation is an exercise of mutual love, an
interplay of give and take, for the good of the family. At each new stage of
married life, there is a need to sit down and renegotiate agreements, so that
there will be no winners and losers, but rather two winners. In the home,
decisions cannot be made unilaterally, since each spouse shares responsibility
for the family; yet each home is unique and each marriage will find an
arrangement that works best.
·
Avoid unduly high
expectations.
Among the causes of broken marriages are unduly
high expectations about conjugal life. Once it becomes apparent that the
reality is more limited and challenging than one imagined, the solution is not
to think quickly and irresponsibly about separation, but to come to the sober realization that married
life is a process of growth, in which each spouse is God's means of helping the
other to mature. Change, improvement, the flowering of the good qualities
present in each person — all these are possible. Each marriage is a kind of "salvation history", which
from fragile beginnings — thanks to God's gift and a creative and generous
response on our part — grows over time into something precious and enduring.
Might we say that the greatest mission of
two people in love is to help one another become, respectively, more a man and
more a woman?
·
Help the other
shape own identity.
Fostering growth means helping a person
to shape his or her own identity. Love is thus a kind of craftsmanship.
When we read in the Bible about the creation of man and woman, we see God first
forming Adam (cf. Gen 2:7); he realizes that something essential is lacking and
so he forms Eve and then hears the man exclaim in amazement, "Yes, this
one is just right for me!" We can almost hear the amazing dialogue that
must have taken place when the man and the woman first encountered one another.
In the life of married couples, even at difficult moments, one person can
always surprise the other, and new doors can open for their relationship, as if
they were meeting for the first time. At every new stage, they can keep
"forming" one another. Love makes each wait for the other with the
patience of a craftsman, a patience which comes from God.
·
Be generous in
giving life: children as gifts. Encourage newly married couples to be generous in bestowing life. "In
accord with the personal and fully human character of conjugal love, family
planning fittingly takes place as the result a consensual dialogue between the
spouses, respect for times and consideration of the dignity of the partner. Counter
a mentality that is often hostile to life... Decisions involving responsible
parenthood presupposes the formation of conscience, which is 'the most secret
core and sanctuary of a person. There each one is alone with God, whose voice
echoes in the depths of the heart' (Gaudium et
Spes, 16). The
more the couple tries to listen in conscience to God and his commandments (cf.
Rom 2:15),
and is accompanied spiritually, the more their decision will be profoundly free
of subjective caprice and accommodation to prevailing social mores". "[The
couple] will make decisions by common counsel and effort. Let them thoughtfully
take into account both their own welfare and that of their children, those
already born and those which the future may bring. For this accounting they
need to reckon with both the material and the spiritual conditions of the times
as well as of their state in life. Finally, they should consult the interests
of the family group, of temporal society and of the Church herself. The parents
themselves and no one else should ultimately make this judgment in the sight of
God". Moreover, "the use of methods based on the 'laws of nature and
the incidence of fertility' (Humanae Vitae, 11) are to be
promoted, since 'these methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness
between them and favor the education of an authentic freedom' (Catechism
of the Catholic Church, 2370). Greater emphasis needs to be placed on the fact that
children are a wonderful gift from God and a joy for parents and the Church.
Through them, the Lord renews the world".
·
Some practical
suggestions:
planning free time together, moments of recreation with the children, different
ways of celebrating important events, shared opportunities for spiritual
growth.
·
Develop a routine that
bonds.
Encourage young married couples to develop a routine that gives a healthy sense
of closeness and stability through shared daily rituals. These could include a
morning kiss, an evening blessing, waiting at the door to welcome each other
home, taking trips together and sharing household chores. Yet it also helps to
break the routine with a party, and to enjoy family celebrations of
anniversaries and special events. We need these moments of cherishing God's
gifts and renewing our zest for life. As long as we can celebrate, we are able
to rekindle our love, to free it from monotony and to color our daily routine
with hope.
·
Grow in faith. Encourage families
to grow in faith. This means encouraging frequent confession, spiritual
direction and occasional retreats. It also means encouraging family prayer
during the week, since "the family that prays together stays
together".
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