Strengthening Marriage and the Family

 "According to God's design, matrimony is the basis of the wider community which is the family, for the very institution of matrimony and married love are ordained for procreation and education of offspring and find their crown in the offspring."

It is said that if we were to compile all the writings of the Church about marriage it would stack 6,000 pages high. Some 4,000 of those pages were written by Blessed Pope John Paul II himself. Just imagining the depth of that is amazing! It is even more profound when we read these teachings and realize that if we can live by them, our whole society could be transformed.

The first major teaching project of Blessed Pope John Paul II’s pontificate was a series of general audience addresses that took place over a five-year period. This collection of 129 short talks has come to be known as the Theology of the Body. It is a teaching that gets to the very heart of who we are as human persons, male and female, created in the image and likeness of God, and helps us to ask ourselves some very fundamental questions: Who am I? How do I live my life in a way that brings true happiness?

A major focus of the work of the Office of Marriage and Family is to oversee the implementation of the Diocese of Worcester’s Pastoral Policy for Marriage Preparation which governs our care for engaged couples as they prepare for a life-long, faith-filled marriage. In an engaged couple’s year-long period of preparation, one of the programs they attend is a seminar called God’s Plan for a Joy-Filled Marriage. Based on Blessed Pope John Paul’s Theology of the Body, the program presents the “why’s behind the what’s” of Catholic teaching about God’s glorious plan for marriage and the gift of human sexuality.

Why is this such an important, and foundational, component of marriage preparation? The love of God is reflected in a special way in the Sacrament of Marriage. The love of husband and wife is meant to be a Christ-like love, a love that is free, total, faithful, and fruitful. In order to have a good marriage, Christ must be at its center. This is not easy to live out in today’s culture. We need not look far to see how painful broken relationships can be. In fact, a number of years prior to his election to the papacy, Blessed Pope John Paul II had already been devoting much of his reflection to the mystery of the human person. So much so, that his entire ministry was committed to defending the dignity of the human person against the “pulverization of the times.” One of the first things couples learn when they come to a God’s Plan for a Joy-Filled Marriage seminar is that God has a “blueprint” for our lives, and for marriage, and if we reflect on God’s plan for marriage and we begin to shape all our ways of thinking and acting according to God’s plan, we will be well on our way to a life-long and happy marriage.

Some rather sobering statistics provide further evidence of the need for conveying the Church’s teaching about marriage. Surveys of engaged couples within the Diocese of Worcester indicate that more than 75% of couples are cohabiting and more than 90% are sexually active. After attending the God’s Plan seminar, the majority of these couples said they now plan on or are seriously considering saving sex for marriage. While we have a long way to go in getting the Church’s beautiful vision across on a larger scale, these statistics certainly give us a lot of hope as we see hearts, lives, and relationships being transformed in Christ.

A couple of examples of how the Holy Spirit is changing hearts through the God’s Plan program: During one seminar, a young man was moved to avail himself of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. After having slipped out to the church during the afternoon and then coming back to rejoin the seminar, he told the facilitators at the end of the day, with tears in his eyes, that what he had learned that day had totally changed his life. On another occasion, a young bride-to-be shared that while she had been raised with no religion she was taking classes to become Catholic to be more united with her Catholic fiancé. Up until attending the seminar she wasn’t completely convinced she was doing the right thing. By the end of the day she said, “Now I know for sure I want to become a Catholic and I want to get married in the Church.”

The Office of Marriage and Family is very grateful to all who support the annual Partners in Charity appeal. It is thanks to your generosity in the Name of Jesus that we are able provide valuable, life-changing services that strengthen marriage and the family, the most vital cell of society.

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