Key Priorities in Engagement

What should I focus on during engagement? As you prepare for your wedding day, you are also preparing for your marriage. Fr. Josh Johnson is joined by Deacon Michael Parker to discuss some of the key priorities for engagement that will help you truly prepare for marriage.

Snippet from the Show
Cultivating relationships with married couples who are in different seasons of life can be incredibly beneficial to your own marriage. Learn from other couples and allow them to support you.

Glory Story (5:09)

Question (8:39)

What are some ways that an engaged couple can prepare for marriage?

Spiritual Life

Cultivate both your personal and common prayer life. Pray alone, but also pray together. Every couple needs as much spiritual support as they can get. Write a convent and ask cloistered nuns to pray for you.

Marriage Counseling

Start counseling before marriage. The challenges and struggles will come and it is best to do all you can to prepare yourselves for them. Learn how to communicate better and support one another.

Relationships

Build bonds with family, both of your families. Every family has its challenges, but it is important to know them and love them as best you can. Also, it is very helpful to have couple friends who are also married. Work on developing close friendships with married couples. Sometimes our single friends won’t understand marriage and may offer unhelpful advice.

Avoid Cohabitation

Cohabitation is a near occasion of sin and can also cause scandal. If you are already cohabitating, see if you can stay at someone’s house until married.

Saint Story: Cyprian and Daphrose Rugamba (35:13)

Cyprien and Daphrose were a married couple that lived in Rwanda. They were married in 1965 two years after Cyprien’s first fiance was killed tragically. Daphrose was a very devout woman and loved her faith greatly. Cyprien, however, had fallen away from the faith and was not a good husband. He was unfaithful to Daphrose and treated her poorly. However, Daphrose remained faithful to her husband and raised their ten children in the faith. She praised constantly for the conversion of her husband.

Seventeen years after they were married, Cyprien became very ill. His illness was undiagnosable and he believed he would die. It was during this time that Cyprien experienced a profound conversion. He asked for the forgiveness of his wife and the two were renewed in their marriage. In 1990, Cyprien and Daphrose established an Emmanuel Community in Rwanda. Their dedication to this community helped it to grow quickly throughout Rwanda even though it was such a tumultuous time in the country.

Cyprien and Daphrose spoke out on the need for unity in Rwanda. They spoke out against some of the immoral and harmful practices that were causing great division in Rwanda. Their work in this led to their assassinations along with six of their ten children.

The cause for Cyprien and Daphrose’s canonizations was opened in September 2015.

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