Couples
Accompaniment
“Love one another as I have loved
you”
Worldwide Marriage Encounter is a movement
that helps couples to live out their commitment of their profession of love
they have made on the wedding day. WWME is a pastoral ministry that would help
married couples to renew/to enrich/ to live the sacrament as a Christian family
and to proclaim the value of Marriage and Holy Orders in the Church and in the
world. This program is organized on weekends for the couples. I had attended
the weekends trainings and found it very useful to me. It may be useful for the
other religious who are all involved in the pastoral ministry and building their
respective religious communities. There
are enormous challenges to married life and commitment today. There are ups and
downs, joys and sorrows, success and disappointments in marriage. Pope Francis said, “Marriage is not easy.
It is never easy… but it is so beautiful… it is beautiful.” The most
beautiful part is when a man and woman pledge their love for life. A movement
like Worldwide Marriage Encounter helps to promote weekends to enhance growth
and happiness in married relationships and to make good marriages great.
To Note: Marriage Encounter is designed to give
married couples the opportunity to examine their lives together ... a time to
share their feelings, their hopes, disappointments, joys and frustrations ...
and to do so openly and honestly in a face-to-face, heart-to-heart encounter
with the one person they have chosen to live with for the rest of their life. The
emphasis of Marriage Encounter is on communication between husband and wife,
who spend the weekend together away from the distractions and the tensions of
everyday life, to concentrate on each other.
Divine Call is the Source of Inspiration for ME
My journey with WWME, is a
great inspiration for me and to know about Marriage encounter (ME) from the sharing
by the couples. I have seen many of the couples leading a holy life, showing
good example for the other couples, in the Church and more than that in their
Marriage encounter ministry. As I have seen their struggle in leading a holy
life because they have many challenges in the family living but they are
together because they have understood each other. It is a God’s gift that each
and every member of ME is called by God to bear witness as couples and to be a
source of inspiration for other couples. I feel that God called me through Mr.
Dorairaj and Ms. Mary Alphonsa to encounter the couples. It is a call within a
call to do Marriage Encounter ministry as a Salesian of Don Bosco (SDB). I had
the opportunity to attend weekend programmes and have undergone many changes being
a religious priest living in communities. At present Fr. Arulkumar SDB has appointed as
the National Ecclesial Team (NET) coordinating priest. There are 5 units in
Tamil Nadu as the active ME Unit Coordination Team (UCT) and planning to reach
out the other diocese.
Importance
of Worldwide Marriage Encounter Weekends
Couples and priests are invited to take
part in a marriage encounter weekend which is set in a loving atmosphere. It is
designed to help married couples communicate more intimately with each other in
order to deepen and enrich their relationship. We all live in a very busy
world, constantly on the move from one activity to another and very often do
not have time for our spouse or ourselves.
A marriage encounter weekend helps a
couple to be together alone, to be away from all the distractions, to take time
out, to focus on their relationship and to reconnect with the spouse. The
effect of the weekend will leave a couple renewed in their commitment, restore
communication and rekindle romance in their married relationship. The weekend
fans the flames of the amber of love and leaving a couple refreshingly all over
in love again. In the marriage encounter we believe that a couple does not
‘need’ a weekend but rather ‘deserves’ a weekend because they are spending the
time for the most important and precious relationship with their spouse. It
reminds them of how special a couple’s love is for each other and how strong
they can grow together.
Continual
Renewal of Love
A priest or a religious is also a
part of the Marriage Encounter weekend. Just as a couple has made a lifelong
commitment, so too a priest has made a lifelong commitment to the Church, the
people of God. The sacrament of matrimony and priesthood are parallel
sacraments. It deepens his relationship with his people as he encounters
himself in the weekend and is better able to understand the struggles of his
people, the joys and sorrows of his people and helps in communication at a
deeper level.
Pastoral Accompaniment
Pastoral care
must take the priority in the church and the couples have a special attention in this. We must be patient
and merciful to those who find themselves living in grave danger of breaking
their relationships. They are to be treated as Jesus did to the poor, weak,
suffering, and wounded. However, the pastoral priority, indicated by Amoris Laetitia
for the present time, is to prevent as far as possible wounds, divisions,
and marriage failures. “Today, more important than before, the pastoral care of
failures is the pastoral effort to strengthen marriages and thus to prevent
their breakdown” (AL 307; cf. ibid., 211).
We must confidently and
patiently develop organic family
pastoral care, including remote and immediate marriage preparation and,
after the wedding, the formation of the couple and especially the young
spouses (cf. AL 200; 202; 207; 208; 227;
229; 230). For this, personal closeness and family encounters, small groups and
communities are more beneficial than convoked assemblies and crowded meetings.
With this aim, it is necessary to promote the protagonism of the families
themselves and their missionary responsibility (“families which go forth”),
while emphasizing, among other things, the cooperation of movements and
ecclesial associations.
To conclude …
Marriage Encounter couples share the
incredible gift of their “couple power” to the world around. Worldwide Marriage
Encounter hopes to reach out to many more married couples, priests and
religious bringing Marriage Encounter to many more countries and dioceses. When
I did a Marriage Encounter weekend it changed my perspective of my priesthood,
it helped me to grow in the conviction of being there for my people. In every
weekend programme I had experienced that I was rejuvenated and invariably at
the end of the weekend programme I could sense the energy and vibrancy of the
entire atmosphere that had changed because of the sharing of the participants.
It is an amazing experience that refuels and renews the love that God has
placed in our hearts for Jesus himself says, “Love one another as I have loved
you,” and was expressed by giving his life for his bride the Church.
The ME couples,
priest and religious are chosen by God for a great mission to take forward the
marriage encounter programme to the couples.
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