Living and leading by Domestic Church
Edwin A. Perez Hernandez
St. Johns’ University
A Marriage Preparation Program
I am writing this paper as my Final Research Paper assignment for Theology 831 - Theological and Pastoral Perspectives on Marriage and Family, Spring Semester 2017 at St. Johns’ University. I’ve been hired as a consultant to design an ideal marriage preparation program.
As Director of Religious Education, at Blessed Sacrament Church in Diocese of Brooklyn, I am the diocesan coordinator of RCIA program at my assigned parish. There is a fact that, in my community, most our neophytes are in a cohabiting status. They do not have a marital status by civil or ecclesial married. After last Holy Saturday at the Easter Vigil, our neophytes completed their initiation sacraments and some of them are expressed their feeling to receive the sacrament of marriage. Also, some of them are expressed the need continuing faith formation.
After I read the Dr. JoAnn Heaney-Hunter article, The RCIA: A Model for Marriage Preparation? I am motivated and fowling her suggestion new framework for understanding the process of marriage preparation. She focusses on “marriage as an initiatory sacrament, as a specification of the baptismal call to holiness, as an entrance into a lifelong process of formation”[i].
This Marriage Preparation Program has adapting the dimension marriage as initiatory sacrament such as Dr. Heaney-Hunter explain in her article. My proposal is a program for couples who are in RCIA program. I suggest a parallel structure for couples that follow the broad outlines of the teaching of Pope Saint John Paul II in his, Uomo e donna lo creo. Catechesisull’ amore umano. The volume Uomo e Donna created it published, therefore, 134 catechesis, which are divided into six cycles.I chose this catechetical bookbecause, as the Dr. Heaney-Hunter explain, “couples are challenged to develop themselves fully as individuals. By growing in self-knowledge and acceptance, the individuals bring the best image of God to the marriage relationship.”[ii], to understand the responsibility of the couple.This catechesis intends to present the anthropology taught by the Ecclesial Tradition. There are the six cycles:
First Cycle: The Beginning
The translation of the book, Uomo e donna lo creo. Catechesi sull’ amore umano, into Spanish was coordinated by Alejandro Burgos Velasco and Pardo Álvarez, Miguel Ángel. Burgos Velasco argues that the context of the book is given by the K. Wojtyla thought, which is concretized in the theological plane in a special Christocentrism whose key is the concept of Redemption understood as new creation and in the philosophical plane by the use of Anthropology.Burgos Velasco explains that Pope Saint John Paul II develops in the first part of this catechesis an extensive theology of the body in which to frame a theology of marriage.A final context of catechesis is the realm of existence, or what is the same, essentially human experience.[iii]
The themes to explore are the two stories of creation. The first account is (GN 1, 1-2, 4), called the Elohist, which is objective in character and helps to understand that man can not be described with the single cosmological categories.The reflection on the Yahwist account (Gn, 2,5-2,25) that includes the fall (Gn3-4,1), places us before the birth of self-understanding and consciousness, and thus integrate the analysis of subjectivity , Typical of contemporary anthropology.It presents us with two theological states: that of original innocence and that of human sinfulness, and also the line of separation between them: the tree of science, symbol of the knowledge of good and evil.Essential continuity is based on the fact that the image of God in man remains.The man of the beginning, has lost the possibility of recovering that innocence, for which it has been closed after sin. That is why he receives through the words of Gn 3:15 the promise of Redemption.[iv]
Second Cycle: The Redemption of the Heart
According to Pardo Álvarez, Miguel Ángel, reading the first chapters of Genesis, the Pope begins the understanding of the human being in the light of Revelation: man, as a permanent project of the triune Creator God; Who has made him in his image and likeness as male and female; < person-body > (a body of < spousal meaning >); Called to act love; To achieve interpersonal communion.In this second cycle the key word is the remission of Christ to the heart of the man tempted of adultery, according to the pericope of the sermon of the mountain (Mt 5: 27-28). The anthropological-ethical study of a subject inwardly strained between the disintegrating forces of sin and the insuppressible longing for harmony, of beautiful love, which reaches him at last by the grace of the redemption of Christ.The "original experiences" of man agree with what he knows by Revelation. The experience of sexual modesty also shows the threat and, at the same time, the thirst for that communion. The "good news" Christian proclaims that the reintegration of man from sin is possible. Human sexuality is saved by the grace of Christ in the virtue of Christian chastity. Through Christian chastity the Ethos of healthy redemption purifies and sublimates the dynamics of Eros.[v]
Third Cycle: The Resurrection of the Flesh
According to Pardo Álvarez, from the remission of Christ to the "Kingdom of the heavens" (cf. Mt. 19, 10, 12, 22, 23-33 and even) - the "eschatology of the body”, The configuration of the resurrected man to the glorious Christ in the communion of the saints.[vi]
Juan Jose Perez-Soba and Diez del Corral explain in this cycle, considering the words of the Gospel in which Christ refers to the resurrection: words that have a fundamental importance to understand marriage in its Christian sense and also "renunciation" to conjugal life < for the kingdom of heaven> >.The complex casuistry of the Old Testament in the field of marriage not only prompted the Pharisees to accept Christ in order to raise the problem of the indissolubility of marriage (Mt 19: 3-9, Mc 10.2-12), but also to the Sadducees,on another occasion, to interrogate him about the Levirate law. In it are found contents that have an essential meaning for the theology of the body.The answer of Christ is a key answer of the Gospel in which it reveals - precisely from the purely human reasoning and in contrast to them - another dimension of the question, which corresponds to the wisdom and power of God himself.Thus, when he speaks of the future resurrection of the bodies, Christ refers to the same power of the living God.[vii]
Fourth Cycle: Christian Virginity
According to Leopoldo M. Vives, dCJM, in this fourth cycle, the Pope studies virginity in the light of the foundations proposed in the three previous cycles dedicated respectively to the original state of man (1st cycle), to the historical state of Man, fallen and redeemed (2 cycle), and the eschatological state (3rd cycle). These cycles offer an original and suggestive framework for the study of virginity, which is bound up between the original design of God over man (manifested in creation) and eschatology as the full realization of that design.Virginity confirms the spousal meaning of the human body in its masculinity and femininity. In the resurrection, the spiritualization of the body in communion with God presupposes the subjugation of all its dynamisms to reason, and the total integration of the affections in the person. It is then that the spousal meaning of the body is fully revealed. Therefore, virginity must be understood in the light of the fundamental truth of the theology of the body, that God has created man in his image and likeness (Gn 1:26). The nuptial meaning of the body is not exhausted in marriage and procreation, but the union of man and woman is always open to a deeper communion where the person reaches his true fullness, which is communion with God.[viii]
Fifth Cycle: Christian Marriage
According to Francisco-CristóbalFernández Sánchez, the Fifth Cycle of Catechesis has as main object a better understanding of Christian marriage from a theological approach of human love. Its reading and study can start from a structuring of the same in three great parts.
The first part consists of a meditation on the meaning of the sacrament of marriage in the context of the historical realization of the divine plan of salvation outlined in the letter to the Ephesians, centered on the personalistic analysis of Eph 5: 22-33 (cat.87 -103). The context of the eternal plan of salvation in Christ manifested and performed gratuitously as God's gift to men, in the dynamics of the Covenant, is shown as the anthropological hermeneutic horizon, theologically adequate, of the sacrament of marriage.
The second part of the cycle places us in a profound reflection on the meaning of the matrimonial liturgy, centered on the sacramental rite (cat.104-108), showing the hermeneutics of the liturgical sign enlightened by the category of "language of the body".The structure of the sacramental sign as an expression of a personal reciprocity between the spouses that is enlightened considering it by the category of the language of the body.
The third part, the Pope establishes the correct anthropological relationship between: 1) the existential truth of love, as a basic dimension of human love between a man and a woman, through a personal analysis of the meaning of the poetic metaphors of singing of songs ( And (2) the sacramental expression of marital consent in the truth of human love, expressed in the language of prayer, as a dialogue of marriage with God, especially through a reflection on the meaning of the prayer of Tob 8.5-8 (cat.115-117). The truth of human love has as its "subjective" dimension the reciprocity manifested in the language of the body of lovers.[ix]
Sixth Cycle: Love and Fertility
According to Miguel Antonio Ruiz Ontañón in this cycle a re-reading and deepening in the truth of the central nucleus of the encyclical Humanae vitae of Paul VI is carried out in the light of the "theology of the body" exposed before. All reflections on the redemption of the body and the sacramentality of marriage serve as a preparation for the interpretation of the doctrine of Humanae vitae, which attempts to answer some questions of a theological nature that the encyclical aroused, among other spheres, in marriage and Procreation. The truth of the language of the body is proposed as the way to understand in depth the two meanings of the conjugal act and its inseparability. These reflections are introduced in the subject of responsible parenthood. In this context, the subject of immortality is approached both of contraception and direct sterilization and abortion, manifesting its illegality and seeing how the "plausible reasons" cannot change the moral qualification of these acts. Periodic continence is placed in the realm of the purity of the spouses, therefore in the plane of the ethics and not of the technique. And when they are Christians, it is also understood as the life of the Spirit. In order to carry out this safeguard, the spouses must live with regard to conjugal chastity, that is, the continence or ability to dominate, control and guide the sexual instincts. Conjugal chastity is a gift of the Holy Spirit and is connected with the gift of respect for what comes from God (virtue of piety).[x]
Finally, the result of this initiative may be presupposing that couples will experience a radical change of mind and heart, and better prepared and more ready to undertake the Marriage Ministry challengers. Such as, Diocese of Brooklyn’ Marriage Ministry, which is following those phases: Marriage Preparation, Marriage Enrichment, Marriage Support and Infant Baptismal Preparation.
[i]Heaney-Hunter, JoAnn, The RCIA: A Model for Marriage Preparation? (New York, 1991), 209
[ii]Heaney-Hunter, 1991: 209
[iii]Burgos, Alejandro and Pardo Álvarez, Miguel Ángel, Hombre y mujer lo creó;el amor humano en el plano divino;por Juan Pablo II (Instituto Pontificio Juan Pablo II para Estudios sobre el Matrimonio y la Familia. Madrid, 2000),51-52
[iv]Burgos and Pardo Álvarez, 2000: 52-53
[v]Burgos and Pardo Álvarez, 2000: 170-171
[vi]Burgos and Pardo Álvarez, 2000: 170
[vii]Burgos and Pardo Álvarez, 2000: 361-364
[viii]Burgos and Pardo Álvarez, 2000: 401-405
[ix]Burgos and Pardo Álvarez, 2000: 469-473
[x]Burgos and Pardo Álvarez, 2000: 619-622
Bibliography
Heaney-Hunter, JoAnn, The RCIA: A Model for Marriage Preparation?.New York, 1991
Burgos, Alejandro and Pardo Álvarez, Miguel Ángel: Hombre y mujer lo creó;el amor humano en el plano divino;por Juan Pablo II. Instituto Pontificio Juan Pablo II para Estudios sobre el Matrimonio y la Familia. Madrid, 2000
School of Evangelization Guidebook, Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, 2016.