Get married? Why? /English

 

Français: Se marier, pourquoi ? // Español: Casarse, ¿por qué? English: Get married? Why? // Italiano: Sposarsi, perché? Esperanto: Geedziĝi? Kial? // Chinese: 為什麼要結婚？ Russian: Жениться? Зачем? // Po polsku: Żenić się? Dlaczego? Deutsch: Warum heiraten? // Português: Casar-se, por quê?

“Preparing yourself to start a family is an investment for the future”. Participants voice their opinion at the convention for engaged couples. 

 

Is he or she the right person? Does the precariousness of one’s situation make a long-term programme possible? Why does marriage seem so frightening? Whoever is thinking about building a future together today often find themselves having to face choices, difficulties, doubts. A journey of growth and the sharing with other couples can help in living one’s own choice with responsibility.

There are many young people who feel the need for a preparation. Ines a young Spanish girl, works in the field of fashion, although she has just been recently laid off; she and Alejandro, a business consultant, are planning to get married next July. They are from Madrid and came to know about the course from others who have already attended it: “To invest in our future is what counts the most, and so we did all we could to be here”. A couple from Brazil, because of the high cost of the airfare, requested that it be their advanced wedding gift.

They were days of reflection and discussion on the various topics through experiences, reports of experts, workshops that were about life as a couple and family life, from budgeting to work, simplicity and moderation, communication, feelings and emotions and being parents. “Ideas such as these form us as a future family – continued Ines – and help us to get to know each other more. Is “this” really what we want?”

More that 200 engaged couples met at Castelgandolfo, with simultaneous translation in ten languages, during the annual course of the New Families,, which is bringing ahead the formation of engaged couples also on the local and regional levels.

Modern culture which is centered on personal well-being, does not encourage marriage which implies a bond sworn to before society and which requires a commitment and also some sacrifices. But the social and family network give solidity to the relationship and in the communion among families, each family unit is a resource for the others.

“For me the legal recognition is important”, said Adolfo who has been with Antonella for ten years, and they have been living together for five years: in April they will get married in a mixed rite ceremony since he is a non-believer and she is Catholic. “I asked myself whether this difference in our convictions would have brought with it some problems among us, but then in learning to accept each other, the diversity of the other has served as a stimulus. Last year I got sick – she continued. This trial strengthened our relationship and guided us in the step towards marriage”.

“From a financial point of view, our situation is quite uncertain because I have an employment contract only up to February, then I don’t know what happens next – Ana of Belgrade explains – while Alexander, her fiance, plays the violin in an orchestra. “We understood that there may be small financial solutions and we have to see what is really necessary”. From Serbia, also 3 other mixed couples came together with them, one of the two is Catholic and the other is Orthodox. “Our desire is to understand together how to live better the differences among us so that they become an enrichment and not an obstacle”.

This “forever” can also be frightening – said one of the families of the staff organizing the Convention – “but this is not synonymous to perfection. Rather, perfection consists in this starting again every time that there is a setback or a difficulty in the relationship”. “A marriage is not successful just because it lasts, but what is important is its quality. Staying together and knowing how to love one another forever is the challenge that Christian spouses face” Pope Francis said to the engaged couples on the occasion of the celebration of Valentine’s Day”.

“In marriage, the spouses don’t give each other anything, but they give themselves in a continuous game of unity and distinction – said Chiara Lubich in Lucerne in 1999 – and their future is enclosed within this dynamics, a future that will bring them beyond themselves, and in particular through the generating of new life; and from this wider communion the family becomes the generator of society”.

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