November 20, 2009

Sex, love and marriage: as God wills it

First group of facilitators are trained to teach engaged couples about ‘God’s Plan for a Joy-Filled Marriage’ which focuses on the sacramental and covenant aspects of Catholic marriage.

ANA RODRIGUEZ-SOTO | FLORIDA CATHOLIC MIAMI BUREAU EDITOR

Posted: 06.18.09

MIAMI GARDENS | Chip DiComo wants others to experience the “oneness” of a true sacramental marriage – the same thing he experienced with his wife, Trish.

The St. Maximilian Kolbe parishioner is a widower now with two college-age sons. Trish died of leukemia in 2007.

“I’m here because I have this need to pay tribute to what we had for 20 years, the strength of the marriage that we had,” DiComo said June 6, while taking a break from a training session at St. Thomas University.

DiComo was one of 30 people, most of them couples, who attended the first training session for “God’s Plan for a Joy-Filled Marriage,” an addition to the marriage preparation programs currently being offered in the archdiocese.

Leaving the nuts and bolts of finances and communications to programs like Engaged Encounter, God’s Plan for a Joy-Filled Marriage focuses exclusively on the sacramental, and covenant, aspects of Catholic marriage. The program is based totally on Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body and theologian Christopher West’s teachings on the subject.

“We would offer this as another option,” said Father Eduardo Jimenez, director of the archdiocese’s family life ministry.

The goal of the weekend-long training session was to prepare a core group of facilitators who could begin teaching God’s Plan for a Joy-Filled Marriage to couples preparing for marriage in the Catholic Church. Father Jimenez said the program would be offered this first year as a pilot in several parishes.

The turnout for the first training session is a good omen, said Marta Vargas, who is helping Father Jimenez with the project.

“We have a waiting list of people who want to do it another day,” Vargas said, including a half-dozen in Key West. “They want it. The receptivity has been incredible.”

The same is true for couples seeking marriage, said Tom McCabe, a trainer for Ascension Press, which publishes the program. “They want what’s good. They want what’s true. The problem is they’re steeped in the culture. They’ve already been given a heapload of lies.”

McCabe, of the Archdiocese of Atlanta, and Jacob Samour of the Archdiocese of San Antonio, led the archdiocesan training workshop. They emphasized that God’s Plan for a Joy-Filled Marriage is not something that can be imposed on couples.

“They’re the ones who must freely accept this,” McCabe said.

The question couples must be asked is, “Why are you getting married in the Catholic Church if you don’t buy this?”

God’s Plan for a Joy-Filled Marriage provides an answer to the questions, “What is a Christian marriage? What does it mean to have a sacrament?” McCabe said.

The course revolves around a “creed” that is rooted in Scripture, from the book of Genesis to Revelation. The tenets are: That God is a communion of love. That God’s love has four characteristics: It is free, total, faithful and fruitful. That another name for that kind of love is marriage. That sexual union is the most definitive expression of married love. And that there are certain actions and thoughts that can violate married love.

“The human body and sex are not only biological realities. They are theological realities,” McCabe said.

Or in the words of Christopher West: “God’s love helps us understand marriage and married love helps us understand God. … (Married love) is a foreshadowing of the eternal joy that awaits us in heaven.”

DiComo said he and his wife learned that on their own. “That was never part of marriage prep.”

But now he wants to help others achieve the same joy. “People need to understand what they’re committing to. They need to understand what sacrament and covenant is,” DiComo said.

 

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