Mentor Training
Session 5
Sacrament of Matrimony
Even though this is a session about the Church, Prayer, and Spirituality, the tone and mentality are very sexy. Sessions 4 and 5 are really all one block but too much to take in at one sitting. In addition, the engaged couples need the Session 4 Homework to internalize the importance of body language and connecting the message with the action. In Session 5, even the messages of intercourse take on new meaning when we see how clearly they express the kind of self-donation Christ pours out on the cross and in the Eucharist.
The two mains goal of this Mentor Training evening are 1) to get the candidate mentors to pray together regularly and to share faith with each other more consistently and openly than they have up to this point in their marriage and 2) to begin to effect an ecclesial conversion that will help them to fall more in love with their fellow Catholics. We offer and encourage them to embrace an ecclesiology of belonging to the Body of Christ as Faith Family while reinforcing the concept of sexual sacrament. We also add a great deal of new content for the candidate mentors that aims at affecting a mini Called to be Catholic weekend which will empower them to belong more deeply to their fellow Catholics and to help others to forgive and to belong again. We have a responsibility to equip them to deal benevolently with those who are alienated from the church. We would also like to whet their appetite for spiritual growth, and we recommendbooks and tapes byFr Chuck Gallagher, Christopher West, and the Holy Father.
The Mentor Trainer approaches this session with a real sense of divine purpose. It is an opportunity to make a huge difference in the lives of the candidate mentors. We will break new ground that is even more powerful than the discovery of how to communicate for intimacy. What is at stake is the candidate mentors’ ability to share their personal faith and prayer life with each other. Even couples who have prayed together as a couple for a long time often discover each other at a deeper level in becoming soul mates. Most couples have never asked nor answered the questions we will give them, and it is with an air of excitement and discovery similar to the Smart Loving Section of Session 2 that we open up the area of sharing faith. Our mentality is that we have something that we cannot wait to share with them because we know how close it has brought us. Bear in mind that articulating faith experiences and sharing spontaneous prayer with her husband is perhaps the deepest desire of every faith-filled woman; so, our women are thrilled and the guys are delighted, because we made it easy. We offer them what amounts to multiple-choice questions and they experience the rewards of sharing.
Welcome 0:00 – 0:04
Welcome the candidate mentors back for Session 5and affirm them for all their efforts to be more sexual with each other and to verbalize what they mean when they communicate sexually.
Review Homework 0:04 – 0:16
The Mentor Trainer models the interaction with the engaged by asking the candidate mentors how they did themselves. This is generally a lively discussion.We want to draw out the experience of the candidate mentors because it will be similar to the various reactions of the engaged. Some will be very excited. For others it will have been awkward, but if they persisted, they will have found that it expanded their communication in a wonderfully positive way.
We want to take a few minutes to go over the homework from Session 4
For some, it was probably a challenge.
For others, it was doubly delicious.
For all, it was an opportunity to internalize the language of the body.
Use any or all of the following questions to encourage the candidate mentors to share their experience of their Homework.
What was your experience of putting verbal language on your physical expressions of affection?
Was it easy or difficult?
Did it make the messages more meaningful for you?
Did you become more aware of using actions to communicate?
What were some of the specific messages that you realized you were communicating through touch?
Throughout the day
I miss you andwantto feel close to you;
I want toremind you that I am in love with you
Specifically during Skin-to-Skin
I belong to you and you are mine
I am grateful for the gift you are to me
During love-making
I give you my whole being
I want to be one with you
These are also God’s messages to us.
Did anyone experience talking while you made love?Telling each other, “What I want to say to you tonight is…”
Did anyone dialogue on how you feel about having more children or praying for the grace to want more children? What was your experience of that?
Provide ample opportunity for anyone to share who wishes to.
Before getting into Session 5, are there any questions about what was covered in Session 4?
In general, any questions should be dealt with and clarified before moving on.
Opening Prayer 0:16 – 0:20
Tonight, we will be talking about the Sacrament of Matrimony, but Matrimony is inherently sexual so we could just as easily refer to this session as “Matrimony, the Sexual Sacrament”
The truth that sexual love is the clearest revelation of Divine Love is most easily understood when it is fleshed out in the lives of real couples.
- What JPII calls “the content of our lives in behavior and in feelings”.
This is really a logical extension of Session 4 and together they form one block but there is just too much to take in one sitting.
This night with the engaged is very inspiring. We should probably rename it Matrimony, a Sexual Sacrament. Some engaged couples are almost overwhelmed by the privilege and responsibility of becoming a living sign, but most just feel tremendously special. Their love is elevated to a new level as is the bar for how they will relate to each other after the wedding, even if they have not been to church in some time. Of course, we get the whole gamut of couples from very religious to infrequent church-goers.
The mentor trainer can share the joy of each type of engaged couple. The experience of mentoring an un-churched couple is so rewarding because the change in their attitude (and sometimes behavior) is so dramatic, but the very faith-filled are also such a delight because of their enthusiasm and the fact that what they havelong believed becomes so much more pertinent. In both cases the sacrament and the church becomes more real and relevant.
The ultimate goal of the evening with the engaged is to help them appreciate how deeply holy their sexual love is and how important it is to the rest of us in thechurch. We want them to leave having raised the bar for how generous and other-centered they will be with each other. We also want them to be filled with anticipation for the real presence of Christ that they will experience in their deeply sexual love after their wedding.
Finally, we witness to the power of prayer, both personal and communal. The prayer of the Church is powerful. Through the priest, it turns bread and wine into Jesus, and it supports and empowers the vowed commitment of a believing couple to transform ordinary marriage into Matrimony. We hope to send them home with gratitude and a feeling of connectedness with the Body of Christ, ready to begin their journey of becoming one in the Lord through faith sharing and couple prayer. We also hope to inspire in them a sense of mission to the Church and to the world.
We introduced the idea of “sexual sacrament” on Living in Love, but tonight we will expand into areas of sharing our personal relationship with God with each other
Sharing faith experiences as well as actually praying together.
We will offer questions for your reflection that will address becoming soul mates and alsobegin thejourney to what we call “spiritual nakedness“
This is a great time to ask questions and bring up topics that may have only been touched on during your weekend
Lead the candidate mentors in prayer.
Invite the group to hold hands, and make it clear that anyone who wishes to pray may do so.
Pray spontaneously, out loud, for these specific graces:
A sense of wonder at God’s presence in the sacrament of Matrimony
Openness to praying together and learning to share faith more fully
Pray also in general for the ministry to the engaged, for openness to the content of this session, and specifically, by name, for one or more couples who are being mentored or waiting to be mentored in the parishes represented by the candidate mentors.
Facilitating Session 5
Session 5 is designed to fill the engaged couple with a sense of awe at the significance of their love for each other and a sense of mission to manifest the real presence of Jesus in the midst of the community. We hope that they come away realizing that their other-centered, total, mutual self-donation is a living sign to all of us of Christ’s own love for the church.
In order to live this sacramental lifestyle, they need to embrace the reality that sexuality and holiness are inherently linked and mutually supportive.
Make sure that each mentor candidate has their Living in Love Every Day (LLED) Couple Workbook, a copy of the Preparing to Live in Love (PLL) Mentor Outline, and the Session 5PLL Couple Pack.
Introduction to Sacrament 0:20 – 0:40
Up to this point, we have freely used words like “Church”, “Sacrament”, and “Marriage” knowing full well that they mean different things to different people based on each person’s unique experience and the operative model of the people who taught and formed us
It is important to clarify these terms so that we’re talking the same language.
Before we share what these mean to us, we want you to get in touch with where you are coming in
Let’s start with the word “Church”, tell us what pops into your mind
Not so much a catechism answer as a mental picture.
There are many “models” of church and all are valid.
This is the Icebreaker on page 2 of the PLL Couple Pack. We start with “Church” and give several people a chance to respond out loud. Later, we will address “Marriage” and “Sacrament”.
There are no wrong answers to this question. Be sure to validate and show the truth in every person’s model or concept.
For example, some of us may have scoffed years ago at the notion of the building being the church but there is a reality about “sacred space” that is valid. It is why marriages, for the most part, must be performed in church buildings. Our buildings are an expression of our devotion and understanding of the glory of God - much love and sacrifice went into creating them. The many precious memories of times of worship with God’s faithful people are alive in that space and in a real way they are present whenever we are there.
Our own experience is that the personal memories of all of the life events of our family, the baptisms, weddings, and funerals are connected to our parishchurchand make the Body of Christ, past, present, and future, come alive for us.
When we ask the engaged this question, we are not looking for a Catechism response, but rather for an everyday personal experience of what the term means to them
There is no critique of the engaged couple’s response, just an appreciation of where they are beginning this session and a clarification of the terms we will use during the session
Once we validate the engaged couple’s answer, we explain that when we use the word “church”, we are primarily talking about the people of God, the living, incarnate Body of Christ
One of the most helpfulconstructs is to relate to the church as a faith “family” because being catholic is fundamentally a relationship with other Catholics. It is a blood family because we share in Christ ‘s body and blood
To us, this means the community of believers who pray, support, and witness to us.
They may be friends, neighbors, or relatives, but if they are baptized, they are the living Body of Christ in our lives.
Family is all about “belonging”
We accept that we belong to each other by birth.
- We had nothing to say about it.
- It was God’s choice.
It’s a very helpful attitude and it puts things into perspective.
- We all have relatives that we like and that we do not like but regardless, we will dance at their weddings and cry at their funerals, because they are ours.
- They are not better than anyone else, just as our kids may not really be better than anyone else’s; yet, we have a special relationship with them because they are ours.
Catholic is our family name
Most of us had nothing to say about it
We were baptized into the faith as infants.
God gave us our parents and God gave us our faith through them
Catholics make us Catholic.
- Remember with fondness the Catholics who shared their faith with you.
The grandmother who taught you the rosary.
The aunt who brought you to a novena.
A dad who prayed with you.
- It is a special relationship.
Please, turn to page 47 of your Workbook and take a minute right now to personalize this by writing down the names of the person or persons who are most responsible for you being Catholic today.
If you are of another faith tradition, where did your faith come from?
What was it about their faith that has led you to choose to belong to the church in a meaningful way?
Being Catholic is as much about belonging to Catholics as it is about what we believe or how we behave
It is a powerful experience of unconditional permanent love
If you do not act appropriately, one might say you are not “Christian”, but we never take back the gift of being Catholic.
- For Example, people often say I “am” Catholic but I do not go to church , or I “am” Catholic but I go to the Lutheran church.
You do not have to earn it.
- From the moment you are baptized, you are as Catholic as the Pope.
It is like your family name; no one can take it away.
The Mentor Trainers can share their awe at the realization that we are the Body of Christ, the living, incarnate, Body of Christ. We are not just “a” people; we are “His” people. When we say “Amen” (I believe) to the Eucharist, St Augustine suggests that we are also acknowledging that we too are the Body of Christ(Yes, we are). When we hold hands to pray or to reach out during the Sign of Peace, we ought to be aware that we are touching someone who has consumed the Eucharist often in their life and reverence the fact that the Body and Blood of Christ flows in their veins.
We often tell the story of a family Advent project. One year, we decided that we would all help to cook our favorite family meals and bring them to a shelter in the inner city to feed the homeless every Sunday. As we prepared to serve for thefirst time,we were impressed with how long the line for food was, but our little daughter Deven called our attention to one particular older gentleman. What we noticed was that he was a drunk, and he looked like he had been on the street for a very long time. But, she noticed a huge miraculous medal around his neck. “Look Mom,” she said “He’s one of ours!” and a warm benevolent feeling washed over me as I laughed and realized, “Yeah,he may be a bum, but he’s our bum.”
Because some percentage of the engaged will be marrying a person of a different faith or perhaps no faith, this is a perfect opportunity to dispel misconceptions about Catholicism and to share what we love about being Catholic
Do not be tempted to water down our faith or limit your sharing to only those beliefs we have in common with other Christians.
- That is “non denominationalism”.
Instead, throw the doors wide open and give them the gift of seeing our faith family through your eyes.
- This is true “ecumenism”;it brings everything into the light.
“Evangelization” is when we make ourselves vulnerable enough to invite the other into our lives, into to the life of the community, and to offer to share what is so precious to us with them.
If we are mentoring an interfaith couple (both are baptized) or a disparity of cult couple (one of them is not a baptized Christian),it can be a very specialopportunity to address sensitive issues or areas of misunderstanding.
In such cases, the Church often recommends that the wedding not include Mass or Eucharist; so as not to highlight that area of disunity, but this is often misunderstood