Several times a year couples from across the diocese gather in Victoria at The Capuchin Center for Spiritual Life for a full weekend to prepare for a sacramental marriage. Throughout the weekend, couples hear from a team of married couples and a priest who guides the conversations. It’s an opportunity to talk intensively and honestly about their future together. The engaged couples privately discuss all aspects of married life – from desires, ambitions, and goals to their attitudes about money, sex, children, family, and their role in the church and society.
It’s a weekend away from the stresses of work, wedding planning, and everyday life. It’s an opportunity to grow closer to each other and in their relationship with their faith. Brooklyn Bussen and Jeff Heiman, an engaged couple and recent attendees of an Engaged Encounter weekend reflected on their time in Victoria. “We felt like Engaged Encounter really prepared us because it made us take a whole weekend to talk through things. Since we had to stay the weekend there, it made us shut out other things in our lives and focus on our engagement. Being completely committed to each other that weekend with no distractions was the most beneficial thing that we could have done.”
Another advantage of immersive conversations is the opportunity to delve into discussions about faith. While some couples come into the weekend with varying backgrounds and outlooks on their faith, Brooklyn and Jeff were both raised Catholic. They took the opportunity to learn more about the other person’s family background and how they were raised, which helped them better understand each other and how to merge these things to create their own family.
While preparing for a wedding can include plenty of tasks, one of the most important tasks is the spiritual preparation for the lifetime of marriage. “Our advice to other couples is to go into the weekend with an open mind! It is hard to go a whole weekend without looking at your to-do list, so naturally, we showed up and thought ‘we just need to check this off the list’. We then realized that dedicating the weekend to our future marriage was something that needed to be done. We left the weekend with a better understanding of each other and more in love than when we came,” stated Brooklyn.
We are blessed in our diocese to have a great team of volunteer couples and priests who use the gifts that God has given them to help young couples in our diocese. They invest their time and energy into helping young couples prepare for their sacramental marriage. They are supported by the Office of Family Life for the Diocese of Salina. This ministry is dedicated to supporting and strengthening marriages and family life. Your gift to the Bishop’s Annual Appeal – Call to Share helps support programs such as Engaged Encounter and assists parishes with programming, training, and resources as they encourage family members in their pursuit of holiness. To learn more about the appeal or to make a gift, please visit- join.salinadiocese.org.