wwme 43 national conference chennai

Couples Accompaniment

Worldwide Marriage Encounter India

(50 years of service for the couples in India)

“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 couples. I had attended the weekends training 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. Worldwide Marriage Encounter (WWME), is a program that has helped countless couples connect in healthy ways and deepen their intimacy, living out the commitment as couples.

Genesis: Worldwide Marriage Encounter is considered the first marriage enrichment program offered to married couples. The story of WWME began in 1952 when a young priest in Spain, Fr. Gabriel Calvo, began developing a series of conferences for married couples to encourage open and honest relationships within marriage and the living out of a sacramental relationship in the service of others.

In India Marriage Encounter has been active from 1973 onwards and established all over India as smaller units in different states. Today, WWME weekends are offered in numerous languages and dialects.

Couples will explore their individual personality styles, improve listening and communication skills, understand God’s plan for their marriage, and learn how to keep their relationship a priority. All sharing between spouses is private, and the experience aims to help couples in good marriages communicate even better.

To Note: Marriage Encounter is designed to give married couples the opportunity to examine their lives together ... a time to share their feelings, 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 couples leading a holy life, showing good examples for 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 been appointed as the National Ecclesial Team (NET) coordinating priest From January 2022 to December 2024. There are 5 units in Tamil Nadu as the active ME Unit Coordination Team (UCT) and planning to reach out to 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 the 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 on 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 priority in the church and couples have 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 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, priests and religious are chosen by God for a great mission to take forward the marriage encounter programme to the couples. As we look ahead, we want to continue to attract couples of all ages, but particularly young couples, to the WWME experience to ensure its future. We want to inspire and engage our thousands of encountered couples and priests to help us fulfil our mission.

Worldwide Marriage Encounter invites all married couples to renew the romance, revitalize their marriage, communicate more openly, find deeper intimacy, focus on their spouse, and share joy. The positive effects are not limited to just the spouses; the entire family will benefit from the growing love as well.

Support Us: