To Prepare for Marriage
Some tools for approaching this vocation which we've found to be useful
The uniqueness of the challenge facing faithful Catholics today in Church history consists of the fact that the burden of transmitting the Gospel lies upon the family. Whereas in previous ages, it was some form of religious community that was the de facto instrument of the Church’s endurance, now much of the work is to be done by families. I’ve argued in my series of Seven Tools for Culture Recovery that the Holy Spirit anticipated this and laid foundations long before this calling was apparent. And given that this seems to be the case, preparing a man and woman for marriage takes on a singular importance.
It’s easy to note that marriage is under attack from many directions (which also demonstrates that this is the form the Holy Spirit and the Church Militant are relying on). Marriage has been questioned, mocked, re-defined, suspected, dismissed, and shaken to its core. The literary world (including Substack) tends to highlight those who’ve given up on marriage, who’ve found the cross too hard, who are angry at the romance with which it’s painted, who consider Catholic marriage a scam no one would take up if they *really* knew what it entailed.
And to some extent, this is true. Marriage is very hard. It is a cross: an instrument of execution of the selfish self; it is a crucible of forging culture that affects generations; it is a beachhead of humanity, bloody and embattled, and taking it up brings a meaning, pathos, and drama to life that is found really no where else for the ordinary man and woman. To suffer under a bad marriage is a hardship, but the grace of the sacrament is there, ready to make even the worst and most twisted of yokes into a glory and a blessing. As Chesterton (a married man) said, “Marriage is a duel to the death that no man of honor should refuse.”
Getting married is like joining the Marines. It’s stepping into the battle for all that is good, true, and beautiful, for everything that is normal, singular, humanizing, comforting, and luminous. Its sacrifices are normative and largely unappreciated: its impact on history is magnified far beyond its time limits. It is sacred: God uses it to bring a unique human soul into the world, so sex is manifestly very much His business, and His rules are there to guard the sacred furnace and keep it burning long and with ardor during the entirety of a man and woman’s life.
The Book of Tobit portrays a society in which marriage is difficult, if not impossible. Tobit, himself a heroic man, himself struggles with a difficult marriage after his disability of blindness. He lives in Babylon, where the good are persecuted, and his life is full of drudgery, misunderstanding, and hardship, and the benefits of his relationship with his wife are unrealized. It is her angry words at the injustice of their situation which lead him to nearly despair and cry out to God.
At the same time, Sarah, another young woman in a far-off country is finding achieving a happy marriage brutally difficult, to say the least. She has attracted the attention of a demon who leads lustful men to fall in love with her beauty and seek to possess her in marriage—but on the wedding night, he kills them. Seven times this demonic outrage has happened and the servants and extended family murmur against her. It’s not stated what this girl, Sarah, did to fall under this infernal influence, but the effect is similar to possession. She is isolated, feared, and told that she would be better off committing suicide and ending this demonic influence on the family. Again, she cries out to God in desperation. And “at that very moment, the prayers of both of them were heard in the glorious presence of God. So Raphael was sent to heal both of them.” (Tobit 3:16-17)
This is the Biblical introduction to the great Saint Raphael, patron angel of travelers, finances, courtship, and marriage, as well as specializations in eye disease and demonic-butt-kicking. This book of the Bible shows like no other that the Lord God is intensely interested in marriage and is willing to intervene to arrange it, heal and preserve and strengthen it.
As I said, marriage is difficult and incredibly hard. And yet, our children still wish to marry and begin families: even our tortured American popular culture still nods to the ideal. So it behooves a family whose children are called to marriage to prepare them. Here are a few tools we’ve found to be helpful in our own marriage and in the marriages our grown children have and are contracting.
Devotion to St. Raphael
Start with St. Raphael. I owe a debt to this saint for leading me to my husband, who after his reversion to his childhood faith (so many of us who marry in this culture have such journeys), took up a devotion to the holy angel. It’s said that the charism of devotion to St. Raphael is that when you meet the person God means you to marry, you have an abiding sense of peace regarding your relationship, such as the son of Tobit, Tobias, had when he heard of and met Sarah.
In a conversation with Tobias, Raphael, who is disguised as a human man, does some matchmaking, telling the young man he should marry Sarah, who is his kinswoman. “Moreover, the girl is sensible, brave, and very beautiful, and her father is a good man.” Tobias has heard of the infamous Sarah whose husbands die at the bridal chamber, and is skeptical. But Raphael tells him to not be afraid, for God can do the impossible.
“Now listen to me, brother, and say no more about this demon. Take her. I know that this very night she will be given to you in marriage... Now when you are about to go to bed with her, both of you must first stand up and pray, imploring the Lord of heaven that mercy and safety may be granted to you. Do not be afraid, for she was set apart for you before the world was made. You will save her, and she will go with you.” (Tobit 6:12)
The devil obviously has an interest in preventing and destroying marriage, in making young people afraid to marry, in telling them it’s impossible. This Scripture is a useful corrective for the doubtful, and it implies that marriages are indeed devised by God “before the foundation of the world.” It is a sobering and daring thing to enter into marriage, and prayers asking for God’s mercy upon your marriage are fitting.
The Scripture continues, “When Tobias heard the words of Raphael and learned that she was his kinswoman, related through his father’s lineage, he loved her very much, and his heart was drawn to her.” Other translations say, “He loved her so much that his heart was no longer his own.” (Tobit 6:16-17) Love is at the heart of marriage. According to the Scripture, not only is “love at first sight” possible, but love before sight is also possible. My husband and I did not fall in love at first sight, but I knew he came from a heroic family: I respected his siblings that I had met. After a few near misses, we finally met after interacting with the same group of common friends for years. We were married almost within a year of meeting, which may seem crazy but was the obvious right thing to do.
So I highly recommend recourse to St. Raphael, guardian of courtship and marriage. Pray to him for yourself, and for your children, and recommend his devotion to others.
The Annulment Questionnaire
Official Catholic Church marriage preparation is a mixed bag, to say the least, varying greatly from diocese to diocese. But here’s one suggestion made by a disgruntled Catholic which has born good fruit in our family. When this Catholic writer had found herself divorced and applied for an annulment, she was astonished by the depth of the questions and commented that if she had been asked such questions before her marriage or as part of her church marriage preparation, she never would have married the guy!
This led to my husband’s idea of downloading an annulment questionnaire and handing it to our children and their possible fiancés, with words to this effect: “These are questions that the Church would ask you if you wanted to prove a marriage never happened. Why not ask them of each other now and save yourselves a lot of heartache later?” While not every question on the forms will apply to the engaged couple, many of them will. Here’s the first section of the one from the New Orleans Archdiocese:
A. Family Background
1. Describe the life of your parents together and the way they got along.
2. Describe the way in which you got along with each of your parents.
3. Describe your relationship with your siblings while growing-up, and the birth order of each one.
4. Describe how your relationship with family members and the marriage of your parents might have impacted your views on marriage.
5. Had you experienced any problems in adjustment or emotional difficulties in adolescence or young adulthood? If so, how did these issues affect your judgment in deciding to marry or readiness to undertake on the obligations of married life?
B. Personality and Character
1. Describe your behavior toward alcohol and drugs; specifically any addictive or abusive behavior.
2. Describe your relationship with the opposite sex, dating habits, and/or any addictive behavior(s); e.g., gambling, internet, cybersex, pornography.
3. Write a brief sketch of your personality; comment on your weak and strong points at the time of the wedding and now.
I highly recommend engaged couples working their way through this questionnaire in detail—and so do the dating couples to whom we have recommended it. They’ve told us that it generated deep and fruitful discussions. As one couple put it to us, “because we went through the questionnaire, we had a discussion about something that was a big deal in our family backgrounds. Later on after marriage, when that issue came up, it wasn’t the devastating thing that it might have been, because we were prepared for it.”
Dating and courtship and engagement is the time for asking these hard questions, for challenging one another, for being very, very sure that you are choosing the right vocation. What makes this difficult for young couples is that our culture preaches the reverse: dating and courtship and engagement should be about flutters, feelings, and rosy-eyed views of the other. Marriage, especially in media, is about clarity, disappointment, blinders off, and astonishment and stoic acceptance or rebellious refusal. Actually, it should be the reverse as one proverb puts it: “during engagement, eyes wide open. During marriage, eyes half-shut.”
Because marriage is a lifelong vocation, a cross that is both difficult to carry and incredibly meaningful and joyous at the same time, it’s worthwhile preparing and arming yourself with as much of the truth as possible—the truth about yourself and the truth about the other. Courtship is not the time for hiding in fear of rejection, but a time of facing the truth with courage.
101 Questions for Catholic Dating Couples
In addition to the annulment questionnaire, here’s a more lighthearted tool along the same lines, made by a gentleman we know, Tom McFadden Sr. He created it to assist his ample amounts of children and grandchildren along the path to marriage. He recently published it as a book on Amazon and it’s free on Kindle. Whereas the annulment questionnaire is more serious and probably only ready to be tackled by those already engaged, these questions are more fun but still useful and enlightening. Mr. McFadden posits that these questions could be asked casually on a date, as part of the “interview” process. As McFadden playfully puts it:
Although it may seem somewhat unemotional or systematized, it's important to remember that when you spend time with a person of interest by going on a date, frequently you are actually interviewing your date for the position of “spouse.”
This is the most important interview that you will ever conduct! It's important to know what to ask! Remember, every date ends either in marriage or a breakup. Save time, money, and mental and emotional anguish by using these insightful questions.
Here’s a sample of the level of detail of some questions—note that while none of the answers are right/wrong, they are all issues on which many devout Catholics quibble, because some people have strong opinions on them, opinions that are debatable but likely to cause friction in marriage if not discussed:
Is it important to “dress up” for Mass? To tithe 10% to the Church? Veil or no veil? Skirts or pants? Front of Church or back? Sing during Mass? Sign of peace? Kneeling/Standing for Communion? On the tongue/hand? Who holds children in Mass? Snacks or religious books for kids during Mass? Crawling under the pews? Holding hands together? Singing during Mass?
Disagreement on whether to give your future toddlers Cheerios at Mass is not grounds for annulment—but it is a subject that can cause friction among married couple when they realize they disagree—especially when they only discover their strong opinion three minutes into the homily! Again, I highly recommend these discussion-starting questions compiled by a seasoned husband and grandfather.
You can find Mr. McFadden’s book—which is free on Kindle, as I mentioned—here.
Chastity
This is what distinguishes the marriage of two serious Catholics from the bulk of the world, and even from their raised-as-Catholic-but-nonpracticing compatriots. The world considers chastity impossible or, if possible, then unhealthy. If healthy, then too difficult. If too difficult, then a cause of friction and unhappiness—and as countless internet confessionals might indicate, a completely chaste courtship is no guarantee of success and happiness in marriage. “If only I had known…” stories used to dot the Catholic internet, whose overall effect agrees with the syllogisms above (impossible, unhealthy, difficult, etc.). But as chastity is asked of each of us, married, engaged, or unmarried and single, lay or consecrated, it’s clearly essential to following Christ.
Chastity introduces tension into a relationship but it is a necessary and wholesome tension, a tightening of a fine string of steel, because it is only upon such tautness that music can be played—the joyful, amorous, playful music of courtship and anticipation that is sung of in the Scriptures, that is a symbol of Christ’s desire for us. The tension between the now and the not-yet is what fuels love. And the chastity of engagement, while at times hilarious and at times painful, at times innocent and at times a rebuilding up of a broken foundation—has the virtue to becoming a shared, happy awaiting.
There will be times of abstinence in marriage ahead—where sexual desire will have to wait because of pregnancy, postpartum, illness, injuries, military deployments, distance, or worse, social upheaval. But those times may have the additional layers of disappointment, disagreement, anxiety, hurt feelings, isolation, misunderstanding or just fear at what the future may bring.
What distinguishes the abstinence of courtship and engagement is that it is shared, agreed-upon, and like the season of Advent, contains a joyful expectation.
Since sexual affection is a river that flows in one direction, and is only with difficulty made to backtrack, we’ve seen many couples—including ourselves—have to make new rules of conduct for the period of engagement. For some couples, the goodnight kiss might have to be curtailed or even done away with altogether. Others choose to withhold all kissing until the marriage has taken place. This is not because sex is bad: in fact, it is terrifyingly good, capable of becoming a glorious stallion or a destructive monster—in order to run fast and far, it needs to be trained and taught to hold itself in check. I, as a Gen Xer, was skeptical of the no-kissing rule, until I attended the wedding of a young couple whom I knew had privately made such a parameter. The sheer joy they took in kissing in public as bride and groom—often not waiting for the ding of a glass—was on a whole other level from the usual performance of newlyweds and made us all so happy for them. (FYI, their marital happiness continues unabated.)
I mentioned rebuilding on ruined foundations: that is true of so many of us, that we come to the altar with a wounded past, innocence stolen or traded away or worse. That is why we come to Christ the Great Healer, because He came to make all things new. It is never too late to begin again, and even a couple who is un-virginal can reap the benefits of upholding the chastity of engagement, of waiting, of putting themselves under that yoke and learning its rules, as many good priests will counsel in marital preparation.
The counterfeit sexuality offered by the Enemy in all its guises is comparable to crack cocaine, often drawing its power from its accompanying shame. By contrast, the sexuality of marriage, the sacred renewal of the covenant is like fine wine—at first taste, not perhaps as exciting or even strange and puzzling, but one whose richness grows and deepens with the relationship, aging apace with your love. There’s nothing performative about it: it’s not an activity, it’s something very much tied up with the bonding of two human persons. In a world that idolizes sex and then smashes the idol in turn, marital sexuality is a common sense sanity so difficult to capture or communicate in words. It is truly “the blessing not lost in the Fall nor washed away in the Flood.”
Marriage over Wedding
I am poised, struggling how to put this last bit into words. The world makes weddings incredibly expensive events that grow more intimidating yearly. I compare it to how the likes of Martha Stewart ruined childhood birthday parties with elaborate games and ceremonies and entertainments—the end result being that too many people gave up on having children’s birthday parties or only have private family-only ones. (I stick with what I learned from my mother: bake a cake, invite a bunch of kids and siblings, and let them figure out how to entertain themselves without any screens for three hours. It can cost as little as $10 and usually works out just fine.) I wonder if the same advice can be applied to weddings. It’s about the sacrament, not the party. That’s the central part.
I don’t want to say the answer is to have a simple wedding. My sister, who has married off three of her ten children so far, has a pithy saying: you can have a cheap wedding or a simple wedding, but not both. “You know what’s simple? Writing a check.”
But if by simple, you mean having a lower-cost wedding, that’s possible. Serve simpler food. Have a less formal reception. For our reception, we put a priority on having as many people as possible and invited whole families, not just the adults. We invited 1000 people and 400 showed up: we rented the cafeteria of the college where my mother worked and served hot dogs. Friends made the cake and decorated and brought cookies. It wasn’t exactly simple to plan, but it was lots of fun.
On the day of our wedding, knowing my own artist’s tendency to niggle and perfect, I made a promise and warned my family: On the day of the wedding I would not answer any phone calls or answer any questions. I wanted to be as contemplative as possible and not distracted by any crisis over place cards or decorations or whatever. As they say, a wedding is a day. You want a marriage to last a lifetime, God willing.
When our own children are planning a wedding, we warn them that our family weddings are not about status. The only status we crave for them is that they achieve a good marriage, aged well. And that is so much more about the two persons involved and far less about the décor or the guest list.
Another word on simplicity: When family wants to pitch in and help to save money, it makes sense to involve them, even if it makes things complicated. Nothing can strain or forge family relationships like working on a wedding together. But marriage is meant to be a public and communal event, as shown in the Gospels where the Father of the Groom sends out servants to find as many people as possible to fill the banquet hall. We strive for the sacrament and for the gift to the community in our wedding planning. Keeping those things in balance is difficult and may seem impossible, but like so much about marriage, possible by the grace of Christ.
Marriage preparation is a truly crucial activity in culture-building, one that should be more than six months of hasty training. It involves prayer, self-reflection and discussion, courage, virtue-building, and prudent detachment as well as the vulnerability to be joyful and faithful. And Christ will work His way into every aspect of it if we let Him. After all, the culmination of all His work is His own wedding, the Wedding Feast of the Lamb in the New Heavens and New Earth. May we and our spouses and families all meet Him there someday.
Let us continue to pray for each other.
Beautiful pictures of a beautiful couple who forged a fruitful union with God.